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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sign the pre-nup!

Reverse situation here: my family owns a business and when it came to marriage, DH had to sign a pre-nup forgoing rights to my interest in the family business. He did so and did not even have a concern about doing so.

The reality is that half the marriages in the US end up in divorce and although we all think it will not happen to us, it does ...... just the complaints about spouses on this forum and advice from posters to end the marriage is anecdotal evidence of how many marriages end up in trouble.

What some posters who have argued against signing the prenup and offering ways to protect OP's interests may not realize is that making a financial settlement in the event of divorce when it comes to a family business, is very difficult. Many such businesses don't have the liquidity to do so and this results in serious complications and ramifications.

I have three siblings and our parents made it clear that if an iron-clad pre-nup was not signed, the child would forgo his/her rights to any equity in the family business. It was our choice and if signing a pre-nup was something that went against the grain, then the child needed to accept that there was a consequence. After all, it is their business/property and they are free do with it as they will.[/quote]

A clarification to my comments above: my parents had only one concern .... that the family business did not get dismembered because of a divorce which without a prenup would require a potentially large settlement being made to the ex-spouse. They were indifferent to what we chose to do with other assets and so in my case the prenup addressed only the issue of the family business.

To those not familiar with the complications that can result without these safeguard, the very issue of valuation is itself complex and two competent professionals can differ in terms of the valuation of a business raising the potential for litigation on just the issue of valuation. As a further illustration, the family business is today conservatively worth around $25 million - and possibly as high as $40 million. If each sibling's share was worth $6-10 million, and there was a divorce where a settlement of $3-5 million would need to be made, we'd have to sell part or all of the business if we could not raise the amount that would be due an ex-spouse.

Two of my siblings are married and they had prenups similar to mine. Our parents made the prenup requirement known to us well before any of us were seriously contemplating marriage. There are other elements to the prenup as it pertains to the family business: for example, if one of us predecease the spouse, the deceased sibling's interest would go into a trust for the children and the surviving spouse would receive an annuity for a specified number of years. So the spouse is not left out in the cold.

OP's in-laws, if they have the flexibility, should just make it a condition of inheritance that a prenup is signed as it pertains to the family business. [/quote]

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