Now what? (Part I)

A lot of people view life in terms of “chapters” or “stages” or “steps”.  Some people view life as a series of events, each impacting the next in some fashion.  Still others just get up in the morning, do stuff until they are tired, and then sleep at some point.  (The latter will not be addressed in this blog post, and frankly, if you are in the latter camp, you are probably reading this post by sheer chance).  Whatever the approach, there is some level of planning to each person’s life.  The most effective planning takes into account one’s current circumstances and attempts to anticipate as many future circumstances as possible.

Most of life’s changes happen incrementally over time in small, almost unnoticeable steps.  For example, it would be tough to pinpoint when hair started to grow on our legs, or on which day we had our first crush on a boy or girl.  Similarly, it’s tough to pinpoint a single day in the middle of high school and identify exactly how we felt, looked, etc., without a photo or journal entry to remind us.  We often have those feelings where we think, “Wow, how did five years just fly by?”

However, there are a few distinct events in a person’s life where he/she is irreversibly different (in some legal manner, of course) immediately upon the occurrence of that event.  Some examples, in no particular order, are reaching 18 years old, marriage, having children, divorce, and of course death.

Each of the above events carry with it certain legal ramifications.  The most important being taxes, holding property, and inheritance rights.  Two events that I am particularly interested in discussing here are marriage and divorce, for obvious reasons.  Here, in part I, marriage will be addressed.  In part II, I will address divorce.

Marriage: So you just got married. Congratulations! Wow, that’s fantastic. You know that everything is different now, right? I know, you still think that nothing’s changed, that you’re in love blahblahblah and you guys just made it formal.

Well, you’re wrong.

When both of you go to work, every single dollar you earn after you say “I do” is half-owned by your spouse.  Anything you purchase with that money that you’ve earned during marriage is also half-owned by your spouse. Likewise for any debt.  And what if you die without a will? Well, by default, everything you owned when you were alive automatically goes to your surviving spouse.  Things are significantly different now.  The IRS won’t even let you file your tax return without telling them what your spouse is going to do.  Things are so different now that you and your new spouse now have special privileges that your single friends don’t have.  For example, if you and your spouse have secrets that only you guys know, nobody can make you testify against the other.  Pretty cool, right?

It’s all really cool unless or until you two develop problems.  Those problems could stem from trust issues, resent, boredom, finances… really just about anything.  Here’s another cool facet of marriage: only one spouse, unilaterally, needs to decide that this arrangement isn’t for him/her.  That’s right, on any given day, one spouse can petition to dissolve the marital bonds.  No consent is needed from the other spouse.  No warning is necessary.  No reason is even demanded by the courts.

With marriage intertwining two lives in such a comprehensive manner, and that arrangement so easily dissolved, why then risk not being clear with your spouse about expectations that you have for each other and for your marriage? It’s a fair question, really.  Your spouse is ostensibly the person you are closest to in life.  You should be able to talk about anything with each other, right?  Any partnership has clearly defined expectations.  Any team (either athletic or workplace) has clearly defined roles and clearly defined expectations for each team member.  Every marriage should as well.

Those expectations can be, and should be, documented.  Commonly documented agreements between spouses are called “pre-nuptial” agreements for those who are not married yet, and “post-nuptial” agreements for those who are already married.  I favor “post-nuptials” for people in their first marriage because it’s tough to guess what someone’s role should be when you have never been married before.  Most people erroneously associate nuptial agreements with some sort of strong-arm tactic employed by a higher earning spouse for avoiding paying any support to the lower earner spouse.  It’s seen as fundamental distrust between two spouses.  But why?

Many things can be detailed in a nuptial agreement.  Property issues can be addressed.  Support issues can be addressed.  Handling liabilities after a potential divorce can be addressed.  The emphasis should be placed on the fact that these issues are being addressed before any ill feelings toward each other.  Imagine that your spouse was diagnosed with some rare, fatal disease.  The doctors aren’t sure whether, or for how long, your spouse will remain living.  But they say there is a good shot that an experimental new treatment may just do the trick.  So you and your spouse do what any reasonable team would do: plan for the worst and hope for the best.  You two plan the worst case–the treated spouse dying–and then do whatever they can to keep the treated spouse alive.  So the couple write wills, draft health care directives in case one or both of the spouses are incapacitated, and most likely make pre-planned funeral arrangements.  It sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? Why deal with this stuff when things turn for the worse?  The best part is if the sick spouse is fully treated, this stuff will never come up or take effect!  So, really, there’s no harm in doing it.

The same should be, but is not, true for marriages.  No, your marriage is not a rare, fatal disease.  But the same approach should be employed.  Who knows whether your marriage lasts 70 years, 1 year, 3 days?  No one knows.  What we all know, though, is that the time to reasonably and objectively dissolve any partnership is not when the partners are most emotional and irrational.  That in itself is an irrational thing to do.  Dissolution should for the most part be pre-determined.  I truly believe discussing the possibility of dissolution early on in a marriage, and educating yourself on the legal ramifications of marriage, will help maintain a stronger marital bond.  Those that discuss the potential of divorce when the times are good will likely benefit from the open, candid discussion.  Plus, wouldn’t you like to learn of your partner’s hang-ups earlier rather than later?

Marriage is not just a “formalized” relationship.  It’s not just a ceremony that costs the same as a down payment on a house.  It’s a legal relationship between two people.  All the love and religion are merely backdrops.  Because when it comes down to divorce, all the love and religion in the world aren’t going to be worth much in a court of law.  Get educated.  Plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Coming soon… Part II on the effects of divorce.