The brutal reality of business ownership and divorce I recently spent 14 hours deconstructing a contract that was designed to be unreadable, only to find the one clause that changed everything for my client. It was not a grand legal theory that saved their business. It was a single, dusty bank statement from 1998 that…
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Sit down and drink your coffee. It is going to be a long day and you probably will not like what I have to say. You built a company from nothing, or maybe you built it from a small seed, and now your spouse wants half of the harvest because you thought a prenuptial agreement…
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The smell of strong black coffee permeates my office while I stare at a stack of documents that will soon be worthless. You think your marriage is protected because you signed a piece of paper. You are wrong. Most postnuptial agreements are not worth the premium bond paper they are printed on because they ignore…
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I recently spent 14 hours deconstructing a contract that was designed to be unreadable, only to find the one clause that changed everything. My client sat across from me, the smell of burnt coffee filling my office, convinced his pre-marriage real estate portfolio was an untouchable fortress. He was wrong. A single repair invoice for…
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I recently spent 14 hours deconstructing a contract that was designed to be unreadable, only to find the one clause that changed everything. It was a single sentence buried in the choice of law provision that effectively disinherited the client’s children from their first marriage. This is the reality of the draft. It is a…
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I watched a client lose their entire claim in the first ten minutes of a deposition because they ignored one simple rule about silence. We were sitting in a sterile conference room overlooking the harbor, and the opposing counsel asked about a credit card account opened three years before the marriage. My client, desperate to…
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Sit down. Drink your coffee. It is going to be a long night because your business is not the fortress you think it is. You spent fifteen years building a firm, missing dinners, and sweating over payroll, and now you believe that your name on the articles of incorporation makes the entity off-limits. It does…
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The specific clause your postnup needs to be valid I recently spent 14 hours deconstructing a contract that was designed to be unreadable, only to find the one clause that changed everything. It was a single sentence buried in a forty page postnup. It did not look like much. But that one sentence stripped my…
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The five year transmutation trap Separate property often becomes marital property through commingling or transmutation when spouses mix inheritance or pre-marital bank accounts with community funds. Without a post-nuptial agreement or meticulous asset tracing, a family law court may award half your pre-marriage equity to your spouse during divorce litigation. I recently spent 14 hours…
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Sit down and listen. Your coffee is cold and your current prenuptial agreement is a paper shield in a tank battle. You think because you signed a document five years ago before the wedding that your assets are protected. You are wrong. I recently spent 14 hours deconstructing a contract that was designed to be…
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