Prenuptial agreements are a really good planning tool. And so just so everyone understands, with a pre-nup what we’re doing is we’re saying hey, we acknowledge our spousal rights under Minnesota law but we’re choosing to deviate from them and to kind of rewrite the rules that will apply to our situation in the event of an death or divorce.

And so situations where it can be really helpful would be blended families, for example. Both people coming in with children from a previous relationship they want to preserve their assets for their own family, you know, it makes sense. It could be a person with an interesting asset, a business ownership interest or a family business and if they work there as well as have ownership it becomes even more important.

Other reasons for wanting or needed a pre-nup would be one person has a very large debt their bringing it, it could be that someone owes spousal support obligations. Other times, it might be just the clients are practical, they’ve lived life, they’ve been through something before where they’re like hey, let’s take care of this now and set the stage so that there’s no surprises.