It was to be a June wedding. The caterer was hired, the band booked; the guests had sent in their RSVPs. Two days before the ceremony, as the bride was having a pedicure, the bridegroom put his foot down. Sign the premarital contract, he told her, or be jilted.
They were a professional couple, living in Manhattan. She was 35 and never married. He was 45 and divorced with one child. Her net worth was $300,000; his was between $800,000 and $1 million. Under the proposed contract, she would waive all rights to marital property under New York`s divorce law and all inheritance rights. Among its other provisions was a support schedule, in the event of divorce, for the children she hoped to have. ”When she saw the first draft, she burst into tears,” said her lawyer, Ralph Brozan. ”The final draft was objectively not fair, and I strongly advised her not to sign.”
”Damn it, I signed it,” said the bride in a phone call to the lawyer on the night before the wedding.
”She said, `I couldn`t face the humiliation of his not showing up,`
” Brozan recalled. ”I felt bad for her.”
Now they are abroad on a honeymoon.
CONTRACT TALKS
For professionals who counsel couples moving in and out of marriage, this story has a familiar ring. When a young woman begins talking marriage with an older, richer man who has been married before, the issue of the premarital contract invariably surfaces. If the idea does not occur to the man, his lawyer is likely to suggest a contract.
One sound reason for this is to assure that part of the man`s estate at the time of the marriage will go to his children of a former marriage on his death. Premarital contracts, which supersede both inheritance laws and wills, have long been employed in estate planning for wealthy clients.
In recent years, men who are not necessarily wealthy have been demanding other legal concessions from second wives. Some seek pledges that the women will or will not bear children. Some insist they sign away claims to property acquired during the marriage. Some want them to waive spousal support on divorce. Support waivers are legal in many states, including New York and Illinois, but not in California and 10 other states.
”Men are taking a much tougher position the second time around: Sign or stay single,” said Lester Wallman, who is on the New York State Bar Association`s committee on legislative policy. ”Increasingly, the courts are upholding these prenuptial agreements provided both parties were represented by independent counsel and providing there was no fraud or duress.”
Women, too, are demanding premarital contracts, as Joan Collins` most recent divorce case demonstrated. Some lawyers estimate that women have more assets than men in 20 percent of the premarital contracts they negotiate. But the vast majority of contracts are still initiated by men, they say, and in certain cases, women are signing away important rights.
PLANNING AN EXIT
As lawyers describe these cases, the typical man is over 40, divorced and perhaps embittered by the settlement. In any event, he wants to avoid the pain and expense of another legal wrangle and to provide for his children. He may have a business or professional practice he wishes to protect. He hopes that the contract will lead to bliss, but if not he has the escape route on paper. The woman is about 30, eager to marry and maybe to become a mother. Often she has a good job, though her paycheck may not be as hefty as her fiance`s, and she prides herself on being self-sufficient. She encourages him to be financially generous to his children, if only because she realizes she has to deal with them. Having heard the sorry tales of his first marriage, she vows that theirs will be a loving partnership. By partnership, she means 50-50.
The contract comes as a shock, say counselors who see women in the throes of legal PMS, or premarital stress syndrome. A common response is: What does he take me for? A gold-digger?
But according to JoAnn Magdoff, a board member of the New York Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, ”For most of these women, money is not why they marry.” Complicating the picture, she and others say, is that part of what attracts the women to the men is money, power and success.
”When everything is spelled out in cold legal language-what`s his and hers-they have to deal with that aspect of the relationship,” Magdoff said.
”He can`t understand why she isn`t signing over the stuff. She can`t understand why he`s asking her to.”
SECURITY VS. INSECURITY
Faced with such a standoff, some women make excuses for the man or make sacrifices to prove their love. ”To me, anyone who draws up a one-sided contract like he did is very insecure,” said a woman of 35 whose divorce from a matrimonial lawyer 15 years her senior just became final.
”Oh, I knew what I was signing,” she went on, ”but I had to reassure him I wasn`t marrying for money. He even went so far as to put in the agreement that if either party started a divorce action, I would have to vacate the apartment immediately.” When he pronounced the marriage dead after four years, she said, ”I found myself out in the street.”
Despite such stories, even feminist-minded lawyers like Harriet Pilpel point out that a bad contract might still be a good gamble for ”women in their 30s who are desperate.”
”They have known a number of men, none of whom wanted to marry,” Pilpel said. ”Whatever happens could be no worse than what they`re facing now-working at an uninteresting job, for an inadequate salary, without a mate, watching their childbearing years slip away.”
Pilpel said she would not presume to criticize these women for taking a chance on love. ”There`s always the possibility that once the children come, his attitude will change,” she said.
TOO LATE TO BREAK? Another possibility is to break the contract later. But courts around the country are showing less and less willingness to honor such claims. A New York appellate court recently found a Westchester County couple`s contract valid even though the man failed fully to disclose his financial status. An appellate court in Kansas upheld a contract granting the divorced wife of a multimillionaire only $24,000 a year in spousal support. She had signed it one hour before the wedding.
For the bride forced to choose between an unfair contract and a missing bridegroom, still another possibility exists: Call his bluff, the lawyers say. All cited cases in which brave brides prevailed.
In one case, both bride and bridegroom were lawyers and the bridegroom`s father was pushing for a contract. ”He had millions,” Pilpel said, ”and yet in the event of divorce she was to receive a lump sum, a fraction of what she would be entitled to under the law.”
As Pilpel recalled the story, the bride, who was her client, turned to the bridegroom and said: ”Darling, I suppose this means the wedding`s off, and I`m so sorry, but I cannot sign this paper. It would be unfair to me and to our future children.”
He tore up the contract. She kissed him. In marrying, he defied his father, but his father came around. ”Today they have two children and pots of money,” Pilpel said. ”They are living in absolute heaven.” –
