A prenuptial agreement is an excellent way to preplan for decisions you may have to make should your marriage not work out as you hope. Like an insurance policy, you would only need a prenup in a worst-case scenario.
There are limitations to what this document can address. Even with that, you may still want to consider that any preplanning you can do in the beginning will make things easier for you in the end.
What should you include in a prenup?
There are some possibly contentious issues that you can account for in a prenup, and one of them is the financial division of property. Here, you can set the tone for how you and your future spouse agree to divide anything you accumulate while married. You can also define premarital or separate property in a prenuptial agreement, so you and your spouse do not wind up disputing this in the event of a divorce.
You may want to clauses about how you are handling pets in the wake of a split. If one of you inherits from a deceased relative during your marriage, you can include whether you wish that to calculate into your shared property or keep it separate.
What does not go into a prenup?
While you can account for most of the financial aspects of a divorce, one very difficult issue you cannot include is anything to do with future children. Since Texas family court judges focus on the best interests of children in divorce, it is impossible to account for what that may look like before those children exist.
Even without deciding on future child custody, you can help expedite and avoid a difficult divorce by taking care of what you can in a prenuptial agreement.