I don't know what their relationship is like, and I don't know what prompted this, but I can't help but feel like this guy is making a huge mistake.
I understand prenups for rich people because you never know why someone is really with you, but if you are with someone before getting rich, that is one of the few things you can never have again. If the relationship is good I don't know why you suddenly make it all about money and drive a possibly irreparable wedge between you. And for what? Because if things go sideways you might lose half? Half of rich is still rich and it's a small risk to take for the chance at a lifelong loving partner. Some things are worth more than money.
In scenarios like this where a person looks to leave immediately after getting money I just assume they were settling to begin with. This seems to happen a lot in the entertainment industry where people leave their original spouses soon after hitting it big and gaining access to dating pools they likely never had access to before.
I've seen many engineers do something like "I want you to freely change your mind to concur with what I believe as a result of my argument while ignoring the fact that I have placed these rules in the first place. "
The desire is for a free mind to make a decision by the fear of the outcome creates an incentive to create processes where the mind is no longer truly free. The "real" desire is never and can never be met because of fear imposed process.
>And for what? Because if things go sideways you might lose half? Half of rich is still rich and it's a small risk to take for the chance at a lifelong loving partner. Some things are worth more than money.
And if they have no plans of leaving then refusing taking half when they go shouldn't be a problem - right?
No, asking for the postnup is a first-strike. Before that point, there was no reason to assume that there was a problem in the relationship. Asking for the postnup introduces distrust into the dynamic.
If I were the spouse being asked to sign the document, I'd say, "Nope, let's get divorced right now and split the money in half. After that, if you want me in your life, feel free to court me again."
Agree + Stay together ; Agree + Divorce ; Disagree + Stay Together ; Disagree + Divorce
Only one of these has potential risk to the business and it falls under the "Disagree" options. So for the business, agreement is necessary to prevent that risk and some business partners that otherwise might be on board would refuse due to that risk.
You act as though this situation is new or unique to businesses. They deal with married business partners every day, and they don't do it by forcing everyone to get post-nups.
I challenge you to find an attorney that would advise her to sign any such post-nup. Maybe a reasonable stock buy-back in the event of a divorce, but asking for a post-nup is completely beyond the pale.
Not signing it would be a clear sign that he should find a normal every-day method of solving his "business partner is married" issue that doesn't involve a first-strike measure to leave her out in the cold because his side-projects are now worth money.
The funny thing is that on top of my business experience with using stock agreements to get around this issue in a business I helped to found, I've also dealt with coming into a bunch of money shortly after being married. Trying to get my wife to sign a post-nup agreement would have been horribly obnoxious and asking for strife.
> Asking for the postnup introduces distrust into the dynamic.
What he is doing is just good business practice: He wants to keep the business as free as possible of liabilities. Her not willing to sign is what introduces distrust: It implies that she at least want to leave her the optinion open to run away with money from his business.
No. There are ways that the business can protect itself for various events.
For example, I was a founder in a business years ago. We included clauses in the stock buy-back agreement that could be triggered upon various events (death of a partner, divorce, etc.) Normally, those kinds of clauses ensure that the non-partner-spouse gets the value of the business owed to him/her, but loses decision-making control of the business.
You don't have to force your partner to sign a trust-breaking post-nup in order to have those kinds of protections for the business.
Your answers seem to be coming from the perspective that the business is more important than the marriage. That's not a perspective that many people here share; your one-line replies that assume your perspective aren't going to go very far to persuade people.
California has no fault divorce and some would argue that the divorce courts are slanted against men in heterosexual marriages.
We don't know how he perceived his marriage before the money started to roll in. We only have her side of the story. Given those facts he might be acting wisely. There's no way for us to know.
When I first saw the title, I thought this guy was a jerk. My success is my wife's success.
But if it is a business and she would get half of his interest in the business, couldn't that cause hardships on the other partners and allow her to make decisions that are detrimental to the business?
Could he have her sign a fair postnup saying she would get half of any financial interests in the business but no voting rights or that the partners would have automatic rights to buy her out?
I could see all sorts of ways that this could be fair to her but still protect his partners.
IANAL, but you're describing a buy-sell agreement, which would cover what would happen to business assets in various death / divorce / firing scenarios. Often, you would agree to sell your assets back to the company in the event that you no longer have direct involvement with the company. If the assets pass to her through divorce, the agreement would still bind the shares, so he doesn't technically need a nuptial agreement for this.
Yeah, some of the comments in the thread allude to that possibility. If it's a matter of protecting business interests though, there are much more tactful ways of bringing that up with one's spouse.
If that was the only reason, that would be the first thing out of my mouth. I'd absolutely make sure she knew it was a business formality done to reassure investors. But she said that he has never mentioned anything along those lines. Sadly, I think people are being way too optimistic about his reasons.
> If that was the only reason, that would be the first thing out of my mouth. I'd absolutely make sure she knew it was a business formality done to reassure investors. But she said that he has never mentioned anything along those lines. Sadly, I think people are being way too optimistic about his reasons.
I'm not sure you need a prenup for that. You can agree in a shareholders agreement that there is a requirement to offer the shares up for sale (at fair market value) to the other shareholders in the event of the shareholder passing away. Not sure about Delaware law, but this works in most of Europe.
Alternatively there could be a provision of swapping "Shares B" for "Shares A" or similar with different voting or veto rights. I think this is also possible in the US, since something similar was done for Facebook? Mark has special voting rights but his inheritors will not?
I'm not sure, but I think a forced sale requirement would be problematic in the US since it would impose a unilateral obligation on the survivor/divorcee that had not been bargained for by them.
I question the probity of such arrangements as well as special voting or non-voting stock. This is exactly the sort of thing that leads people to conclude that capitalism is rigged.
Why does that make the system "rigged"? If you start a tech firm with four developers and one of the lawyers get a divorce, do you want his ex to have any voting rights when it comes to strategy?
It seems like your comment has several unspoken assumptions that I'm unclear on, but yeah, I do. Insofar as financial instruments are fungible/transferable, they ought to be transparently so. Once you start creating different classes of financial interest, some with decision-making power and some without, you're creating a tiered system and those with the decision power are both incentivized and empowered to put their own interests over others'.
The basic notion of capitalism is that property rights + free markets = optimal economic growth. As soon as you start creating different classes of ownership you're signalling that that's a actually a fiction.
Insofar as financial instruments are fungible/transferable, they ought to be transparently so. On
It's not about the financial instruments. I'm making the assumption that a "side project" that the spouse did with a few of his friends wasn't capital intensive, and it was knowledge based. As a software developer, if I were to start a business, it wouldn't be capital intensive at all. I would need partners that brought a set of skills to the table - maybe a few developers and a person with a marketing background or industry connections. The only costs besides time would be a bunch of AWS resources. The "investments" in my company wouldn't be financial, they would be expertise. Why would one assume that the person's spouse would have the expertise to make intelligent strategic decisions on the direction of the company? What if it were a law firm?
Do you think that Carl Icahn or Baine Capital have the same set of incentives as the employees or the founders of a company? They want to make their money and get out, their time horizon is a lot shorter.
The same could be said of the spouse of a founder. As founders, we would be more likely to care about the long term vision of the company. The spouse may just want to make any money she can right now.
If Mark Zuckerburg hadn't kept a controlling interest in Facebook, would it be where it is today? What if he had sold a controlling interest to Yahoo under pressure from the VCs?
So what? Inheritance of a partnership interest isn't a new situation (other than for these people). If the first thing you worry about with regard to a business is how to limit future involvement of other people, that suggests the objective is to hoard money rather than grow it.
It's not necessarily to "hoard money". If I start a company with three technical people and a person with a good business background and we all have voting rights because I trust their judgement, why would I want to have someone else come in with decision making power whose judgement I don't trust? Not necessarily even because that other person as ill intent, but maybe they just don't have the background of the original founders.
If I started a business with a friend because I trusted his business instincts and he passed or they divorced, I would be fine with her benefiting financially as much as she would if they were still married but I wouldn't want her being able to make any strategic decisions.
Why are you assuming the surviving partners necessarily has worse judgment than the person you originally went into business with? It sounds like you're arguing from a default position of not trusting other people and needing to defend your enterprise against outsiders, which is likely to be a limiting factor on business growth sooner or alter. You might be better off with a professional corporate structure, like a legal partnership.
Facebook and Google both have founders who have more voting rights than their ownership stake would usually allow.
But in the case of the Reddit thread, it seems like her spouses business is more like a partnership. Even with a legal partnership, she is a joint owner in the partnership by default unless some other arrangement is made.
Just to emphasize, if the purpose of the postnup is to keep her from benefiting financially from "his" success while they are married, I find that completely distasteful. But if the purpose is to protect the integrity of the partnership, I don't see a problem with that.
I don't think my wife would want to have any part of the day to day decision making of a computer related company I started and let's assume I wouldn't ask her for a postnup and ask her to sign something on the event of my death that would allow her to be bought out at a fair value or allow her to keep her equity but it be non voting.
To add on to what the other poster said. If I don't pay all of the taxes that I should and we file jointly, my wife is just as liable as I am. If I file bankruptcy, my wife will be affected. If I started my hypothetical business, charged credit cards and didn't pay them (especially in a community property state), they could come after her resources.
If I make dumb decisions, my whole family is affected.
One of the hardest things in life is making a side project successful. The people that is with you at the hard times is part of your team and should be with you in the good times.
This man probably has already a mistress. When you have a couple tens of millions in the bank and people know you have it you start attracting dangerous women, I would say professionals, gorgeous women that have experience manipulating men with sex, the PUA(Pick up artist of their sex).
If you were not very good with women before marrying, and even if you are you are extremely vulnerable to them. The same will happen with men like bankers that will stalk you all day the moment you enter a couple million in a bank for doing an operation, they will even cry for you doing with your money what they say is much better for you(which is what is better for them).
IMHO the best strategy is most people not knowing what you are worth. Drive a normal car, wear normal clothing, have a normal house, if you can. I wear normal clothing but drive a Tesla.
> This man probably has already a mistress. When you have a couple tens of millions in the bank and people know you have it you start attracting dangerous women, I would say professionals, gorgeous women that have experience manipulating men with sex, the PUA(Pick up artist of their sex).
I would rather argue that this should actually be a strong reason for her to trust him. If he meets another women, he can never be sure that she is not into him for the money. On the other hand for the existing wife he knows that she did not marry him for the money. This fact alone should give him a very strong incentive to trust the existing wife instead of any other woman that he now meets. So the wife knows that he has a strong disincentive to leave her.
The top answer nails it: the husband’s only real option is divorce if she refuses to sign, thereby bringing about the very thing he’s trying to avoid.
But I’d guess here’s a good chance she can talk him down, as I’m picturing one of his tech bro’s going, “dude, you totally need a post-nup. This guy I knew...”
He mysteriously does not see her as a contributor to his success or is a d*ck. The impact a person has in our lives obviously cannot be calculated, but cannot be simply ignored. If they have been together for six fricking years, how can he dismiss her influence on him? Considering they have a functional relationship, she probably has been helping him on infinite occasions, from domestic chores to emotional support.
Maybe I'm just too ruthless, but I don't see how I, in the wife's position, would ever agree to this. Especially considering there's going to be a huge amount of temptation for the husband to cheat now; at least get paid if he gives in and things go sideways.
If she does not sign, the only way out for him is to file a divorce, lose some money to her and start a new business venture. So if she wants to stay married to him, there is no alternative than signing. I would call this a strong incentive for her to sign.
He made a financial agreement with his wife to share 50-50. That's what a marriage is, it's a legally binding contract. If he wanted a pre-nup, he should have gotten one before entering into that contract, i.e. the marriage.
But he didn't.
And he wants to alter the terms of the deal now, as a post-nup? After years of partnership? Oh hell no.
If I were his wife, I would seriously consider leaving him over this. Walk, with "his" assets that were always his-and-hers.
You made a good point about marriage being a financial agreement. I feel many young people are not fully aware of what they are going into when they get married (me included). There's a lack of education.
Then when they get into the real world and have an understanding of how sometimes unbalanced divorce law can be, they are like "wait, how did this happen".
> If I were his wife, I would seriously consider leaving him over this. Walk, with "his" assets that were always his-and-hers
People like you are exactly why people want to sign pre-nups in the first place.
> He made a financial agreement with his wife to share 50-50. That's what a marriage is, it's a legally binding contract.
If it was always clearly cut as a 50-50 split set in stone, there would be no need for as many divorce lawyers.
> And he wants to alter the terms of the deal now, as a post-nup? After years of partnership? Oh hell no.
People want to alter the terms of the deal all the time, a divorce is usually one of those alterations, most frequently initiated by women. After years of partnership. Why this is surprising to anyone is beyond me. Is it really that different in California?
You are correct in one thing though - he probably shouldn't have gotten married to begin with.
"Just being factual" isn't a valid defense. Even if one assumes 100% factiness, that's not all that matters. There are infinitely many facts. Which one chooses, how one expresses them, and what their likely effect is in context, are just three of the other issues at play.
As for the GP comment, I can see why it would feel that way but I didn't read it that way myself. There's obviously a lot of interpretation involved in these things.
The internet trope of men's supposed resentments about what a shitty deal marriage is, etc. etc. blah blah, is unsubstantive flamebait.
Generic resentment is impossible to engage with other than ideologically, which leads directly to ideological flamewars, all of which are off topic for Hacker News. If you've read the site guidelines and understand its mandate, it should be easy to see why: such discussions are all the same, and there's no intellectual curiosity in them.
> Every married heterosexual man has at least one acquaintance who was "divorce raped". All of the virtue signaling in the world by a man's wife does not protect him from a change of her heart.
Eww. Do they actually call it that? That's messed up.
Anyhow, nobody is forcing anyone to get married. It's no different from any other contract. If you don't like the terms, don't sign the sheet.
Last I checked, there was a legislative process that is overseen by elected officials required to change most laws around marriage. You have to sign a contract with the state to get a license and operate a vehicle legally, I don't see people up in arms and refusing to drive because the state can change driving rules. Same with incorporating a company in any given state. You are subject to that state's laws even if they change after you start your company, but you take that risk because you determined that the protections you get from signing that contract is more valuable than the risk from not doing so.
Also, other than legalizing no-fault divorce and expanding marriage to same-sex couples, what are the changes that states could make which are so scary to you? Sharing wealth 50/50 in the case of divorce is not some new thing.
Except (AFAIK) none of these has ever resulted in 50% of someones wealth/future-wealth/ip being "awarded" to someone else.
> Also, other than legalizing no-fault divorce and expanding marriage to same-sex couples, what are the changes that states could make which are so scary to you?
Beside legislative branch, judiciary also gets to set precedents as it go.
> Sharing wealth 50/50 in the case of divorce is not some new thing.
It was new when first time it happened. Since it could not have been in marriage contract or constitution. It must have been made up by courts.
Would you sign a contract which can be arbitrarily changed by a third party at any point? Would you signed a contact where the terms are not clearly defined? This is the state of marriage today in many Western countries
1. It depends on your jurisdiction. Often they are not clearly defined. In part because there are so many possibilities and it's difficult to write rules to handle all of them. This is where judges come in. If you go to court, it will depend on the judge and their take on the situation.
That aside, my original point stands. You sign a marriage contract and the state legislature can change the terms of the contract without your consent.
2. Could you elaborate? I couldn't understand the point you made. As far as I'm aware you don't sign a contract when you drive a car.
Thankfully many guys younger than I are waking up to the reality of marriage. Unfortunately my generation was fed the bullshit about "God's plan". The truth of marriage and divorce needs to be communicated to all young men lest we continue to end up broke and unable to see our children.
Good point - I feel like marriage is glorified and society is telling us without it you will not be happy. This is coming from Hollywood, religion etc.
People are waking up to the fact that marriage may not suit everyone and divorce can be unfair in some cases.
My case in point. My wife cheated on me after a year of marriage but because I was the higher earner I had to give her all the money I earned that year. Not to mention the fact I didn't get any credit for having paid off all of her car loan with pre-martial money.
> Unfortunately my generation was fed the bullshit about "God's plan".
Are you, like, what, 120 or something? Even Ametica’s (unusually large minority for a first world country, but still) religious fanatics today mostly are extremely pragmatic (arguably, downright libertine) when it comes to the male position with regard to marriage. I don't know what line you may have been fed, but I think you are grossly mischaracterizing any living generation with your generalization.
Absolutely. Heres one fucked up example. You thought of an idea; get married; divorced; you implement the idea/make money off it;. Goodluck cause now state gets to decide how much ip-right/money should the ex-spouse get.
Citation? Everything I'm reading says that your property, including IP, that was exclusively yours before marriage, is yours when you get divorced. Likewise, I don't see any way for post-divorce ideas and businesses to be considered "community property". Looking at WA laws though.
His move makes sense if he plans to quit his wife. He knows she will get half of what he has, so before he makes a move, he tries to see if she would accept to sign a post-nup. What's the risk?
Another explanation is that we have an incomplete/distorted explanation from the wife, and that she may have misunderstood the post-nup. If what he's working on is getting significant funding, during due-diligence the lack of pre-nup may appear as a problem.
Anyway, I'm not making any judgment on any of the parties, human relationships are such intricate machines...
Why on earth would the existence or not of a pre-nup affect funding? The funds go to the business not the individual and wouldn't form part of their finances if there was a divorce. No due-diligence is going to raise the lack of a pre-nuptial agreement as a reason to withhold investment.
Half his (vested) shares would go to his wife, in the event of a divorce. As a shareholder, she would have the right to vote on certain matters.
I don't think it makes sense for her to sign a standard post-nup, however, I think it does make sense to account for the fact that the husband wants to make sure he keeps control of his shares in a business he's currently building.
I feel like the comments here on HN are really missing at least one important angle. Frankly, I think it comes from a too closed definition of marriage and relationships.
What a marriage is legally is far from reflective of most relationships. It's easy to say "well don't get married then", but there are huge reasons that legal marriage is important for couples when it comes to things like taxes, healthcare, and more. Realistically, people of many sorts need the benefits of legal marriage.
For that reason, I am a huge proponent of modifying the marriage agreement to each personal case (aka a prenup, but also defining what your relationship is and not just defaulting to the societal norm. That's a conversation to be had long before marriage, but revisited at that stage.). For example, relationships don't have to be lifelong. If a marriage lasts happily for 30 years and then gets stale, that's not ideal but congrats on the 30 years of great partnership! What about people who have either romantic or sexual feelings for multiple people? I am sure that polyamorous families run into many legal issues, and while not terribly common, highlights a stark case of differing relationship style. There are many much smaller variants that can have legal implications in the context of traditional legal marriage. The idea that marriage is lifelong, unconditional, monogamous, and means sharing absolutely everything is just not going to work for a lot of people.
To me, it sounds like this couple was happy, got married, and skipped this conversation. Now that a business risk is in play if a divorce happens, it sounds like they need to have it. It sounds like the husband here did not approach this well at all, but I think that a fine agreement could be reached given the right setup of legal advice and information and making sure that the wife is not pressured into it here, which if it happened, is terrible on his part. From the full story, I am inclined toward a relatively charitable reading of the agreement. I'm obviously a person reading one side of the story over the internet, so I could easily be wrong in this case.
I feel bad for this couple. If I had to choose between my life partner and my business partners, it would not even be a question. Marriage is the ultimate partnership. If you aren't willing to share everything, good and bad, then maybe it's not for you. I mean, most people even say that in their freaking vows! I hope she refuses to sign and he wises up and apologizes.
This is why I was upfront with my girlfriend (now fiancé) from the VERY beginning. I said I would never marry her, nor anyone, ever, without a pre-nub. Period.
Her money is hers, mine is mine. We will forever operate like that.
We talked about marriage early in our relationship (within the first month). The conversation was more about marriage in the abstract sense than it was about OUR (potential at the time) marriage.
I've always been a blunt, upfront person. Transparent as a plane glass window. Since we were talking about marriage, I just threw in a casual "when I get married, there 100% will be a pre-nub or it's not happening". As well as a few other "hard stops".
As time went on the marriage conversations became more about US getting married... OUR marriage. I made sure at nearly every point to remind her of my "hard stops". They're the kind of thing you never want to be vague about, and are worth stating VERY early in the relationship, in my opinion.
Every time we hit a new phase in life, our fears come out.
My guess is that this guy might be feeling insecure knowing that his wife could divorce him.
He's clearly pursued a life that is about making money and intends to keep doing so, so there is a good chance he equates having money (or both to being lovable / worthy of Love on some deep level.
He may be trying to arrive at feeling secure in his romantic relationship the only way he knows how -- via a business deal.
He's missing an incredible opportunity to be vulnerable with her and discover his true worth, inside.
Several of the comments mention they know about startups that have been destroyed by a divorce when a party without any knowledge of the company got stock/control. Is this a real thing that has happened? Does anyone have direct experience with it?
Yes there are even recent news articles about such situations not just startups.
I think some major sports team owner had a forced liquidation like this recently.
That being said post nups are weird to me, so the terms really should be spelled out to surviving prevent a business scenario but to give her some amount of compensation maybe? Idk.
To me, post and pre-nuptial agreements merely reinforce the idea that either you or your partner or both don't trust each other and are together out of mere convenience. If that were the case, why not just stay unmarried?
BTW, the level of support for the husband, among the hacker news community, so far, is pretty astounding, contrasting with the support the wife receives on reddit. Not to paint with a broad brush but I think this really says something about the kind of people running things in tech, not to mention all the stuff women had to put up with in the news the past couple of years with regards to any tech workplace.
My current partner and I have what we both deem a great romantic relationship and friendship. We plan to get married for legal benefits and stay together for some time. We could care less what it says about our relationship, but there are simply legal things that make sense. It's likely we will never divorce. But we both can envision worlds where divorce happens. If it happens after 30 years of great partnership, so be it. It doesn't invalidate those great years we had. But if it does happen, we would want a fair and just split after it. Not based on 50/50, and not necessarily based on "yours is yours, mine is mine". Neither of us would want to leave the other in financial trouble, but if one of us made much more than the other, we both agree that it would be fairer to give that person some sort of better split, so long as it does not dramatically hurt the others remaining life. It'd also depend on the life goals of each of us from that point and who would need the money more for their respective goals. What we find fair may be different than others, but given the scope of the agreement it's really only about what we both see as fair.
We trust each other 100%. We could probably act on this type of agreement without a lawyer. But no one ever knows how divorce will go down, so why not put it in writing?
All of this isn't to say that there can't be nefarious reasons at work here and is not to invalidate or ignore the terrible way tech treats women. But this is not a categorical thing, and it really comes down to the specific agreement and the two people involved, presuming neither side is coerced or uninformed about the agreement.
"My current partner and I plan to get married for legal benefits and stay together for some time."
Comes off sounding like a business transaction, which is fine if that's how you plan to leverage the idea of marriage, but then again it probably should be properly labeled as a joint business venture/partnership where people have written agreements to protect each other's assets in case of things going badly between them.
It has a romantic and friendship aspect as well though, as the primary purpose over the legal benefits, which are a distant third to those two. Bad wording on my part, sorry. Editing to be clearer. Anyone that knows us would see us externally as any other couple in terms of relationship style unless we have specifically talked about our relationship more with them.
My point is that people leverage the legal construct of marriage in many ways, and prenups enable that. To say that a prenup is inherently a sign of lack of trust is far from accurate.
In practice, I agree it does often point to that, but there are plenty of counterexamples. I would argue it works as such a good indicator due to how many bad relationships are out there.
> To me, post and pre-nuptial agreements merely reinforce the idea that either you or your partner or both don't trust each other and are together out of mere convenience. If that were the case, why not just stay unmarried?
From my vantage point HN is evenly split and Reddit is overly supportive of the woman, although that's not taking into account the other subreddits that this was crossposted to.
So I'm not trying to scam anyone, but is there a way for a business arrangement to be made that doesn't incur this risk? I know you can put together a buy/sell agreement and have successorship/rights of first refusal documents, but is there a legal way a married person can protect assets from their partner if they wanted to, without going into complicated trusts and shit?
From what? The other spouse or the legal system? Most would assume it is protection from the other spouse. To verify, one could offer to sign a prenup that splits everything 50/50, i.e., that codifies what would happen under community property law. This provides the benefit of clarifying how a separation would occur to protect the spouses and their work from the legal system.
If protection from the legal system is sought, then the 50/50 prenup should be agreeable.
If protection from the other spouse is sought, then what is the first spouse (the one demanding the prenup) going to give up in order to gain that protection?
If the first spouse is demanding a one-sided prenup that only benefits the first spouse, then it can be argued that the first spouse has broken a marriage vow by seeking to enrich his or her self at the expense of the other. [1]
[1] None of this is legal advice and should not be used as such.
Sounds like risk management. I presume he wants to stay married but also wants to protect his business ventures by getting her to agree to a maximum payout. I've known many wealthy men who were completely financially destroyed by divorce. There is often no clean way of splitting a business and having to liquidate cash to buy the partner out can often sink the company.
On a related note, I consider Amber Heard as a risk to the whole Mars mission and get a bit nervous when I hear rumors of them getting back together. I wonder if I'm the only one.
Edit: I grew up in farming country and by far the biggest risk to farms there is divorce. This is insane given all of the other risks in farming.
TBH if you have a side project or a company a prenup is pretty much a must it’s the only way to ensure you remain in control over it regardless of how financially successful it is.
I’m not particularly wealthy (as in millions/not have to worry about working for the rest of my life) but have a high income and had a few side projects and I would never consider a marriage without a prenup to protect both myself and my partner from vindictive practices and petty behavior.
The divorce scheme today is simply too messy without prenups.
Prenups are fine. Many people view them as just contingency planning.
This is about a POST-nup, which makes no sense to me. The husband is either being an idiot who listens to idiot advice, or the husband is planning on leaving her. Either way, he needs to get his head on straight and the spouse needs to not sign this.
This isn’t clear cut; divorces today are archaic they were set in a completely different time when there was a very different trade between the parties getting married.
This isn’t just about money, his partner now in theory is eligible to half (or more if there are kids) of everything he owns including any intellectual property he have created.
This can go well beyond simple greed and be more about ones life work.
It also puts effectively his company at risk because the company doesn’t have 2 founders but 3 as the partner can get half of his share or even more in the divorce.
> This isn’t just about money, his partner now in theory is eligible to half (or more if there are kids) of everything he owns including any intellectual property he have created.
But that is what marriage is. Everything in a relationship is jointly owned. People who think they can somehow skirt around this don't seem to understand that. Marriage is basically the legal recognition that two people are to be treated as one. They are a team. If people can't handle that, don't get married....
> This can go well beyond simple greed and be more about ones life work.
It isn't "ones life work". It is "their lives work". Remember, they are a team.
> It also puts effectively his company at risk because the company doesn’t have 2 founders but 3 as the partner can get half of his share or even more in the divorce.
But thanks to the marriage, what is his is also hers. By nature of them being treated like a single entity. Why shouldn't she get half of their share? That share has material value, therefore both partners are entitled to it.
>But that is what marriage is. Everything in a relationship is jointly owned. People who think they can somehow skirt around this don't seem to understand that. Marriage is basically the legal recognition that two people are to be treated as one. They are a team. If people can't handle that, don't get married....
No this isn't what a marriage is, historically this isn't how it worked, and only for a very short time while there still was a very different trade between the partners where divorces became universally acceptable when this was practiced.
>It isn't "ones life work". It is "their lives work". Remember, they are a team.
They are partners, it doesn't mean that all of their personal achievements are a team effort, in fact the vast majority of their achievements would still be individual.
>But thanks to the marriage, what is his is also hers. By nature of them being treated like a single entity. Why shouldn't she get half of their share? That share has material value, therefore both partners are entitled to it.
Which is why you get a prenup It is no longer the case when the woman trades 1-2 decades of her life to raise 3 children and needs protection/assurance that she will not be thrown out when her societal value effectively has been reduced to zero with nothing.
My biggest disappointment in this whole ordeal is that this isn't a case of a woman getting succeeding an asking for a postnup tho with how divorces are still settled especially in no fault states she would be much more protected against predatory behaviour in that case.
What people seem to constantly ignore is that CA is a no fault state, she can just as well decide 5 years down the line that she much rather keep the house and 50% of the assets and start a new life because now she can afford to live on her own without any financial worries.
People yapping about that it's not fair to deny someone a full share of a work that they have not participated in, but have no problem with that person basically having a nuclear trigger that would allow them to walk out with 50% or more of the money as well as destroy their partners livelihood if they so desire at a whim.
How is the timing of the agreement changing the purpose inherently?
To me, it sounds like he made the original mistake of not getting a prenup, and now that business interests are being risked on the relationship of two people, it makes sense to add that contingency plan.
How is it not still a contingency plan possibly? I agree there could be other reasons, but from the full story that's not what I would expect here. It sounds like a risk to the business that he/others want to remove. An appropriate agreement can be crafted for that.
All of this really depends on the specifics of the agreement.
The post talks that the successful venture were two side projects that become successful very unexpectedly. At least the money was not there when they married and neither any of the marriage partners did expect it.
I've been told that it's not uncommon for CA judges to throw prenups away in cases where, say, one of the two partners started a company and vested a huge chunk of shares, but the other partner would be getting none of that on divorce according to the prenup. In this case California community property laws overrode the prenup. In fact, having dealt with a prenup myself, I've been told not to even bother with a pre-nup as it was supposedly "unenforceable" according to my legal counsel.
I don’t live in CA or in the US but I’ve known people who got burned, known investors to actually inquire about prenups during their due diligence and have been told by more than one lawyer that if you live in a country where common law marriage exists to get some sort of a contract signed that would clarify the status of any shared property as well as individual investments before the common law period kicks in (e.g. if you about to be living together for 5 years).
I know someone who's prenup was invalid because other party claimef didn't understand what she was singing. It's very very unlikely that ur prenup will be thrown if it's deemed unfair.
I believe the judge will want to see that both parties had qualified legal counsel at the time of signing the prenup, otherwise it might not be considered valid.
I suppose with enough money at stake and enough animosity between the two parties, it is always advantageous to claim to not have understood the original contract. Worst case you lost a bunch of money in legal fees, best case you win big.
The answer is simple to me: the wife should get a lawyer and file for divorce and half or more of the assets. If the hopefully-soon-to-be ex-husband thinks he can talk her into a post-nuptial agreement, then he also probably thinks he can talk her down from her share of the money.
Given what was described, she needs to aggressively defend herself.
Could someone help explain this to me? I don't understand why the wife shouldn't sign. As far as I can tell from the post, she didn't help create any aspect of the apps that her husband made which made them rich. I don't understand why she would be entitled to half given that she did not contribute half.
I can't tell if you are serious or not but... Nothing happens in a vacuum. Would he have had the time or opportunity to work on side projects without his wife handling some aspect of their domestic situation, for example? But the bigger picture is that a married couple is a single entity legally speaking as far as property and finances are concerned. Judges in many jurisdictions completely ignore pre-nups for this very reason.
Was serious. Thanks for the response. My parents always kept separate bank accounts, always seemed to have clearly defined separations between who
owned what. Separate cars, separate car payments. Separate careers, separate everything. I always got the sense that my parents were two separate individuals in a partnership. I don't think either of them would have a problem signing a postnup solidifying that.
There are quite a few countries where it's A-OK to give your entire salary to your wife, so it's more like not paying her your salary, but her giving you a fraction of yours.
> I don't understand why she would be entitled to half given that she did not contribute half
Under California law, all assets acquired after marriage are considered "community property". This means that regardless of who "actually" earned the assets, they are owned by each spouse equally (50/50).
Not all states have this regime, and there are good arguments both for and against the concept. I believe that the strongest argument in favor is that community property prevents power imbalances from developing within a marriage. It is sadly common for a spouse to be trapped in an abusive or unhappy marriage, but who cannot practically escape the relationship because they do not have independent means of support. Community property provides a guarantee of financial support should a marriage dissolve.
It's not that she feels entitled to his wealth, it's that the prenup makes her feel like her husband doesn't trust her 100% to NOT go after his wealth in the case of a divorce.
Notice she said she would never hurt her husband even if the relationship ended. From her perspective, the prenup is not necessary, but she feels like her husband thinks differently and may not trust her completely.
> It's not that she feels entitled to his wealth, it's that the prenup makes her feel like her husband doesn't trust her 100% to NOT go after his wealth in the case of a divorce.
Even the legal possibility of her doing this is a strong liability for the business. So her not signing means sabotaging his business venture, which only leaves him divorce as option to save his business.
I'm sorry, but this line of thinking is abso-fucking-lutely bonkers. If he, or any of you honestly feel that someone would do that, then why are you marrying them?
Her not signing is in no way, shape, or form sabotaging the business venture. Not in the slightest. And if he does divorce because of that, then he deserves whatever he gets, because he shouldn't have married her in the first place, and he didn't love her.
From the business perspective (which means completely disregard any personal perspectives/issues that arise) there are four scenarios.
Agree + Stay together ; Agree + Divorce ; Disagree + Stay Together ; Disagree + Divorce
Only one of these has potential risk to the business and it falls under the "Disagree" options. So for the business, agreement is necessary to prevent that risk and some business partners that otherwise might be on board would refuse due to that risk.
Coming into or marrying into money, divorcing for 50%, and "finding a better partner" is not something completely unheard of and it is common enough that people seek protection against it which is why these sort of agreements exist in the first place. If the marriage "isn't about money" then pre/post nups only solidify that fact by putting it into writing: it isn't about the money and won't ever be about the money.
There are two possible perspectives to take here:
A) They would only ask for it in writing if they didn't trust them at their word (people with this perspective will likely side with the wife)
b) They would only refuse to put it in writing if they don't intend to honor their word (people with this perspective will likely side with the husband)
"From the business perspective (which means completely disregard any personal perspectives/issues that arise"
No. Those other perspectives are just as valid, if not more.
"So for the business, agreement is necessary to prevent that risk and some business partners that otherwise might be on board would refuse due to that risk."
Given that millions of businesses are started while one party is married, and don't have this problem, I don't consider it to be a valid concern.
"Coming into or marrying into money, divorcing for 50%, and "finding a better partner" is not something completely unheard of and it is common enough that people seek protection against it"
And what's the wife's protection in that case?
"If the marriage "isn't about money" then pre/post nups only solidify that fact by putting it into writing: it isn't about the money and won't ever be about the money."
Except now, there are no consequences for the husband being unfaithful.
>No. Those other perspectives are just as valid, if not more.
As far as the business is concerned - not really. To the individuals? Well... this is why there is such a divide depending which perspective someone takes... it's a "clear cut" answer depending what kind of perspective you have and whether or not you're assuming "in good faith" or not.
>Given that millions of businesses are started while one party is married, and don't have this problem, I don't consider it to be a valid concern.
Millions of businesses have or don't have rules against dating. Some allow dating, others don't allow dating vertically, others don't allow dating vertically in one's department, and others don't allow dating period.
Just because some businesses take a risk doesn't mean it isn't a risk. It's a matter of how you attempt to mitigate that risk. As others have mentioned - buyback stocks under certain circumstances such as divorce are the "usual way" of mitigating this kind of risk.
>And what's the wife's protection in that case?
I didn't say she gets any - or that she should even sign. Just that asking her to sign is not some sort of one-sided trust breaking unless you're assuming it's only being done in bad faith. (ie. so he can cheat on her and if she leaves him because of it she's left out in the cold)
>Except now, there are no consequences for the husband being unfaithful.
Except losing his wife. Sure - it's less of a consequence than losing his wife and half his money... but if the consequence of losing her isn't enough to ensure faithfulness then that should be enough reason for her to leave.
"As far as the business is concerned - not really."
Right, but we're not just talking about a business. We're also talking about a marriage. Which would probably say that the business perspective is even less relevant.
> I'm sorry, but this line of thinking is abso-fucking-lutely bonkers. If he, or any of you honestly feel that someone would do that, then why are you marrying them?
When you're married, it's a partnership. You don't exist independently of other and go on more regular dates, you live together and are practically and emotionally committed to each other. For all we know he was only able to write those apps because of the emotional and/or financial security she brought to the relationship.
It is funny how you got downvotes for stating a fact. Like when you start a business and someone has vested shares but they don’t do anything much anymore while you are the CEO. Guess what they still own those shares. The unfairness is about the unidirectionality of time. The question is not if it looks fair ex post, but if you deemed it fair ex ante.
To put this in a slightly different light, suppose you entered a contract with a startup and got some equity. Now suppose the owner decided he wanted your equity back in case you left the company. How’s that make you feel? (Any similarities to Zygna is purely coincidental.)
It reminded me how we failed to raise funding and one of the investors said that doing business together with my wife was a red flag for him because "wives ruin startups."
Probably it was the same for others but they didn't say it explicitly. Oh, well.
The problem is in perspective, right? She says it feels like he doesn't trust her when asking for the post-nup, but coming from his side a post-nup would enable him to feel more at ease with her, enabling a higher level of trust. Saying no to signing the post-nup is saying "You were right not to trust me".
No, it really isn't. Because if she signed, then he's basically free to cheat on her at will, and there really isn't anything she can do about it. If she were to divorce, she would be out in the cold.
Why, apparently, is it acceptable for him to have a "contingency plan", but not her?
> No, it really isn't. Because if she signed, then he's basically free to cheat on her at will, and there really isn't anything she can do about it.
As far as I understand the Reddit post, the post-nuptial agreement is only about his new business venture and not about other, existing assets. So he still has something to lose, if they divorce.
Saying no to signing the post-nup is saying "You were right not to trust me".
No it isn't. Trying to bust a pre-nup says that, but refusing to sign a post-nup is saying 'you're going back on the arrangement you made.' I can't believe people are making excuses for this guy. Imagine if his wife had lucked or figured her way into money and asked the husband to write himself out of the financial picture; are you telling me you'd advise him to just forget about his rights?
I understand prenups for rich people because you never know why someone is really with you, but if you are with someone before getting rich, that is one of the few things you can never have again. If the relationship is good I don't know why you suddenly make it all about money and drive a possibly irreparable wedge between you. And for what? Because if things go sideways you might lose half? Half of rich is still rich and it's a small risk to take for the chance at a lifelong loving partner. Some things are worth more than money.