Your fiancé is a grown up, and what he did was pretty sneaky. He should not have bombarded you with wanting a prenup at a dinner with his parents, leaving you outnumbered. If your fiancé can’t (or won’t) effectively advocate for you with his parents, I would reconsider this marriage. Seriously.

1) Get a lawyer.

2) Ultimately, this is just between you and your fiance. He can take his parents' concerns and ideas under advisement, sure. But you only need to come to an agreement with him, not with Nancy and Dennis and him.

First, you are one very smart young woman! If the property is in your fiancés name then his parents really don’t have a vote and you just write up a deal with him on your terms. Frankly, what I’d do is require that a separate business account be set up for the property and that no co-mingled funds can be used. If the property’s income can not support repairs and is therefore losing money it’s up to your husband to borrow against the property to fund the repairs. If a bank will not provide a loan then he should consider selling the property. The property is a business and it should be managed that way especially given your IL’s insistence on a pre-nup.

walk away

Anonymous wrote:Stick to your guns. Get a lawyer. What you are asking is entirely reasonable, and it's pretty awful the ILs don't see it that way.

Actually, if your fiancé agrees, why do his parents have anything to do with it. Draw up an agreement that stipulates your condition and both of you sign it.

This. His parents have no say in this. It’s a private matter between you and your husband. If they wanted to maintain any strings, they should’ve put it in a trust.

Put a clause in there that if he cheats the prenup is is null and void.

You said they had gifted them the properties? How is it then that you proposed that the properties remain within their family? Did they sign them over or not? If your DH has a property in his own name, why are his parents involved in his prenup?

Anonymous wrote:1) If you are going to sign a pre-nup, have your own lawyer. Always. Their lawyer represents their interests, yours represents yours.

2) A rental property is a business. For tax purposes they need to be tracking business expenses. They need to have a separate bank account for the income and expenses too. This is an issue entirely separate from your marriage. That’s not too much to ask; it’s basic management.

This!

Seems reasonable.

How does the income from the properties work? If that goes to your household expenses then it sounds like a wash no?

Your fiancé should sell the rental property.

The proceeds can go into a trust fir him. You don’t actually need a prenup if you do this because the trust would not be marital property. Done.

Anonymous wrote:You don’t have to agree to anything with your in-laws. Just your fiancé

Haha I was.thinking the same!

1) If you are going to sign a pre-nup, have your own lawyer. Always. Their lawyer represents their interests, yours represents yours.

2) A rental property is a business. For tax purposes they need to be tracking business expenses. They need to have a separate bank account for the income and expenses too. This is an issue entirely separate from your marriage. That’s not too much to ask; it’s basic management.

You don’t have to agree to anything with your in-laws. Just your fiancé

Stick to your guns. Get a lawyer. What you are asking is entirely reasonable, and it's pretty awful the ILs don't see it that way.

Actually, if your fiancé agrees, why do his parents have anything to do with it. Draw up an agreement that stipulates your condition and both of you sign it.

I have been with my fiancé for seven years. We both have well paying jobs and are overall very happy. Our wedding is next summer. Over dinner with my future ILs, the three of them brought up signing a prenup.

Fiancé and I have roughly the same amount saved for retirement and no debt (including a mortgage, we rent an apartment), but his parents have gifted fiancé and his brother two rental properties that they purchased in DC. These are strictly investment properties and none of us would ever live in them (not convenient to anyone’s work, not our type of neighborhood, etc).

The prenup would only address the rental properties, stating that in the event of divorce I would have no right to either of them. I am perfectly fine with this in principle; his parents put up a good bit of money to buy them as an investment for their two sons and would like them to remain within their family. My issue, however, is that the properties’ rental margins are very thin. The rent just barely covers the mortgage each month, and when repairs are required, that money has been coming out of the pockets of fiancé and his brother (their parents are completely hands off financially now that the properties have been purchased.

After fiancé and I get married, therefore, I would be on the hook for contributing to any and all repairs for these properties. When I brought this up during the conversation, I proposed that the properties remain within their family but that any repairs that came out of our pockets would be tracked and given back to me at 50% of the repair cost, in the event that the marriage not work out. Fiancé was supportive of this idea but his parents were adamantly opposed to it, saying it would create too much trouble to account for every receipt form the hardware store and would create too much trouble where the brother’s stake is concerned.

I’m not sure what to do. We left the dinner in a pretty uncomfortable place and I just said that fiancé and I had some things to discuss in private. He doesn’t seem to think they are going to come around, and that I should just agree and sign since we have a solid relationship and nothing is going to happen.

But I’m also very troubled about potentially contributing many thousands of dollars over the years toward some properties I would have zero stake in. This doesn’t seem equitable in the least. If the properties were making the family some extra money every month that would go into an account owner and controlled by their family, and used for repairs, I’d be perfectly fine with that. But I feel like I’m being taken for a ride here. Any advice here? I don’t love the idea of hiring my own lawyer but seems like this will have to take place. But is it even worth it if they just won’t change their minds?