Pre-Nuptial Disagreement

Yesterday, I was watching the Seinfeld episode where George is about to send out his wedding invitations and desperately wants to stop the wedding from happening. After failed plans to tick off his fiancee by smoking and insulting her by asking her to sign a pre-nup, she dies from licking the toxic wedding invitation envelopes, which were very cheap and he insisted on buying. In the end, he's more happy that he's not getting married than sad that she's dead. That's odd within itself, but this is Seinfeld we're talking about here.

Anyway, the episode got me thinking about pre-nups. Elaine said that she wouldn't sign one. And I agree! I think most of my friends feel the same way. I've known a few people who've had the alternate argument-- it makes total cold, logic sense to arrange for one, and if you don't, you are the poor sap who is going to be screwed in the end.

I see where the opposing view is coming from, but just to a point. People keep citing the "50% of all marriages fail" stat, but first of all, that's not true. If you take out people who get married and divorced numerous times in their lives, the stat is only like 30%. The other major reason I hear for pre-nups is "no one who gets married thinks they are going to get divorced, but obviously, sh*t happens." Now, I don't think I'm going to get divorced, but I totally acknowledge that crazy things happen in life that you can't anticipate. It's not that I think it's *SO* out there for me (or my friends) to get divorced. What I think is more out there is the idea that we would want to not only split up, but that if we did, it would be so acrimonious that a pre-nup would've been necessary and helpful. But it's a slippery slope. If I can say that divorce could be possible, how can I say how messy it would be? We could really hate each other, and we could have an empire to divide. But I strongly doubt either one of those things will happen.

And then there's the fact that if you do have a pre-nup, you are in some sense saying 'out loud' that  divorce is possible. And who wants to admit that when they are about to get married? Maybe its naive of me, but to a certain extent, I would wonder why two people were getting married if divorce was so tangible to them.

But, I am not a child of divorce. And my husband and I are not heirs to fortunes. Everyone has their own circumstance- I respect that. Just giving you my thoughts. What are yours?