What will invalidate my California prenuptial agreement?

If you ask most Americans, they’ll tell you that they don’t feel that they’re rich enough to necessitate having a prenuptial agreement. We live in an era in which so many marriages end in divorce though. It’s more important than ever for spouses to protect anything that they do have. It’s important that your prenup is properly executed if you expect a family law judge in Orange to uphold it as valid in the future.

Believe it or not, one of the most common reasons that prenups end up not being enforceable is because they’re never written down. Oral agreements do not suffice in California or virtually anywhere else in the United States. For a prenup to be considered valid, it must be written and properly signed by both prospective spouses.

For a prenup to be upheld by a California judge, both spouses must have been given ample time to review it to consider the implications of signing it. If either party was pressured into signing it, then a judge may consider it invalid. In some jurisdictions, it may be recommended or mandatory for each party to consult with an attorney before signing a prenup for it to be considered enforceable.

Prenuptial agreements are only considered to be properly executed when both parties fully disclose their liabilities, assets and income. If either spouse withholds or provides incomplete or untruthful information, then a judge will likely deem the prenup to be unenforceable.

While prenups can cover financial matters between a couple, some matters are prohibited from being agreed to in it. It cannot limit either spouse’s ability to request a modification of child support if they were to divorce the other.

You and your future spouse can include other financial decisions, however biased they may seem to others. If a judge deems them to cause an unnecessarily unfair financial hardship for either one of you, then they may decide that it’s not valid.

Oftentimes, individuals who enter into prenups do so because they have assets to protect or because they want to protect themselves from liabilities they know their prospective spouse has. If you want to make sure that your premarital contract is enforceable, then a prenuptial agreements attorney can guide you in executing it per California law.