Is Your Prenup Made to Be Broken?

According to the latest media reports, Tiger Woods paid his ex-wife Elin $110 million in their recent scandal-plagued divorce. Allegedly, their prenup was for much less than this, but prenups are broken every day and for a number of different reasons.

The primary reason that prenuptial agreements are breached include:

• Coercion, duress, undue influence or bad intent
• Agreement was verbal, not written
• False or incomplete information
• Ineffective or absence of legal counsel
• Documents were not signed or witnessed properly
• Unconscionable provisions such as denial of child support
• Acute financial imbalance prior to or after the marriage

If a prenup is written unfairly so that it favors one party much more than the other, a judge may find it to be unenforceable simply on the grounds of unfairness.

The most common way that prenups are breached is because one of the parties failed to disclose a significant asset. Couples who are preparing a prenuptial agreement should include the following items:

• All sources of income
• Real estate, including timeshares
• Inheritances and gifts
• Bank accounts, including offshore
• Investment accounts
• Trusts
• Partnerships
• Businesses
• Life insurance policy benefits
• Retirement accounts