Pre marriage planning Can Save Assets and Legal Entanglements

If you’re planning to get married consider taking steps before the marriage to protect your assets. If parents or other benefactors will give or bequeath wealth to you be certain that that wealth passes to an irrevocable trust for your benefit. Properly done you can benefit readily from the trust but if the marriage falters, those assets will be protected for you. Learn how to maintain the integrity of separate premarital assets without commingly so that if you later divorce those assets may not be counted as marital assets to divide. A better step may be to transfer premarital separate assets into a revocable trust with its own tax identification number designated to hold only separate property. That may help maintain that protective status. An even more protective step if feasible for you is to transfer those assets into an irrevocable domestic asset protection trust (“DAPT”) or similar type of trust. That trust will be protective from a future divorce should that occur, but may also shift those assets to grow outside the tax system, and in a protective environment that your creditors may not be able to reach. Finally, obtain a prenuptial agreement and memorialize in that agreement the trusts and other premarital separate property assets so that your soon-to-be spouse is on notice.