Divorce rates yield prenups for unmarried couples

By Amanda Sivan Kaufman
Lynn Duquette, 49, of Clinton County lives an unusual life. She has never been divorced, almost never fights with her husband, and when it comes to sorting out household chores there is no exchange of words, the work just gets done.
While this life sounds ordinary, the Center for Divorce and Reform estimates that 40 percent of all marriages end in divorce in the United States as of 2009.
Despite this statistic, Duquette said she never thought about getting a prenuptial agreement, an “explosive trend” according to a report by the New York Post among couples today.
Glens Falls family law attorney William Nealon said that he infrequently has to do prenups, but when he does the most common items discussed are pensions and equities.
“It’s really a way that a party can assure himself or herself that previously acquired assets can go where they might want them to go in the event that a relationship falters,” Nealon said.
The thought never occurred to Duquette when she was living with her husband before marriage, but she said she would not discuss it if she had to do it over again.
“I knew that once I got married I wanted to stay married,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of property or a lot of belongings, so there wouldn’t be a lot to divvy up.”
After 25 years of marriage this August, she said she believes the choice she made is right and discussing a prenup is unromantic. But if “knock on wood” something did happen and she and her hubby would split, Duquette does not imagine that deciding who gets what would be an issue between them.
The US Census Bureau reported that the number of unmarried couples who are living together went up 88 percent between 1990 and 2007. The New York Post report attributes the prenup trend due to this.
Matthew Hewson and Hillary Sponable, both 20, fall into the category of an unmarried couple getting the agreement. They are not engaged but consider marriage a possibility.
Hewson promised his grandmother he would never sell or lose the 200 acres of land in Beekman Town she left him, something he wants to protect no matter how much he trusts his girlfriend.
Sponable said she has no interest in his “swamp.”
“The prenuptial agreement isn’t for her, I trust her. It’s for the lawyer that she’ll hire (in case of a divorce) to make the settlement because he’ll naturally point to the land to make the settlement for the money that we need,” Hewson said. “I don’t trust lawyers.”
The land in question is no joke according to Sponable, who said her boyfriend loves the land so much he told her that when he found people growing illegal narcotics on it he shot one in the leg.
“Well, I didn’t necessarily shoot anyone,” he said with a laugh. “I might have joked that I shot somebody but I didn’t shoot anybody. But it’s a much better story to tell your girlfriend when you’re first dating her that you blew someone apart, but in reality it didn’t happen.”
Hewson stands by the notion that “love and business don’t mix” and that getting the agreement is not unromantic but something important for couples to do as preparation. If the two have children, he doesn’t believe visitation would be an issue in the case of a divorce because both of them would be connected to their offspring.
Sheryl Maxwell, a Plattsburgh divorce and family law attorney, said that for married couples, children come first when discussing separation settlements often involving living arrangements and child support.
“(Prenuptial agreements) don’t leave room for any nasty surprises,” Hewson said.