Pre-marital Planning

Most people are familiar with prenuptial agreements as the primary form of pre-marital planning. Prenuptial agreements have many requirements: full disclosure of all of both party's assets; representation of both parties by separate counsel; signing of agreements a specific amount of time before the wedding to be enforceable. There is also the vaguer concept that prenuptial agreements must be fair: family courts are courts of equity and not courts of contract, so if a court decides the prenuptial agreement wasn't fair, the court can disregard the agreement even if it meets all technical requirements. 

Luckily, there are other, more concrete alternatives to the prenuptial agreement. Specifically, using an irrevocable trust to hold and own pre-marriage, separate property assets avoids the headaches of a prenuptial agreement. As long as you set up the trust and fund it prior to marriage, there is no need for disclosure to a future spouse, additional attorney involvement, or any room for vague interpretations of fairness. 

When you place assets in a properly drafted irrevocable asset protection trust, the assets are removed from your "legal ownership," meaning there is no way for those assets to become marital property because you never owned them during the marriage. However, with proper planning, you can still have control of the assets, benefit from the assets, and allow your future spouse and family as much access to the assets as you desire.

Tresp, Day & Associates, Inc. has significant experience using trusts for premarital planning, and we are nationally recognized experts in asset protection. We can assist you with structuring your estate so that you can move forward in your marriage without concern. Contact us today. We now offer face-to-face consultations utilizing video conferencing technologies such as FaceTime, Duo, and Zoom.