Can You Get Out of Your Premarital Agreement?

High net-worth individuals often use premarital agreements to limit their financial exposure in divorce. In a rush to get married, many people sign these agreements without fully understanding what they are giving up. When it comes time to divorce, your spouse could dust off the agreement to limit what they pay you in alimony or give up as marital property.

Can you challenge a premarital agreement? The answer is yes, but the grounds are narrow. You need to coordinate with an experienced lawyer who has handled many high-end divorce cases. Below we look at some reasons why a judge may set aside a premarital agreement.

Reasons to Set Aside a Premarital Agreement

Premarital agreements are generally enforceable, but there are some common situations where a judge could set it aside:

• You were coerced into signing. Like any other contract, a premarital agreement requires voluntary assent to be valid. A judge might set aside an agreement if you faced coercion or duress to sign. This is a high bar. Simply feeling like you had “no choice” but to sign is usually not enough. Instead, we want to know if your spouse threatened you in any way or used psychological manipulation.
• You signed only due to fraud. A premarital agreement is not valid if procured by fraud. For example, your spouse may have told you the document was something else, like a will. If you did not know you were signing a premarital agreement, then a judge should not enforce it.
• Your spouse hid assets or failed to fully disclose their financial situation at the time of signing the premarital agreement. A judge might set aside a premarital agreement if a spouse failed to fully disclose their financial condition at that time. Your spouse could have hidden assets or lied about certain accounts. They could have forged documents or given your legal team made-up numbers.

Work with an attorney. We can request full financial documents, going all the way back to when you signed the premarital agreement. We can bring to a judge’s attention any attempt to hide assets.

There might be other reasons for a judge to find a premarital agreement invalid. For example, it could fail to satisfy the requirements for an enforceable agreement, such as a lack of signatures, or the document violates public policy.

A judge might also set aside a premarital agreement if it is unconscionable, meaning that it is so one-sided as to be grossly unfair to the other party. This is a very high bar. After all, many people give up rights to alimony when signing an agreement, so the fact that it is “unfair” in some sense is not enough.

Contact a Miami Premarital and Postnuptial Agreements  Lawyer

Premarital agreements are sometimes poorly drafted or hard to understand. Do not simply agree that any agreement is automatically enforceable. Instead, reach out to our legal team so we can review whether to ask a judge to set aside the agreement. A Miami premarital and postnuptial agreements lawyer with Hamilton O’Neill can meet to review the details of your divorce. Reach our office by calling 305-371-3788 to schedule a private consultation.