Most Replayed Moment: Why You Need A Prenup And How To Avoid Divorce!

More and more people are getting prenups. You said to me that a lot of people contact you these days asking for you to help with prenups. One of the interesting things we were talking about before we started filming was it's really uncomfortable to turn to your partner and ask them for a prenup. I know a lot of people say that, and I think it's a question of how you enter the conversation.

Again, like, you know, I guess because I get paid to talk, and I'm used to talking sometimes about difficult things with a judge or revealing, you know, things that are hard to reveal about someone and trying to make sure that they're not viewed negatively, even though they might have behaved negatively.

So I think prenup, it's all about how you bring up the conversation. And my preferred entry point for a prenup when I talk to someone is every single person who gets married has a prenup. It's either written by the government or it's written by the two people who love each other more than the other eight billion people in the world.

I personally think that the two people in a marriage are better qualified to create the rule set of their marriage than politicians they don't know, especially when you consider the nature of politicians. They won a popularity contest. They managed to offend as few people as possible, and they change constantly.

So you're signing up for the most legally significant thing you're ever going to do other than die with a rule set that no one ever explains to you in advance and that can be changed by people who don't know you based on who won a popularity contest. Okay? That seems smart to you? Or, or... do the two of you decide what the rules are going to be?

And then starting from the beginning, which is where you are if you're doing a prenup because you're about to get married, okay? Then you live your life in accordance with that rule set together. And when one of you is deviating from it or when a red flag goes up, like you go, hey, how come you're doing it that way?

Remember we have that rule set. And so I like that. I think prenups, even having a conversation about a prenup, I think, is a very healthy exercise for a couple. I cannot tell you how many people since our first conversation have stopped me on the streets of New York City and said, I got into the coolest conversation with my girlfriend about prenups and marriage after I saw you and Steven talking.

I've had probably like two people a week say that to me. It's a very, I always say to these people, I'm like, you do weird stuff in bed. Like you're watching Diary of a CEO in bed. It's because you know there's other stuff. Like I'm not great on the shower thing, but I'm in bed. You know, I like Steven too, but that's not the time maybe.

It is. But I guess it is. Anytime is a good time. Please turn. But no, I'm not trying to hurt you. I know you broke 7 million. I don't want to screw it up. But I do think that there is something to this conversation. And I do think sometimes like, you know, look, you're in a relationship. You've had a hard conversation with your partner.

Yeah. And when you're in it, It's not fun. And you kind of go like, how are we ever going to get out of this? Is this how it's going to be now? We have this feeling, and it's awkward, and it's weird. And then you make it through it. And then the next morning you wake up, and maybe things are still a little weird or something.

But like, oh yeah. I like to believe that then there's this feeling of like, hey, we did that thing. Like that thing was a little weird. It was a little hard. We lost the plot. But then we got it back and we're still here. Look at us. Yeah, look at us. Like, yay, go us, you know? I think there's real value in that.

I think that, again, the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing. It's hard to talk about when this ends. It's actually the thing I'm proud of most of my relationship is exactly what you just described there. I'm not proud of our relationship being perfect, because it's not.

I'm proud of how imperfect it is and how we continually resolve the conflict without coming out the other side resenting each other. We come out the other side proud of each other. We're like, you know that meme where the, I think it was the Hot Ones meme where they're like, look at us, who would have thought?

And that's like the thing that my girlfriend turns to me and says continually is, I'm so proud of... how much shit we've got through. Because she refers to it like the roots have got even longer. And going back to your conversation about prenups, it reminds me of what we were talking about before we started recording.

This idea that people don't want to confront it, because you tried to get a stand at a wedding convention as a divorce lawyer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I want to say one thing about what you said before that, because your verbiage is very interesting to me. Because you said, you know, in my relationship, you know, it's not perfect, but I'm proud of X, Y, and Z.

And I have to tell you, like, I don't know, that sounds pretty perfect. Like, I think that things are imperfect. Like, and that's perfect. Like, there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. Like, ever. And that's perfect. Like, it's perfect. Like, I genuinely believe we're perfect. Like, I think we're all flawed and we're perfect.

Like, because we're authentic, we're real. So I think that's a really important, if people, if perfection is the standard, we will all fall short. I think the reality is that we are all perfectly imperfect and that's really beautiful. But yes, the wedding, so in the United States, I don't know in the UK, but in the United States, we have these things, they're called wedding bazaars or wedding expos or wedding fairs.

And somebody came up with this and it's a brilliant business move, which is you rent a gigantic hall or a small hall, depending on where, some of them are done at like giant convention centers. And, you know, people who are associated with the wedding industrial complex, you know, they pay to have a booth.

So there's photographers, there's bakers, there's—and, you know, every table has, like, something. The photographers have different pictures. The cake people might have, like, little samples of cake— You know, there's all the little grab bags and things that people give out as wedding gifts. There's, you know, different travel things related to your honeymoon and where you might go.

There's different websites for, you know, your registry. Like, there's so many wedding-related, wedding-adjacent businesses. This is a multibillion-dollar industry. So I reached out to, like, four or five different smaller and bigger wedding expos. And I said, in some in substance... I'd like to get a table.

And they said, great, photographer, baker, what do you do? And I said, oh, I'm a lawyer, and I do divorce and family law, but it's just going to be themed around prenups. It's not going to be in any way negative about marriage. It's going to be, you know, just a congratulations on your engagement. Have you talked about a prenup?

And then I'll have brochures and things, and you can, you know, make sure that they pass muster, that I don't say anything that would be offensive to anyone. I don't want anyone to be uncomfortable, any other vendors to be uncomfortable. But there's literally hundreds of vendors at this thing. So there's no reason— Not one wedding expo would rent a table to me.

They refused my money. They would not take it. They would not take it. No matter how flowery I said I'd make the language, no matter how respectful to the institution of marriage I said I would be, they would not let me buy a table. They wouldn't take my money. And those tables are not cheap. It's thousands of dollars to get a table at a wedding expo.

They would not take my money. Even though almost 60% of people end in divorce. And it's like almost an inevitability. The probability is there's going to be a conversation about how we separate. As I've said before, every single marriage ends. It ends in death or divorce. The majority of them end in divorce.

The majority of them end in divorce. Why wouldn't you allow me to have a table that just says... If you'd like to have a prenup, here. I'm not even trying to sell a prenup on you, like you're getting engaged, you need a prenup. It's just, have you talked about a prenup? And information about that, they would not even let me in the room.

And because it shatters the illusion, it's reality. They don't like reality. They don't see reality. as what it is, which I think, by the way, is quite romantic. I think there's something very nice about talking to your partner about, you know what I'm afraid of? Losing you. I don't want to lose you to death, even though I know someday I have to.

But I don't want to lose you to divorce either. But man, almost 60% of marriages end in divorce. And if we got divorced... Like, what would we be? Like, I hope we wouldn't hate each other. Like, I hope I'd still love you and care about you, or I'd still want you to be well. Even if you left me, I wouldn't hate you.

Like, I don't have one ex-girlfriend that I go, man, I hate that person. Like, I wish all of them joy. I hope they're all happy. Like, our chapter together ended, but I wish all of them joy. People don't like to go into things... without optimism, though. And the conversation around, should we get a prenup, almost sounds like, I think we're gonna break up someday.

I think you can hear it that way. But I don't think it has to be that. I agree with you about the optimism. I think people would prefer to look at the bright side of things and to be optimistic. And I am not suggesting, like, I don't believe in fairy tales. I'm a realist. That doesn't mean I get up every day just thinking about nothing but death and divorce and how it's like, life is beautiful and life's meant to be lived.

And like, you don't wanna sit, I'm not gonna sit at a wedding and be like, do you know how many percentage of this people are gonna get divorced? I don't view it that way. I think it's wonderful. But be realistic about things. Like I don't wanna get ill, but I have a physical every year. I go to the doctor every year.

Like, I like to know what's going on. I like to be a realist. I like to, I don't plan on crashing my car, but I like knowing that I have a seatbelt and an airbag. And by the way, if my seatbelt and airbag aren't working, I would like to know in advance, because I'm driving as if they're going to work.

If you told me, by the way, Jim, your seatbelt and your airbag aren't working, I would drive very, very, very carefully. Right. So I think it's the same thing. Like, just we can't have an honest conversation and be optimistic. Divorce in the U.S. is very different from divorce in the U.K. And I actually learned what I think it is.

I learned this from watching several things. But one video comes to mind from a couple of weeks ago. You'll know the case. There's a black actor who is currently posting a lot on his social media about how his wife is like chasing him down for child support. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, I don't remember his name.

I'm bad at celebrity names. I'm bad at celebrity names. Unless I represent them. But yes, I know who he is. And he said on a couple of shows, but he went on his Instagram and said, like, my wife, who I've broken up with, who, like, basically doesn't really have a job at the moment or is making some money from some Instagram work, is she's got this, like, pack of lawyers who email me and demand to see my bank statements because...

I've been doing well lately. I've got a couple of new movies and stuff, and she wants to make sure she gets more money for me and the kids based on his success. And I never realized it was like that. I never realized that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's modifiable. It's modifiable. Child support, for example, is modifiable every three years when there's a 30% change in income up or down.

So if I have a wife, and then we have four kids, and then I break up with her, and when I break up with her, I'm making a million dollars a year. And then I'm making $100 million a year. Goes up. Child support goes up. To like what? What are the numbers? Depends on the percentages. In New York, one child is 17%, two is 25%, three is 29%, and four is 31% of your gross income.

Of my gross income? Your gross income. Less FICA, 0.0765. Social Security and Medicare. If my gross income is $100 million. So theoretically, there are caps on the combined parental income. Everywhere. Yes, pretty much. But... Judges have a tremendous amount of discretion based on a variety of factors, including things like what was the lifestyle of the children during the marriage?

What are the reasonable needs of the children? Like celebrity divorces, I will tell you, there are some legitimate separate needs that celebrities, the children of celebrities need. Like they, you know, security, for example. What's the biggest child support payments you've ever heard of? Well, I mean, Diddy had, I think it was $20,000 a month for a period of time.

He's kind of a well-known one, and it was very well publicized. The most I've ever had in a case is I had a client who got $65,000 a month in child sports. But it covered a lot of things. It covered a portion of private school tuition. It covered a security detail. It covered, you know, these were very, very high net worth, you know, public figures.

What kid needs $65,000 a month? Well, the kid doesn't get the money. The parent who has primary physical custody gets the money. And they can do with it whatever they want. Correct. So they could go spend it in Vegas? Correct. That's not fair. You should have to provide receipts. Well, what I've always said is, I mean, first of all, the system is complicated enough without people having to provide receipts to check the math of a person and what they're spending the child support on.

Like, it's already overwhelming enough and it's already difficult enough. Like, listen, what you're proposing would create a lot of additional work for me, so I appreciate it. But it is, from my perspective, it is a potentially very... Dangerous thing. What I always tell people is getting married without a prenup is a fairly risky activity.

Having a child with someone is the most risky activity in relationships in terms of the amount of emotional and financial damage a person can do to you. Have a kid with them. Having a kid with somebody, they can weaponize that child. They can alienate that child. They can use that child's needs to piggyback onto financial needs.

There's so much stuff a person can do to torture you if they have a kid with you. And there's so much legal wrangling and rambling to do. And what I'll tell you is it… You know, I have a client who spent somewhere in the realm of $100,000 in legal fees arguing over whether Thanksgiving should begin on Wednesday and end on Sunday or whether it would begin on Thursday morning and end on Thursday evening.

Now, that person's worth, you know, $700,000 or $800,000,000. So $100,000 to them is not a lot of money. Most people, myself included, I'd just eat turkey another day. Like, it's not worth that amount of money, right, to have that argument. That's why having a kid with someone, you're opening up the door to potentially tremendous amount of battles.

Whereas... If you're arguing over a $50,000 bank account and you spend $30,000 in legal fees, even if you won, you only won $20,000. If you lost, you lost significant. So it forces a certain rationality into the transaction. Whereas your time with your kids, people could attribute whatever value they want to that.

I've had clients who fought over minuscule things about children that to me would be minuscule. To them were incredibly important. You said that the two big reasons why people divorce are infidelity and money. Yeah. Is it a loss of money, a lack of money? The person goes poor? That's a big piece of it.

Losing money, gambling money or losing money unexpectedly, bad business and investment decisions. There was a period of time where I did a lot of divorces because people decided they were going to try to be day traders and all of a sudden people, you know, they were like barring against retirement accounts.

Crypto? Yeah, they were learning the hard way that if you short stocks, there's almost no limit to how much money you can lose. Crypto divorces? Crypto's big. I did a couple of crypto. where crypto became very important and whether it was on a hard wallet or whether it was, I mean, hiding money with crypto very, some years ago when crypto was first sort of on the scene, when I really should have been buying Bitcoin because it was like, you know, $3 or $5.

There was a period of time where most divorce lawyers and most judges didn't understand what crypto even was. I mean, try to explain to a 75-year-old judge who has an AOL email address what cryptocurrency was and the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin, like, and why you're concerned that they might have these funds on a hard wallet at all.

And they're looking at you going like, well, I have no idea what this is. So it's tricky. I mean, these are the things we, as a divorce lawyer, one of the things that makes it a very exciting job is that we're constantly – we're getting an education in all of these things. Like I represent, I remember I represented a surgeon and I learned everything about how surgeons get paid, how they make money, how they hide money, what their expenses might be.

And so then the next time I did a surgeon, I'm like, oh, I know this. You know, the first time I represented someone who owned a hedge fund or was a partner in a hedge fund. I had to learn about how capital accounts work and how people are paid and where you might be able to hide money. Have you ever seen that where someone is like publicly thought to be a billionaire and then you look at their bank statements during a divorce and you realize that they've basically managed to hide everything.

So they're basically broke. It's all in someone else's name. Well, yeah, there's two permutations of that. One is people who are publicly incredibly wealthy and then in reality, they're leveraged to the Hilton broke, like way broke. That happens a lot and that happens a lot with celebrities. Celebrities are very often leveraged to the hilt because they had a hit record or they had a hit movie or two and then they think, Oh, everything I do is gonna be like this.

And so they just go out and buy tons of stuff and there's always people who loan you money, you know, especially if you're a public figure and you have some money, right, a couple of million bucks, you can get a couple million more real easy. So, and then it just very rapidly, and they buy everybody else.

They have, you know, there's always clingers around the person, you know, the whole entourage that a lot of whom are siphoning money off of people. So there's a lot of people that look very wealthy and are dead broke. And I have a lot of those. How does that play out in court when the wife finds out that their partner or the husband finds out that their wife was implicated?

They're not happy. They're not happy. And... And it's hard because they think they have proof of something. Like they're like, but look, here's a picture of him with a Ferrari. And it's like, right, I can show you the papers that he doesn't, he leases that Ferrari. Like it's this much of a car payment.

Like I had a guy who had like three Bentleys and a couple of, you know, like McLaren, he had crazy cars. And yeah, it was all leveraged to the hilt. It was not, he didn't own them, you know. What's the second permutation of that? The second permutation is when someone, When they've hidden the money? Yeah.

I'm trying to find the right adjective, that they're enough of a sociopath, that they're enough of a malignant narcissist, or they're enough of a careful planner that they have created structures that make it almost impossible for their spouse to get anything in the divorce. So some of the things that people do in the ultra-high net worth space for generational wealth preservation and tax avoidance have second order effects when they get divorced, right?

So a lot of wealthy people don't own very much of anything. They own companies that own properties and they have an interest in a trust for the benefit of their great grandchildren that owns companies that own properties that they then borrow against. Like there's their whole structure is a very complex, and they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to trusts and estates attorneys and accountants, so they pay almost nothing in taxes.

And so that they will have no estate issues, they will have intergenerational wealth. Well, those things make a lot of sense from a wealth preservation and estate planning perspective, but they make a divorce really complicated. because it's no longer marital money. It's owned by this trust, it's owned by this corporation, it's owned by, I only have this percent interest in this thing, which is why we both benefited from the taxation of it.

So that's where it gets like a little, what I do is a fascinating job because we work with, very brilliant forensic accountants who kind of go in and try to recreate whether something was done as a fraudulent transfer in contemplation of divorce, or whether something was done for good faith reasons and, you know, was done in a way that was designed to benefit the marriage as opposed to as divorce planning.

There must be scenarios where someone goes into a divorce. I think I'm divorcing you, let's say. And I think in divorcing you, I'm going to get a big payout. But it turns out in divorcing you that you get a big payout because I've got more money than you. Yeah, it happens a lot. That happens a lot. I've actually, I wrote an article for one of the women's magazines called The Last Remaining Feminist Taboo.

And it talks about a lot of female clients who are paying alimony to their husbands. And it stings. You know, you could have a woman who's like a Bella Abzug, like Gloria Steinem level feminist. And when she gets told, you know, that like, yeah, you gotta pay him alimony. They're like, I'm sorry, what?

Like, no, he's a man, he could work. Like he can work, he's the men who get alimony. And you're like, no, gender is a construct and sex is actually, you know, a construct socially. You're a CFO of a company, and he's a really cute, long-haired musician who you married because he's, like, fun, you know?

Like, and you earn 4,000 times what he earns annually, and so you have to pay him alimony because it's just math. It's God's gender blind. It's just math. And they're like, yeah, no, I am not paying alimony. He's a man. He's got a strong back. Tell him to get a job. By the way, I've had men in that situation go, yeah, I'm not taking alimony.

Really? They won't take it? They won't take it. Alimony is like the... Spousal support. Okay, like child support? No, it's to maintain the marital lifestyle. It's in order to rehabilitate your earnings so that you can be... So, for example, I marry a woman from the UK who's a physician. Yeah. And now she's coming to the United States because we're in love and she's marrying me.

And she is going to lose her license to practice medicine because she's coming to the United States and it's a different licensure. Okay, so now she moves here in reliance on us being married and we're married for a couple of years and then we divorce. She's going to need, because I now make a lot more money than her, she's going to need some money to get her back to a place where she's back to her earning capacity.

So if I married Taylor Swift and we're together for 20 years, do I get half? You do not get half usually, no, no. I mean, first of all, she has too many good lawyers, I'd imagine if you're able to get half. But you would certainly, I mean, there was a- How much could you get me? How much could I get you from Taylor Swift?

I'd have to know how much Taylor Swift has. I also don't think she's, she's never made it down the aisle yet, has she? But if I take her down the aisle and then we stay together 20 years and I come back to her and say, James, it's time. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I'm going to get you as much as possible.

I can't promise you anything, but I am promising you I'm going to get you as much as I can. I mean, you know, I'd have to know. I'd have to know what the finances are. Billion dollars. I would have to. She has a billion dollars. In cash. Billion dollars in cash acquired during the marriage or prior to the marriage?

During the marriage. All acquired during the marriage, you get in half. You get in half. You get in half. Listen, Adele's ex-husband did very well. Kelly Clarkson's ex-husband did very well. It depends on how quite well. Look it up. It's out there. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's out there.

The reality is, is those were people. She had her most successful tour at the time during the marriage. She had her most successful album at the time during the marriage. It's all a question of where things land in... in the trajectory of someone's life. If you marry someone when they're on the come up, like Jeff Bezos, great example, like largest divorce settlement probably paid in history was to his ex-wife.

Why? Because Amazon wasn't a thing when they got together, right? So that was, she was there for the whole trajectory. If he got remarried now, she's not going to get half because she wasn't there. There's a premarital component to that that is significant. If you got me 500 million from Taylor Swift then, Would you take like a commission?

No, it doesn't work that way. We're prohibited from doing that. We get paid by the hour. You're prohibited. I am an hourly wage earner. Like if I worked at McDonald's. Who prohibits you? The rules. The rules that govern. And by the way, rightfully so. Why? Because you otherwise would create an incentive for the lawyer to maximize recovery for their client rather than the recovery that makes sense for their client.

So like I've had cases where... the cash payout I get for my client is lower because I want to get them more support, like child support or spousal support, or I want to get them more of the real estate rather than the payout. So really what we're supposed to do as lawyers is not be invested in the percentage of the result.

Personal injury lawyers, like you slip and fall, that's different. Last question for me is regarding me and my partner. I never want to end up in your consultation room. We never want to go there. If you were to give me one piece of advice to prevent, and it can't be don't get married, to prevent me and my partner ever ending up in your consultation room.

It wouldn't be don't get married. Oh, OK. What would it be? Pay attention. Just pay attention. Right now you're paying attention. Like you're paying attention. She's important to you. You're important to her. You're interested and you're interesting. You know, I would say pay attention and pay attention to three things.

One. The you, the me, and the we. Because those are three different things. Like, you be you because you're who she fell in love with. And don't let you go too far from shore. Like, you be you. Don't let anything in the world, don't let her, don't let the we, don't let any of it stop you from being you because you're who she fell in love with.

And the she, right? Who she is. So there's you, there's me, there's we. So her, remember who she is. Let her be her. Like, make sure that she takes time to be her. Make sure you give space for her to be her because that's who you fell in love with. And let that person change, just like you might change sometimes from time to time.

And if things change too much, I'm not saying resist it. But note it. Pay attention. Say, hey, this is going on. Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Like, you know, let's just notice it. Let's just pay attention. And then the we. Like, the you, the me, and the we. Like, talk about, you know, pay attention to the we.

Make sure we're watering the plant. Like, make sure that... That would be the only advice I'd ever give to anybody. It has nothing to do with marriage. It has to do with connection. It has to do with love. It has to do with... There's a reason why... You found the we, right? Like you can be you all by yourself and she can be her all by herself.

But there's value in being we and seeing each other's blind spots. And if there's value in that, treat it like something valuable. Don't let the world, don't let your own strengths and weaknesses, don't let anything pull you off of that. Pay attention. to you, the me, and the we, and don't be afraid.

The hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing. So if it's harder to talk about it, it's harder to point it out. It's harder to say, hey, are we okay? Is everything good? Like, you know, if that's harder, do that, lean into that. What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode.

If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.

Most Replayed Moment: Why You Need A Prenup And How To Avoid Divorce!

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