What happens if you divorce after signing a prenuptial agreement?

Perhaps you met your spouse when you were both in medical school, so you had a mutual interest in protecting your future income. Maybe you knew that you would eventually inherit your family business, and your fiance at the time agreed that signing a prenuptial agreement just made sense given the situation.

Whatever your reasoning for initially creating the document, you now find yourself in a situation where you need to make use of it. Whether due to slowly growing apart or some disastrous act on the part of your spouse, you believe that your marriage will soon end in divorce. What does your prenuptial agreement mean for your upcoming divorce proceedings?

You can keep the costs lower

In theory, a prenuptial agreement largely serves to bypass the conflict that so often develops in a contested or litigated divorce. The two of you can cooperate for an uncontested filing that follows the agreements you already reached.

Overall, divorcing with a prenuptial agreement is often more affordable than a litigated divorce. If you move forward with uncontested proceedings, you can expect to pay an average of $4,100 to divorce. That’s significantly lower than the average cost of $23,300 incurred when couples litigated two or more issues in their divorces.

You can minimize contact and conflict

Once one of the two of you files for divorce, you can go low contact or possibly no contact if you are a child-free couple. You won’t have to worry about negotiating anything unless there are important marital factors that you did not address in your prenuptial agreement. There may be a few terms that you have to resolve either with one another or through your attorneys to move forward with an uncontested divorce filing.

Prenuptial agreements make it particularly simple for co-parents to transition from a married couple to adults raising children together but separately. In rare situations, either you or your spouse may choose to challenge the prenuptial agreement, which could lead to full-fledged divorce litigation. However, for most couples, having a prenuptial agreement will mean enjoying a straightforward and low-conflict divorce process.

Reviewing your prenuptial agreement can give you a better idea of what to expect in your upcoming divorce.