What goes into a Marriage Contract?
Video: What goes into a Marriage Contract?
By: Steven Benmor, B.Sc., LL.B., Family Lawyer
Jurisdiction: Ontario (Canada)
[Host: What’s usually in a [Marriage] Contract, by the way Steve? Is it all material? Is it an agreement about material assets, pension plans, retirement savings? Is that is what is included in a Marriage Contract?] It boils down to two things. It boils down to protecting your income and protecting your assets. And so your income whatever it is today, and your assets whatever it is today, is going to be different in five or ten or twenty years. So it’s very hard to actually say I want to protect something that I don’t know that I may or may not have in fifteen or twenty years. … Really, what a Marriage Contract does it tries to protect the person’s liability or future liability to their spouse in the event of separation. And the two areas of liability are what will I have to pay them to live each month, it’s called support or alimony, and the other one is how much of my property do I have to part with when we split up. So those are the two things that people seek to protect in a Marriage Contract.
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(’First Take Live’ video clips courtesy of Dan Carter Productions. Original Broadcast: 2007) About the author: Steven Benmor practices Family Law in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Visit Steven Benmor’s online Family Law Resource Center for concise answers to many more frequently asked Family law questions, feature articles on Family law topics, dozens of links to other Family law websites, and more at www.benmor.com. The information on this page is for discussion purposes only. It is by no means legal advice or even a statement of the law on this subject. Please do not rely on the accuracy or completeness of this information. Any question or concern elicited by the information on this page should be taken to a lawyer who will consider the facts of each case and the legal remedies available. |
