Forever’s Getting Shorter Every Day

It’s a great achievement when we can get a title for a blog post that could also some day double as a title for a hit Country & Western song. Yeah, a little humour to get us rolling because what we’re going to talk about in this week’s post is not the most cheerful of topics.

When people get married, they make a promise to love each other forever. What many of them tend to forget is that forever is a long time; so that is not always an easy promise to keep. Especially since, nowadays, so many people get married for the wrong reasons, and it’s actually just a little too easy to get hitched.

Back in the day, marriages usually only took place after a lengthy and very complicated courtship, or because you’d been discovered in a particularly awkward situation that couldn’t be explained away. As the years have progressed, the process of getting married has become simpler and the reasons for doing so have become far more varied. Every day, people are getting married for all sorts of stupid reasons.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that because it is so easy to get married, the practice of waiting for the right person to come along has been virtually abolished. It seems that people reason they can always divorce if things don’t work out. If only it were really that simple, there probably would not be a problem! But divorce is anything but easy… in fact, it can be downright painful, no matter which side of the proceedings you are on.

You can avoid being a victim of this kind of thing if you just heed this simple advice. Before getting married you should:

• Be sure you really love the other person, and
• Be sure they love you

This advice is effective because contrary to what many people believe; true love does not diminish with time. It really is just as the preacher describes it: for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.  True love does not falter in times of adversity, but actually becomes stronger. What must be observed as truth is that if more than half of marriages fail, then clearly more than half of the people who get married should never have done so. In the vast majority of these cases, it is because the marriage was not based on true love.

How do you know if it’s true love? Again, it is really quite simple. In the UK, getting divorced has traditionally required one of these reasons:

• Adultery
• Physical or verbal abuse
• Habitual inebriation
• Extreme miserliness
• Desertion

The simple test is that if you could do any of the things on the above list or if your intended could do them to you, then what you have is not true love, and a marriage between you will have at least a 50% chance of not going the distance. Even if the marriage does work out perfectly, you may eventually wish it hadn’t, but you may also lack the courage to end it. Staying in a bad marriage can sometimes be worse than admitting defeat.

All of this matters because if your marriage does end in divorce, it can negatively impact your life in several ways. Similarly, if you stubbornly cling to a bad marriage in order to avoid divorce, that will also have a detrimental effect on your quality of life.

The primary negative short-term impact with divorce is the cost, which can also sometimes develop into a long-term problem, especially if one party to the marriage is substantially wealthier than the other. Maybe the best example of the problems that can arise in that kind of situation is the epic struggle between Khoo Kay Peng and Pauline Chai, which has been going on for several years and has cost more than £6 million already. You certainly don’t want to follow their example!

Keeping down the cost of divorce should be the aim of every couple going through one. Fortunately, that is one thing that is actually getting better as time progresses. To get the best result, the following rules should be kept in mind:

1. Never try a DIY approach; you could lose a fortune without adequate legal assistance.
2. Never work with a solicitor, their fees are much too high compared to legal consultants who provide exactly the same quality of service for a simple fixed up front fee.
3. Always have a prenup, no matter how confident you are in your present choice and no matter how “unromantic” it may seem. A prenuptial agreement has, in fact, helped some marriages to work better.
4. Make sure you file every document correctly and at the appropriate time to avoid delays, because delays are the biggest contributor to escalating costs and problems.
5. Avoid slandering your spouse, especially in court, as it can count against you. Don’t let emotion ruin your chances of a good outcome.
6. If you have to go to court, show up. Nothing will ruin things for you faster than not appearing, unless your spouse also fails to appear.

Prenuptial agreements are a kind of insurance policy for a marriage. Many people worry that it will have a detrimental effect on their marriage prospects, but actually the opposite tends to be true. It is definitely something that people struggle with bringing up, often due to nervousness over how the other person will react.

Such bashfulness is not helpful to you, however. You do need to make sure that there is an agreement in place before the marriage, because it provides the same peace of mind that any other kind of insurance does. To make it an easier topic to discuss, think about these points:

• The prenup is not just a contract that dictates what happens if a marriage breaks down, it can also serve as a code of conduct during the marriage.
• The intention of a prenup should be to reassure each other firstly that neither party is entering into the marriage merely to take advantage of the other and, secondly, it is to ensure that each of the partners can be certain that they will behave honourably toward one another if the marriage falters or disintegrates for any reason.
• A prenup won’t hold water if it isn’t fair, so this is not something you use to exclude your betrothed from being able to receive a fair settlement if you divorce, but it can set some boundaries on expectations and it should be reasonable.
• Bear in mind that circumstances can change dramatically during the course of a marriage and when there are substantial shifts and life events that take place, it can be a good idea to revisit the prenup (and perhaps also a will) to make revisions if necessary.
• Everything must be done by somebody who is qualified in law to be certain that the agreement will be legally valid.

Before you decide to tie the knot, talk to Hylton-Potts about the preliminary steps you should take by calling us on 020 7381 8111 or sending an email to [email protected].

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