Since you could later be engaged in a nasty, costly, and emotionally draining divorce some day, you should consider a prenuptial agreement as a precaution. Below we have given you some information on what is in a prenuptial agreement and whether it could be useful for you.

A prenuptial or ante nuptial agreement is a document signed by two people who intend to be married. It describes their rights and obligations should they get divorced. A prenuptial agreement informs court how they want their assets and property divided up.

Divorces become messy when parties cannot agree on distribution of property, such things as house, house, stocks, and bonds and whether one party should pay other alimony, now known as "maintenance" in most states. Assume that husband has $1,000,000 in his own name prior to marriage. A properly drafted prenuptial agreement can award that same $1,000,000 to him after a divorce, notwithstanding what he does with money, such as purchasing a home in joint tenancy or shifting money into other accounts. Without a prenuptial agreement, wife might be entitled to one-half of $1,000,000 or more, depending on financial circumstances of parties at time of divorce. The prenuptial agreement is a powerful and valuable tool that can favor husband, protect wife, or serve both of them fairly. It is a question of circumstances and intentions.

Candidates for prenuptial agreements used to be just older individuals with huge estates that they wanted to protect from gold diggers for their children from previous marriages. Since more millionaires are born every day, candidate pool is growing by leaps and bounds. Now everybody has something to protect: an unpublished author, budding inventor, anybody with a lucrative profession or a good idea. So, before you dismiss idea of a prenuptial agreement, assess your situation in life and your long-term future in deciding whether a prenuptial agreement is right for you.

Now, most people never get employment contracts because their employers do not want to lose right to terminate you with or without cause. But there is a saving grace--if your employer wrote an intial offer of employment letter and you commenced employment based on that letter, you can use terms in that letter as your contract of employment. Hopefully letter spells out your salary and length of employment because there are cases where if your fired before end of term in that letter than you can be due balance of your salary for that term. So, if your salary was $40,000 for year and offer of employment letter states your term is 1 year then if your fired in first 2 months, your due balance of 10 months salary. And if your employer has an Employee Handbook with rules and regulations therein (usually terms of termination, warnings, vacation pay) then that Handbook is also a binding "contract" of employment. Read terms of your Handbook because it may spell out how and when you can be terminated which may or may not be good for you depending on whether or not it limits employer's liability for terminating you. On other hand, if Handbook has terms regarding certain pre-warning procedures before terminating you an dthose procedures were not followed , then you can enforce those procedures as terms of your contract. If your employer breached those terms he most likely must re-instate your employment and follow those procedures before terminating you.