There are hundreds of details that a bride-to-be has to deal with in the months before her wedding — the band, the flowers, where to seat relatives who despise one another and are likely to throw things—but unfortunately, the detail that can make the most significant difference in her life is often overlooked: a prenup.
The reasons for this are understandable—no bride ever wants to imagine that someday she's going to get divorced, despite the odds. Who would? But I believe the main reason a prenup isn't considered is because many young women getting married are in the same situation that I was—the owner of nothing but credit-card debt. When I got married at 24, a prenup never even remotely occurred to me. What was there for him to take? My Visa bill?
But 18 years later, when I divorced my husband, I had a successful writing career and some money in the bank. He got to take half of it. But it isn't even the fact that I had to give him half that I find so egregious. It's the alimony he demanded I pay him on top of it that makes me very, very angry—like scream-really-loud, get-drunk, and eat-gratuitous-carbohydrates angry. On the first day of every month, I have to write him a mother^#%*ing check for six thousand dollars.I've been doing this for two and a half years. I've got five more left.
How did this happen? Because California divorce laws are antiquated and ridiculous and favor the less successful spouse. You're probably thinking that he must have been raising our children, while I was acting as the breadwinner. Nope. We don't have any. The state of California says that I'm supposed to keep him at the standard of living he got used to during our marriage, even though he's no longer my husband. So despite the fact that he has a master's degree and more marketable job skills than I do, I've had to give up my quality of life in order to maintain his. I can now no longer afford such luxuries as cable TV and haircuts.
When my divorce lawyer, Melanie, first told me that my ex was eligible for spousal support (the new way of saying alimony), I replied, "There's no way he would ever ask for that. That would be such a pussy move." She shook her head, looked at me across her desk, and said, "Every woman who's sat in that chair has said the same thing. Get ready, because he's going to ask for it."
She was right. Melanie and her firm, Wasser, Cooperman, and Carter, have a roster of female clients who, like me, wish they could build a time machine and go back and make their ex sign a prenup before they walk down the aisle. I've met a few. We manage to find one another at parties. Maybe it's the look of disbelief and rage we all share. We end up huddling in the corner, discussing ways to cut down our monthly bills so we can afford to write that damn check. One woman was going to hire her ex to be her nanny. He didn't want the job. Why would he? He doesn't need a job. He gets her check every month.
I once had a first date (with a fireman, no less!) who, after the topics of divorce and alimony came up, said, "Being your ex sounds like a great gig. I know I'd be taking that check…." I informed him that if he'd told me a Kardashian was fellating him under the table as we were eating, that would've been less offensive than what he'd just said.
So brides-to-be, I implore you—whether or not you have a penny to your name right now—make that man sign a prenup that spells out a fair division of the assets based on percentage of income earned and, most important, eliminates spousal support…for both of you. If he's protected too, he can't complain. Because some day, all of you fun, fearless women will invent something or write something or build something or sing something or paint something or design something or act in something or start a company that makes you a lot of money, and there is no reason on this earth why you should be penalized for your success by having to continue to support an ex-husband.
Think of me as a cautionary tale. If I've convinced even one of you to get a prenup, I will feel less angry on the first day of next month when I have to write that goddamn, mother^#%*ing check, yet again.
Karen McCullah is a screenwriter — whose movies include 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde, The House Bunny, and The Ugly Truth— and author of the novel The Bachelorette Party, published by St. Martin's Press.
Via
