Even though your marriage seems to be barreling toward an inevitable divorce, neither you nor your spouse is quite ready to call it quits. If you have not yet tried it, marriage counseling might help. In fact, according to Psychology Today, emotionally focused therapy is successful as much as 90% of the time.
During couples counseling, you and your spouse have the opportunity to discuss marital roles. If the subject is what is causing your marriage to strain, you might be able to save your failing marriage by creating a postnuptial agreement. That is, you can use a postnuptial agreement to formalize the solutions you reach during counseling.
1. Define marital roles
Because you and your spouse grew up in different environments, you might have wildly different ideas about how marriage should work. If either of you is carrying too much of the workload, you can use your postnuptial agreement to outline who is responsible for what. Indeed, simply putting expectations on paper can help bridge the communication and expectation gaps.
2. Protect your future
Even if counseling helps you to write a meaningful postnuptial agreement, there are no guarantees your spouse will follow through with his or her obligations. If you eventually must divorce, your postnuptial agreement can be helpful.
As you know, divorce can come with a great deal of uncertainty, as you and your spouse must split marital assets. Your postnuptial agreement can give you some peace of mind by clearly describing what happens to marital wealth and even the kids in the event of a divorce.
Depending on how rocky your marriage is, your husband or wife may be reluctant to enter into a postnuptial agreement. Ultimately, though, if you can convince him or her, the agreement can keep you out of divorce court.