I did not get married until I was 32 (he was 6 years younger)and my fiancee at the time did ask me to sign a pre-nup before the wedding. I refused because I was such a romantic idealist and felt that it would be the wrong way to start off a new marriage, kind of keeping one eye on its demise, you know? Who wants to think about failure when you have stars in your eyes?

As it turned out, it was a good thing I did not agree to sign it because he recently ran all of our joint resources into the ground (retirement, savings & everything...) and kept a private investment account on the side that he started shortly before our marriage. That he kept it in his name only came as a surprise to me: our agreement had been to merge all of our individual assets and investments into a joint family account when we tied the knot. Over the years he showed me the statements regularly, acting as if the money was joint and the account in both our names. What he failed to divulge was that my name was never put on the account as promised. So had I actually signed that prenup I would not be entitled to one red cent of it now, and he kept that money separate and invested for the last 20 years. At this point it looks like I stand a fairly good chance of being awarded 50% of whatever money has accrued in the account while we were married because we live in an equitable distribution state and the interest/gains in the fund are considered a marital asset. I hope and pray that this is true, because it is all that is left from everything we worked so hard for over the years.

In the unlikely event that I would ever marry again, I would make darned sure that my assets are safe, whether it be in the form of a prenup, or some other vehicle, so that I am never in this awful financial position again.

foundhervoice-atlast