Yahoo News Why Didn’t Bennifer Didn't Sign a Prenup?
We all saw this coming. After weeks of swirling rumors about impending doom for Bennifer 2.0, Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck on Tuesday, on their 2-year wedding anniversary. But here is something we definitely didn’t see coming: The news, delivered via TMZ and its sources, that they never signed a prenup before getting married (which they did twice, first in Vegas and then on his compound in Georgia).
How could it be that a couple with their profile—and an alleged combined net worth of some $650 million—didn’t think to protect their respective assets? (According to TMZ, the pair have been battling it out for months trying to reach a settlement.) Was it just blind faith that this love—her fourth marriage and his second—would be true and everlasting?
That might be the only plausible explanation, since there really is no upside to skipping the prenup, according to Thomas Kretchmar, a family law attorney and partner at Aronson Mayefsky and Sloan. “Very few, if any at all,” he tells T&C. “And none that would, all things being equal, come close to offsetting the benefits of entering into a prenup.”
Or could it be that Lopez and Affleck were planning on signing a postnup instead (which can be done at any point during the marriage)? “Given the relatively small window of time between their engagement and their wedding, they may have decided—even against the preferences of their lawyers—to just use a postnuptial agreement to handle the issues they would have handled with a prenup,” Kretchmar explains. “This fact pattern isn’t unheard of, even with high net worth individuals. In such a situation the key, of course, is actually getting that postnup finalized in a timely fashion. Two years without getting it done wouldn’t be best practice, but it’s something that is known to happen. I’m not suggesting that that’s what happened here, but it’s an example of a very plausible explanation.”
As far as we know, Bennifer signed neither prenup nor postnup, which might explain TMZ’s report that settlement talks have become increasingly acrimonious between the two. Then there is the fact that the divorce is taking place in California, a “community property” state. Translation? “Without a prenup, whichever of the two of them earned less income during the marriage will “benefit more” because California, as a default rule, generally treats all income earned during a marriage as belonging equally to both spouses,” Kretchmar says.
In other words, this does not bode well for J.Lo, whose wealth, by all accounts, far surpasses that of her soon-to-be ex-husband. Let’s just hope she gets to keep that engagement ring?
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