Family law attorney Scott Levin explains five reasons couples should consider prenups: they force honest money conversations, protect family businesses and assets, shield each spouse from the other's debts, clarify financial rules during marriage, and streamline divorce if needed. His collaborative approach creates fair agreements rather than one-sided documents.
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Hey everyone, this is Brian DeVore with the DeVore Realty Group, and I'm really excited today to talk with Scott Levin. Um, Scott Levin, a friend of mine who does a lot of divorce mediation, um, but he also does something else. He helps families, not just who are leaving their marriage but going into marriage, with doing prenuptial agreements. And, you know, that's sort of a taboo word for some people. Well, prenup— I'm going into a marriage, you know, I'm really happy and excited to do this, why would I want to do a prenup? So Scott's going to talk about 5 really important reasons why you should do a prenup, and then we'll have a little discussion about that. So Scott, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you, sir. Great to see you as always.
and you as well. So I really was interested in getting into this, the meat of this. As you know, I'm divorced and thankfully, you know, didn't have a prenup, but it worked out okay. But you really dialed it down to 5 really important reasons why you want to get a prenup. Let's talk about that.
Yeah. So like you said, prenup can have kind of a negative connotation to it. And I think that the reason for that primarily is that the traditional prenup is drafted by the higher-earning spouse and their, and their attorney, and they kind of go into a corner, figure all the stuff out, make it a super one-sided agreement, and then they kind of hand it to the other person. And they're like, here, sign here, we're getting married in 7 hours. So there's, there's another way to do a prenup, and just the process of it, it basically is where someone like me works with both parties and, and basically asks them a series of questions to elicit answers. And then we draw— we kind of draft the agreement together. And then the parties can have a, you know, a lawyer review it for them. But I am an attorney, and that's kind of how I prefer to draft my prenuptial agreements, where I represent one of the parties, but I'm working with both of them to kind of create a tailored agreement. So we're protecting what needs to be protected, but we're certainly not, you know, overdoing it. And we're, and we're really making it like, you know, fair and reasoned agreement. And, uh, the first thing that's on my list for the first benefit is, um, that the parties can have a deep dive into their assets and debts prior to marriage. And I think that, that it can be very, very, very helpful for people to have that conversation about not just what they have and don't have when they're entering the marriage, But also things like, are we going to deposit our paychecks into the same account? Are we going to deposit the whole paycheck into one joint account? Are we going to leave a little separate? So like all these little discussions really require people to have mature conversations that I certainly didn't have with my wife prior to marriage. But they can be really helpful and it can be really— and it can be difficult, but it can bring people together. Because you're really accomplishing your first achievement, which is having difficult conversations about real stuff that matters and working through it to come to a kind of an even ground. So there's that deep dive into the assets prior to marriage, which I think can be really important. Some of the other benefits are ensuring family assets stay in the family. If you have a business or property, protecting your business or your property. Especially, you know, second marriages when you, when you're a little older at that point and more established. You might have a business that's thriving, so you can protect that business. Shielding your spouse— shielding yourself from your spouse-to-be's debt and obligations. So that's another benefit. And then, of course, the final thing, which people don't love to speak about, but prenups really can streamline the divorce process. So You can basically put in, you know, how you want things to go later. And then if unfortunately you get to that point, you know, you can stick to that agreement and, uh, and, and not waste a whole lot of money and time on, on the legal process at the back end.
So that's definitely a benefit, not one you think about necessarily when you're going into it. It's like, okay, well, when we get divorced, we'll be very happy that we have this prenup. But, you know, one thing that kind of stood out when you were just talking about that was When you're working with couples, it could be eye-opening perhaps for these, uh, 2 people who are about to share their lives together for the rest of their lives. It could be eye-opening as far as what their thoughts are on money, what income they may— or accounts they may already have, you know, things that they didn't think to talk about for some reason. So I really think it sort of pulls back the curtain in a lot of ways on not just what people have, but also how they view money.
I unfortunately, in the divorce process, I see a lot of people that never commingled money. And I don't know if that's a generalized statement. I don't know if I feel comfortable saying that, you know, people that keep their finances completely separate during marriage are more likely to get divorced. I don't feel comfortable saying that, but I can tell you that people that don't have detailed conversations about their finances and their goals and objectives seem to end up in my office in the divorce mediation space. more often than people that really have like 2 minds that are working together to create wealth and solutions. Um, so it is a really important step prior to marriage, I think.
I wonder, uh, as you were talking about this and listing these things, you talk about shielding yourself from your spouse's debts. And so it's, it's maybe money in and money out. Um, how, how often is it when you're working with people where people maybe are surprised to learn what some of their spouse-to-be debt might look like? Does that come up at all?
It does and can be taken back. Oftentimes it's, it's one of the reasons that they're in my office because they have some sense that there is debt there. So I have a client who I did a prenuptial agreement for who owns a dental practice, and his dental practice went through an audit. And because of the way that we set up the prenuptial agreement, when that audit was trying to be extended to his wife's assets to reclaim some of those proper— some of those assets from her, they could— the IRS could not do that because of the way that they had separated their estates essentially through the prenuptial agreement. And in the same case, she— teenage kids And one of those teenage kids actually got into a horrific auto accident, and I believe that auto accident would have resulted in the dental practice being taken down during the, you know, personal injury lawsuit. But because the dental practice was completely separate pursuant to the prenuptial agreement, both of them ended up being protected from those 2 actions. So He was protected from his stepchildren's accident and the liability that arose from that. And she was protected from the IRS audit of the dental practice, which I think could have resulted in another situation in her having— that's kind of how you can separate the debt and future obligations too.
So that, that, those are huge points because usually when people go into, you know, getting a prenup, they think, well, you don't trust me. You're thinking about getting divorced, but it's not just about, you know, what hap— how you separate the money when you get a divorce. It's during the marriage, you know, how assets and money could be dealt with. And, you know, I always think it's interesting that marriage is really a contract between 2 parties. That's why when you go through the divorce process, you got to go to court, you have a marital settlement agreement, that— so it's like a partnership that, you know, could dissolve. And when you go into a partnership of any kind, it's smart to have an agreement. of how it's going to be, you know, whose assets are coming in, whose debts are coming in, how it's going to play out. So there's no misunderstanding, and you can always kind of point back to that. Personally, I don't think that it means that you don't love the person and you don't trust the person. It means you want to maybe protect the person, protect yourself at the same time. So I think it makes a whole lot of sense to do one.
I mean, it's not for everyone, um, but, uh, you know, if you're really thinking logically and you— and if, if you both really love each other, then it's something that can help both of you and not affect the relationship in a negative way. Like I said, a lot of my clients get closer together, especially a lot of my younger clients, you know, become closer during that process because I'm almost, I'm almost being their financial counselor. Well, do you want your retirement, your 401 earned during the marriage to be a community asset that you both would split, or do you want it to be separate? I mean, these are things that they've never thought about and no normal person would. Other than if they were to seek out that sort of counsel.
Great advice, Scott. Thank you very much. How can people reach you if they want to learn more about this?
Yeah, so Scott Levin. I am a family law attorney. I specialize in, uh, in mediation and resolving people's disputes, uh, as well as of course drafting, uh, prenuptial and premarital agreements. I'm at, um, 858-255-1321, and, uh, you can find me at Chief Thank you, Scott.
