Why it's time to reconsider your opinion on prenups | Benedikt Ummen & Magdalena Witty | TEDxTUM

[Music] [Applause] we have been together for seven years and married for three of them we decided to get married after we had traveled in an electric car along the ancient silk road until the border of china it was a huge adventure that required lots of planning and really tested our relationship making our bond even more profound our love would last forever it felt natural to get married and become a team for life having both grown up with siblings we also knew we wanted to become parents to our daughter who was born six months after we returned and her future siblings be together till death do us part and raise our own little family that was our plan but it also felt right to be prepared for things not going according to plan after all one thing our trip with the electric car taught us was that no matter how amazing plan a sounds unexpected things might happen you might need to fall back on plan b or c but what are plan b and c in a marriage it doesn't sound even remotely romantic to think about contingency plans for your marriage people aren't really talking about it are they and that's why we are here today to tell you why we think it's actually very romantic to contractually agree on always having your partners back on making sure their needs are met and that they are well taken care of in case plan a doesn't work out this is why we negotiated for over 12 months our very own personal prenuptial agreement but before going into all that let's take apart the word first pre-nuptial agreement free means before and nuptialis is a latin word for something being related to marriage fun fact you can just as well sign a prenup after your wedding this is actually how we did it and agreement is straightforward both parties need to want it you can't force a prenup only negotiated usually a prenup covers arrangements only important in case of a divorce most often they are concerning only the following two things the division of assets accumulated during marriage and spousal support which is the kind of money or other support you give to your ex-partner that does not sound romantic but we promised you romans right when i was a little girl i was dreaming of the most romantic wedding day with huge festivities a princess dress a ballroom and a party never to forget all i thought about was the wedding not the whole package that comes with it did it cross my mind that about 30 to 40 percent of german marriages end in divorce after 15 years of course not and why would it thinking discussing negotiating even arguing about what happens after the potential separation from the person you are about to tie the knot with that's like saying maybe to the question will you marry me imagine your partner turns out to be a total lemon in his views about money responsibilities or a potential separation would you rather find out as early as possible or when the hypothetical becomes reality it sounds obvious to me the earlier the better an agreement arranged in peace will always outweigh a wartime settlement in good times i consider magdalena's interests to be equally important as my own so let's take a closer look on why we think that a prenup is helpful for any couple wanting to start a family prenups according to the cliche are only good to save money for the richest bows which is because very often the partner having or earning more tends to compel the other to sign a prenup before the wedding but you don't need to wield this tool as such a weapon from the very start we knew our prenup was not about hoarding as many assets as possible for one side but about finding a fear even a generous agreement for both of us for the sake of our own little family the first step was to be transparent about the assets we have and the assets and income we expect to have in the future we talked about how we would like to split these in case of a divorce money issues are one of the leading causes of divorce so the more you talk about money now the less this topics gets thorny in the future we always fostered transparent communication about money in our relationship so actually that part of the prenup seemed fairly easy to us our real work was just about to start in our experience what many people don't recognize is that when you get married you always implicitly agree on a default prenup agreement namely the one provided by the law of your land neither priest nor best man will tell you much about these laws so it's highly recommended to become at least a bit familiar with them the essence of the solution by law is after a divorce the person with money or a job supports the person without money or a job we both have academic decrees and a similar amount of work experience in the past i even earned more than benedict this changed after our first daughter was born three years ago i stayed at home with her for a year because it was easier for me nursing her even after she started daycare i wasn't working close to full time right now i'm at home again with our second daughter who was born four months ago financially starting a family meant for me first i had no income second i was no longer paying into my retirement fund and third i stopped building up my human capital and earnings potential for the future according to the statistics my lifetime income will be at least one third less than benedict unfortunately child care is not ideal to help us solve this discrepancy because who stays at home with a sick child what happens during the 30 days or so that a child care center is closed in a year who takes care of a school kid during the 12 weeks of school vacation or in a pandemic with months of lockdown in our case i reduced my work to a minimum and stepped in for all these cases every couple with children is faced with a constant trade-off between investing more time into a career or into the family as long as the relationship lasts and the couple sees themselves as a team that's actually no problem but since there is a considerable chance that also our relationship might not last a lifetime we want to give the person caring for the family peace of mind so in case of a divorce i would of course receive the default spousal support defined by law but that alone is not enough additionally we've agreed to strike up the following balance in case of a divorce first we compare how many years one person was less of a money earner than the other because he or she was caring for the family second for every year of this difference that person gets another extension of spousal support the primary aim of this spousal support extension is that in our case magdalena could re-educate and retrain herself for potentially many years without any monetary worries this takes away a significant source of pressure usually associated with a divorce namely having to suddenly accept any dreadful or otherwise unsuitable job that comes along this thinking does not exist in german family law the law says that your ex-partner needs to pay spousal support only if you cannot support yourself a compensation for unpaid family work through a generous spousal support extension is uncommon and requires a special prenup finally let's also have a closer look at what our process of developing the prenup look like one of us was usually walking our baby daughter to sleep outside and continued walking the other one was juggling a phone and a laptop that way we could discuss duprina for hours of course that involved disagreements and back and forth but maybe the physical distance helped us to remain focused and factual at one point i got lost while developing the perfect equation for how much spousal support each one would get with greek variables and crazy fractions so i stopped short of integrals unfortunately family lawyers aren't engineers or mathematicians what really slowed us down was the fact that our first two lawyers just didn't understand our intention and we're going for a standard solution we were on our own for long stretches of time finally we found a good lawyer who felt just like a coach to us she helped us translate our thoughts and equations into legal terms this process was long and intense i remember benedict's dead a serious and precise text accountant asking guys what's taking you that long with that prenup is the wedding off clearly it wasn't off we were just deciding the best relationship contract we could have wished for we will only know at the end of our lives if it was really the best contract for us but regardless of what happens in the future we are already certain that the process of developing our marriage contract has made our relationship stronger it gave us insights into our core values our vision of our future together and what is important to us it made it even more clear that we both wish to raise children and spend as much time as possible with them the trade-off between career and children isn't easy and we find ourselves in a constant dance in between but we know what is important to us the prenup has also increased our trust in each other we know we can rely on each other right now but we also know that in case of a divorce our interests are protected equally this gives us and especially me since i am currently spending more time with the children and with my career peace of mind to live the life i and we want to live in case you're still not convinced think about all the insurances you have in your life in case of sickness in case of unemployment heck even your smartphone might be insured somehow magdalena and me all the years of our lives spend towards the common cause of a family together are insured too each partner ensures the other one's time investment into the family now isn't that romantic you see we really consider our prenup as a relationship building tool that's why we encourage you to discuss the prenup with your partner and your close friends and family so that all of this becomes more normal it doesn't matter whether you're about to get married or if you're married already there is never a wrong time to shape the relationship you have enjoyed so far and want to enjoy well into the future maybe forever thank you thank you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 36,359

Keywords: English, Family, Law, Life, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Society, TEDxTalks

Id: R2ZQkR_6oxs

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2022