
A prenuptial agreement is a tool that can be utilized for you and your future spouse to address uncomfortable financial conversations. This will allow you to rest assured that your assets are protected before you get married. But in order for this to work, you must complete a full financial disclosure. Read on to discover more about financial disclosures and how a seasoned Sparta prenuptial agreement attorney at Paris P. Eliades, Esq. can walk you through this.
What does financial disclosure mean in a prenuptial agreement?
Financial disclosure in a prenuptial agreement is where you and your future spouse must disclose all of your assets. More specifically, you must disclose the following:
- Your channel(s) of income and its net total.
- Your assets (i.e., real estate, cars, expensive personal items, etc).
- Your debts (i.e., credit card debt, student loan debt, medical debt, etc).
- Your prospective inheritances (i.e., being a beneficiary or heir).
If you fail to disclose any of the above assets, whether it is intentional or not, you may have to suffer serious consequences. That is, if you end up getting a divorce down the line, the New Jersey family court may consider your prenuptial agreement to be invalid. And so, you may have to undergo a lengthy and expensive litigation process to divide up your assets accordingly. This may lead to you losing important assets that you wished to protect through your prenuptial agreement. What’s worse is that your failure to fully disclose your finances can be flagged as fraudulent activity, which comes with its own set of legal troubles.
What else is involved in a prenuptial agreement?
To reiterate, a prenuptial agreement is intended to coordinate how you and your future spouse will divide up your assets in the event of a divorce or death. And so, your agreement may answer any or all of the following questions:
- How will our real estate be divided?
- How will our assets, which have appreciated in value, be divided?
- How will spousal support payments work?
- What will we do with our marital assets?
- What will we do if we inherit finances or other assets?
Importantly, your agreement may not answer questions pertaining to how child support payments and child custody arrangements will work.
And lastly, like most legal contracts, a prenuptial agreement must be created and filed in a certain way so that the New Jersey family court can consider it to be valid. So, you must ensure that you abide by the following:
- Your agreement must be in writing.
- Your agreement must be voluntarily signed.
- Your agreement must be notarized.
- Your agreement must be considered fair and just.
For more information, contact a Sparta, NJ family law attorney today.