SF engineer came to money and now wants wife to sign a post-nuptial agreement
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I understand prenups for rich people because you never know why someone is really with you, but if you are with someone before getting rich, that is one of the few things you can never have again. If the relationship is good I don't know why you suddenly make it all about money and drive a possibly irreparable wedge between you. And for what? Because if things go sideways you might lose half? Half of rich is still rich and it's a small risk to take for the chance at a lifelong loving partner. Some things are worth more than money.
Well said and you know that this person is with you because of you (and not because of money).
The desire is for a free mind to make a decision by the fear of the outcome creates an incentive to create processes where the mind is no longer truly free. The "real" desire is never and can never be met because of fear imposed process.
And if they have no plans of leaving then refusing taking half when they go shouldn't be a problem - right?
Perspective matters.
If I were the spouse being asked to sign the document, I'd say, "Nope, let's get divorced right now and split the money in half. After that, if you want me in your life, feel free to court me again."
Only one of these has potential risk to the business and it falls under the "Disagree" options. So for the business, agreement is necessary to prevent that risk and some business partners that otherwise might be on board would refuse due to that risk.
The above is copied from another reply of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16011037
I challenge you to find an attorney that would advise her to sign any such post-nup. Maybe a reasonable stock buy-back in the event of a divorce, but asking for a post-nup is completely beyond the pale.
>I challenge you to find an attorney that would advise her to sign any such post-nup.
You couldn't as there's no benefit for her to doing so - especially if she ever decides to leave him.
On the other hand, not signing it is a clear sign that she is not supportive to keep her partner's business as free as possible from liabilities.
Not signing it would be a clear sign that he should find a normal every-day method of solving his "business partner is married" issue that doesn't involve a first-strike measure to leave her out in the cold because his side-projects are now worth money.
The funny thing is that on top of my business experience with using stock agreements to get around this issue in a business I helped to found, I've also dealt with coming into a bunch of money shortly after being married. Trying to get my wife to sign a post-nup agreement would have been horribly obnoxious and asking for strife.
What he is doing is just good business practice: He wants to keep the business as free as possible of liabilities. Her not willing to sign is what introduces distrust: It implies that she at least want to leave her the optinion open to run away with money from his business.
For example, I was a founder in a business years ago. We included clauses in the stock buy-back agreement that could be triggered upon various events (death of a partner, divorce, etc.) Normally, those kinds of clauses ensure that the non-partner-spouse gets the value of the business owed to him/her, but loses decision-making control of the business.
You don't have to force your partner to sign a trust-breaking post-nup in order to have those kinds of protections for the business.
If the wife is not supportive of the business ventures of the husband, I see no future in the marriage.
We don't know how he perceived his marriage before the money started to roll in. We only have her side of the story. Given those facts he might be acting wisely. There's no way for us to know.
But if it is a business and she would get half of his interest in the business, couldn't that cause hardships on the other partners and allow her to make decisions that are detrimental to the business?
Could he have her sign a fair postnup saying she would get half of any financial interests in the business but no voting rights or that the partners would have automatic rights to buy her out?
I could see all sorts of ways that this could be fair to her but still protect his partners.
Not every person is a great diplomat.
Alternatively there could be a provision of swapping "Shares B" for "Shares A" or similar with different voting or veto rights. I think this is also possible in the US, since something similar was done for Facebook? Mark has special voting rights but his inheritors will not?
I question the probity of such arrangements as well as special voting or non-voting stock. This is exactly the sort of thing that leads people to conclude that capitalism is rigged.
The basic notion of capitalism is that property rights + free markets = optimal economic growth. As soon as you start creating different classes of ownership you're signalling that that's a actually a fiction.
It's not about the financial instruments. I'm making the assumption that a "side project" that the spouse did with a few of his friends wasn't capital intensive, and it was knowledge based. As a software developer, if I were to start a business, it wouldn't be capital intensive at all. I would need partners that brought a set of skills to the table - maybe a few developers and a person with a marketing background or industry connections. The only costs besides time would be a bunch of AWS resources. The "investments" in my company wouldn't be financial, they would be expertise. Why would one assume that the person's spouse would have the expertise to make intelligent strategic decisions on the direction of the company? What if it were a law firm?
Do you think that Carl Icahn or Baine Capital have the same set of incentives as the employees or the founders of a company? They want to make their money and get out, their time horizon is a lot shorter.
The same could be said of the spouse of a founder. As founders, we would be more likely to care about the long term vision of the company. The spouse may just want to make any money she can right now.
If Mark Zuckerburg hadn't kept a controlling interest in Facebook, would it be where it is today? What if he had sold a controlling interest to Yahoo under pressure from the VCs?
If I started a business with a friend because I trusted his business instincts and he passed or they divorced, I would be fine with her benefiting financially as much as she would if they were still married but I wouldn't want her being able to make any strategic decisions.
But in the case of the Reddit thread, it seems like her spouses business is more like a partnership. Even with a legal partnership, she is a joint owner in the partnership by default unless some other arrangement is made.
Just to emphasize, if the purpose of the postnup is to keep her from benefiting financially from "his" success while they are married, I find that completely distasteful. But if the purpose is to protect the integrity of the partnership, I don't see a problem with that.
I don't think my wife would want to have any part of the day to day decision making of a computer related company I started and let's assume I wouldn't ask her for a postnup and ask her to sign something on the event of my death that would allow her to be bought out at a fair value or allow her to keep her equity but it be non voting.
What about your failures ? What if you end up commiting a crime, will your wife have share in that ?
If I make dumb decisions, my whole family is affected.
One of the hardest things in life is making a side project successful. The people that is with you at the hard times is part of your team and should be with you in the good times.
This man probably has already a mistress. When you have a couple tens of millions in the bank and people know you have it you start attracting dangerous women, I would say professionals, gorgeous women that have experience manipulating men with sex, the PUA(Pick up artist of their sex).
If you were not very good with women before marrying, and even if you are you are extremely vulnerable to them. The same will happen with men like bankers that will stalk you all day the moment you enter a couple million in a bank for doing an operation, they will even cry for you doing with your money what they say is much better for you(which is what is better for them).
IMHO the best strategy is most people not knowing what you are worth. Drive a normal car, wear normal clothing, have a normal house, if you can. I wear normal clothing but drive a Tesla.
I would rather argue that this should actually be a strong reason for her to trust him. If he meets another women, he can never be sure that she is not into him for the money. On the other hand for the existing wife he knows that she did not marry him for the money. This fact alone should give him a very strong incentive to trust the existing wife instead of any other woman that he now meets. So the wife knows that he has a strong disincentive to leave her.
But I’d guess here’s a good chance she can talk him down, as I’m picturing one of his tech bro’s going, “dude, you totally need a post-nup. This guy I knew...”
This guy is being ridiculous.
Too harsh?
But he didn't.
And he wants to alter the terms of the deal now, as a post-nup? After years of partnership? Oh hell no.
If I were his wife, I would seriously consider leaving him over this. Walk, with "his" assets that were always his-and-hers.
Then when they get into the real world and have an understanding of how sometimes unbalanced divorce law can be, they are like "wait, how did this happen".
People like you are exactly why people want to sign pre-nups in the first place.
> He made a financial agreement with his wife to share 50-50. That's what a marriage is, it's a legally binding contract.
If it was always clearly cut as a 50-50 split set in stone, there would be no need for as many divorce lawyers.
> And he wants to alter the terms of the deal now, as a post-nup? After years of partnership? Oh hell no.
People want to alter the terms of the deal all the time, a divorce is usually one of those alterations, most frequently initiated by women. After years of partnership. Why this is surprising to anyone is beyond me. Is it really that different in California?
You are correct in one thing though - he probably shouldn't have gotten married to begin with.
Taking HN threads into personal attack is a sure way to make a flamewar worse. Please have the self-control to resist this when commenting here.
As for the GP comment, I can see why it would feel that way but I didn't read it that way myself. There's obviously a lot of interpretation involved in these things.
Another explanation is that we have an incomplete/distorted explanation from the wife, and that she may have misunderstood the post-nup. If what he's working on is getting significant funding, during due-diligence the lack of pre-nup may appear as a problem.
Anyway, I'm not making any judgment on any of the parties, human relationships are such intricate machines...
I don't think it makes sense for her to sign a standard post-nup, however, I think it does make sense to account for the fact that the husband wants to make sure he keeps control of his shares in a business he's currently building.
Or if he suspects that his wife can quit him one day.
What a marriage is legally is far from reflective of most relationships. It's easy to say "well don't get married then", but there are huge reasons that legal marriage is important for couples when it comes to things like taxes, healthcare, and more. Realistically, people of many sorts need the benefits of legal marriage.
For that reason, I am a huge proponent of modifying the marriage agreement to each personal case (aka a prenup, but also defining what your relationship is and not just defaulting to the societal norm. That's a conversation to be had long before marriage, but revisited at that stage.). For example, relationships don't have to be lifelong. If a marriage lasts happily for 30 years and then gets stale, that's not ideal but congrats on the 30 years of great partnership! What about people who have either romantic or sexual feelings for multiple people? I am sure that polyamorous families run into many legal issues, and while not terribly common, highlights a stark case of differing relationship style. There are many much smaller variants that can have legal implications in the context of traditional legal marriage. The idea that marriage is lifelong, unconditional, monogamous, and means sharing absolutely everything is just not going to work for a lot of people.
To me, it sounds like this couple was happy, got married, and skipped this conversation. Now that a business risk is in play if a divorce happens, it sounds like they need to have it. It sounds like the husband here did not approach this well at all, but I think that a fine agreement could be reached given the right setup of legal advice and information and making sure that the wife is not pressured into it here, which if it happened, is terrible on his part. From the full story, I am inclined toward a relatively charitable reading of the agreement. I'm obviously a person reading one side of the story over the internet, so I could easily be wrong in this case.
Her money is hers, mine is mine. We will forever operate like that.
I've always been a blunt, upfront person. Transparent as a plane glass window. Since we were talking about marriage, I just threw in a casual "when I get married, there 100% will be a pre-nub or it's not happening". As well as a few other "hard stops".
As time went on the marriage conversations became more about US getting married... OUR marriage. I made sure at nearly every point to remind her of my "hard stops". They're the kind of thing you never want to be vague about, and are worth stating VERY early in the relationship, in my opinion.
My guess is that this guy might be feeling insecure knowing that his wife could divorce him.
He's clearly pursued a life that is about making money and intends to keep doing so, so there is a good chance he equates having money (or both to being lovable / worthy of Love on some deep level.
He may be trying to arrive at feeling secure in his romantic relationship the only way he knows how -- via a business deal.
He's missing an incredible opportunity to be vulnerable with her and discover his true worth, inside.
I think some major sports team owner had a forced liquidation like this recently.
That being said post nups are weird to me, so the terms really should be spelled out to surviving prevent a business scenario but to give her some amount of compensation maybe? Idk.
BTW, the level of support for the husband, among the hacker news community, so far, is pretty astounding, contrasting with the support the wife receives on reddit. Not to paint with a broad brush but I think this really says something about the kind of people running things in tech, not to mention all the stuff women had to put up with in the news the past couple of years with regards to any tech workplace.
My current partner and I have what we both deem a great romantic relationship and friendship. We plan to get married for legal benefits and stay together for some time. We could care less what it says about our relationship, but there are simply legal things that make sense. It's likely we will never divorce. But we both can envision worlds where divorce happens. If it happens after 30 years of great partnership, so be it. It doesn't invalidate those great years we had. But if it does happen, we would want a fair and just split after it. Not based on 50/50, and not necessarily based on "yours is yours, mine is mine". Neither of us would want to leave the other in financial trouble, but if one of us made much more than the other, we both agree that it would be fairer to give that person some sort of better split, so long as it does not dramatically hurt the others remaining life. It'd also depend on the life goals of each of us from that point and who would need the money more for their respective goals. What we find fair may be different than others, but given the scope of the agreement it's really only about what we both see as fair.
We trust each other 100%. We could probably act on this type of agreement without a lawyer. But no one ever knows how divorce will go down, so why not put it in writing?
All of this isn't to say that there can't be nefarious reasons at work here and is not to invalidate or ignore the terrible way tech treats women. But this is not a categorical thing, and it really comes down to the specific agreement and the two people involved, presuming neither side is coerced or uninformed about the agreement.
Comes off sounding like a business transaction, which is fine if that's how you plan to leverage the idea of marriage, but then again it probably should be properly labeled as a joint business venture/partnership where people have written agreements to protect each other's assets in case of things going badly between them.
My point is that people leverage the legal construct of marriage in many ways, and prenups enable that. To say that a prenup is inherently a sign of lack of trust is far from accurate.
In practice, I agree it does often point to that, but there are plenty of counterexamples. I would argue it works as such a good indicator due to how many bad relationships are out there.
The eyes of love are blind.
From what? The other spouse or the legal system? Most would assume it is protection from the other spouse. To verify, one could offer to sign a prenup that splits everything 50/50, i.e., that codifies what would happen under community property law. This provides the benefit of clarifying how a separation would occur to protect the spouses and their work from the legal system.
If protection from the legal system is sought, then the 50/50 prenup should be agreeable.
If protection from the other spouse is sought, then what is the first spouse (the one demanding the prenup) going to give up in order to gain that protection?
If the first spouse is demanding a one-sided prenup that only benefits the first spouse, then it can be argued that the first spouse has broken a marriage vow by seeking to enrich his or her self at the expense of the other. [1]
[1] None of this is legal advice and should not be used as such.
This Reddit comment is pretty spot on regarding this case.
On a related note, I consider Amber Heard as a risk to the whole Mars mission and get a bit nervous when I hear rumors of them getting back together. I wonder if I'm the only one.
Edit: I grew up in farming country and by far the biggest risk to farms there is divorce. This is insane given all of the other risks in farming.
I’m not particularly wealthy (as in millions/not have to worry about working for the rest of my life) but have a high income and had a few side projects and I would never consider a marriage without a prenup to protect both myself and my partner from vindictive practices and petty behavior.
The divorce scheme today is simply too messy without prenups.
This is about a POST-nup, which makes no sense to me. The husband is either being an idiot who listens to idiot advice, or the husband is planning on leaving her. Either way, he needs to get his head on straight and the spouse needs to not sign this.
This isn’t just about money, his partner now in theory is eligible to half (or more if there are kids) of everything he owns including any intellectual property he have created.
This can go well beyond simple greed and be more about ones life work.
It also puts effectively his company at risk because the company doesn’t have 2 founders but 3 as the partner can get half of his share or even more in the divorce.
But that is what marriage is. Everything in a relationship is jointly owned. People who think they can somehow skirt around this don't seem to understand that. Marriage is basically the legal recognition that two people are to be treated as one. They are a team. If people can't handle that, don't get married....
> This can go well beyond simple greed and be more about ones life work.
It isn't "ones life work". It is "their lives work". Remember, they are a team.
> It also puts effectively his company at risk because the company doesn’t have 2 founders but 3 as the partner can get half of his share or even more in the divorce.
But thanks to the marriage, what is his is also hers. By nature of them being treated like a single entity. Why shouldn't she get half of their share? That share has material value, therefore both partners are entitled to it.
No this isn't what a marriage is, historically this isn't how it worked, and only for a very short time while there still was a very different trade between the partners where divorces became universally acceptable when this was practiced.
>It isn't "ones life work". It is "their lives work". Remember, they are a team.
They are partners, it doesn't mean that all of their personal achievements are a team effort, in fact the vast majority of their achievements would still be individual.
>But thanks to the marriage, what is his is also hers. By nature of them being treated like a single entity. Why shouldn't she get half of their share? That share has material value, therefore both partners are entitled to it.
Which is why you get a prenup It is no longer the case when the woman trades 1-2 decades of her life to raise 3 children and needs protection/assurance that she will not be thrown out when her societal value effectively has been reduced to zero with nothing.
My biggest disappointment in this whole ordeal is that this isn't a case of a woman getting succeeding an asking for a postnup tho with how divorces are still settled especially in no fault states she would be much more protected against predatory behaviour in that case.
What people seem to constantly ignore is that CA is a no fault state, she can just as well decide 5 years down the line that she much rather keep the house and 50% of the assets and start a new life because now she can afford to live on her own without any financial worries.
People yapping about that it's not fair to deny someone a full share of a work that they have not participated in, but have no problem with that person basically having a nuclear trigger that would allow them to walk out with 50% or more of the money as well as destroy their partners livelihood if they so desire at a whim.
To me, it sounds like he made the original mistake of not getting a prenup, and now that business interests are being risked on the relationship of two people, it makes sense to add that contingency plan.
All of this really depends on the specifics of the agreement.
Any basis to this or is this just a scary story?
I suppose with enough money at stake and enough animosity between the two parties, it is always advantageous to claim to not have understood the original contract. Worst case you lost a bunch of money in legal fees, best case you win big.
Implicit terms get you in trouble.
Usually assets earned after marriage are split during a divorce while assets owned before marriage are considered separate property btw.
Given what was described, she needs to aggressively defend herself.
If he was single, should the cleaning service get a cut of his company?
Should the Domino's get a cut of his company for keeping him fed during those midnight coding sessions?
What about the washing machine manufacturer?
Under California law, all assets acquired after marriage are considered "community property". This means that regardless of who "actually" earned the assets, they are owned by each spouse equally (50/50).
Not all states have this regime, and there are good arguments both for and against the concept. I believe that the strongest argument in favor is that community property prevents power imbalances from developing within a marriage. It is sadly common for a spouse to be trapped in an abusive or unhappy marriage, but who cannot practically escape the relationship because they do not have independent means of support. Community property provides a guarantee of financial support should a marriage dissolve.
Notice she said she would never hurt her husband even if the relationship ended. From her perspective, the prenup is not necessary, but she feels like her husband thinks differently and may not trust her completely.
Even the legal possibility of her doing this is a strong liability for the business. So her not signing means sabotaging his business venture, which only leaves him divorce as option to save his business.
Her not signing is in no way, shape, or form sabotaging the business venture. Not in the slightest. And if he does divorce because of that, then he deserves whatever he gets, because he shouldn't have married her in the first place, and he didn't love her.
Agree + Stay together ; Agree + Divorce ; Disagree + Stay Together ; Disagree + Divorce
Only one of these has potential risk to the business and it falls under the "Disagree" options. So for the business, agreement is necessary to prevent that risk and some business partners that otherwise might be on board would refuse due to that risk.
Coming into or marrying into money, divorcing for 50%, and "finding a better partner" is not something completely unheard of and it is common enough that people seek protection against it which is why these sort of agreements exist in the first place. If the marriage "isn't about money" then pre/post nups only solidify that fact by putting it into writing: it isn't about the money and won't ever be about the money.
There are two possible perspectives to take here:
A) They would only ask for it in writing if they didn't trust them at their word (people with this perspective will likely side with the wife)
b) They would only refuse to put it in writing if they don't intend to honor their word (people with this perspective will likely side with the husband)
No. Those other perspectives are just as valid, if not more.
"So for the business, agreement is necessary to prevent that risk and some business partners that otherwise might be on board would refuse due to that risk."
Given that millions of businesses are started while one party is married, and don't have this problem, I don't consider it to be a valid concern.
"Coming into or marrying into money, divorcing for 50%, and "finding a better partner" is not something completely unheard of and it is common enough that people seek protection against it"
And what's the wife's protection in that case?
"If the marriage "isn't about money" then pre/post nups only solidify that fact by putting it into writing: it isn't about the money and won't ever be about the money."
Except now, there are no consequences for the husband being unfaithful.
As far as the business is concerned - not really. To the individuals? Well... this is why there is such a divide depending which perspective someone takes... it's a "clear cut" answer depending what kind of perspective you have and whether or not you're assuming "in good faith" or not.
>Given that millions of businesses are started while one party is married, and don't have this problem, I don't consider it to be a valid concern.
Millions of businesses have or don't have rules against dating. Some allow dating, others don't allow dating vertically, others don't allow dating vertically in one's department, and others don't allow dating period.
Just because some businesses take a risk doesn't mean it isn't a risk. It's a matter of how you attempt to mitigate that risk. As others have mentioned - buyback stocks under certain circumstances such as divorce are the "usual way" of mitigating this kind of risk.
>And what's the wife's protection in that case?
I didn't say she gets any - or that she should even sign. Just that asking her to sign is not some sort of one-sided trust breaking unless you're assuming it's only being done in bad faith. (ie. so he can cheat on her and if she leaves him because of it she's left out in the cold)
>Except now, there are no consequences for the husband being unfaithful.
Except losing his wife. Sure - it's less of a consequence than losing his wife and half his money... but if the consequence of losing her isn't enough to ensure faithfulness then that should be enough reason for her to leave.
Right, but we're not just talking about a business. We're also talking about a marriage. Which would probably say that the business perspective is even less relevant.
Given that lots of BASE jumpers survived their jumps, BASE jumping cannot be a really dangerous sport.
Trust, but verify (Доверяй, но проверяй).
Off topic, but worth stating: Knowing that, I try to be supportive of stuff that she wants to take on.
Probably it was the same for others but they didn't say it explicitly. Oh, well.
Why, apparently, is it acceptable for him to have a "contingency plan", but not her?
As far as I understand the Reddit post, the post-nuptial agreement is only about his new business venture and not about other, existing assets. So he still has something to lose, if they divorce.
No it isn't. Trying to bust a pre-nup says that, but refusing to sign a post-nup is saying 'you're going back on the arrangement you made.' I can't believe people are making excuses for this guy. Imagine if his wife had lucked or figured her way into money and asked the husband to write himself out of the financial picture; are you telling me you'd advise him to just forget about his rights?