During this morning’s interview, we briefly discussed Tom and Katie’s supposed “wedding contract,” and I found myself getting disproportionately upset. The idea of a contract that says that you must be married to someone for a finite period of time – and that you’ll be financially compensated for each year that you uphold the contract – it just doesn’t sit quite right with me. Not to be simplistic…but that’s just not the point.
That’s not to say that I’m opposed to pre-nups; to me, they’re an entirely different matter. We don’t have one, but I think they make total sense if either party enters the marriage with significant assets. Also, Kendrick and I have talked about the possibility of drawing up a post-nup when we have children so that if things ever do get dirty between us, the custody details will have already been hashed out (presumably while we were still able to communicate openly and lovingly about what we thought would be best for our children). One of my exes was going through a divorce when I was dating him, and I thought that the position that he and his wife put their daughter in during the custody battle (even going so far as to play answering machine messages for her in which Daddy slammed Mommy, or vice versa) was unforgivable.
Anyway. Some statistics that I found on divorcerate.org and divorceform.org:
– The highest percentage of men and women who ultimately divorce are those who marry between the ages of 20 and 24.
– According to the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce.
– According to the Discovery Channel, couples with children have a slightly lower divorce rate than childless couples.
– The New York Times recently revised the Census Bureau’s oft-cited statistic that 50% of couples that are presently married will ultimately divorce downward, to just over 40%. (Check out this interesting NYT article on divorce rates.)
(Caveat: I’m no statistician, as my college Stats professor will readily attest, so if I’m interpreting any of these statistics incorrectly – or if more accurate ones are out there – apologies. Feel free to correct.)
The unsurprising conclusion: lots and lots of marriages end in divorce. Which means that pre-nups are just the smart thing to do. They’re logical. So why does the Tom/Katie situation bug me so much? I think it’s because that (if the rumors are true) they already know that the marriage has failed, and they’re presently maintaining their union solely for money and publicity purposes. Why these people can be married and my friends Jeremy and Eric, who have been in love for about ten years now, can’t be…well, that makes no sense. And it makes me furious.
My question to you: What do you think about pre-nups in general, and Tom and Katie’s supposed “marriage contract” in particular? Do you think there’s a difference? Also, what do you think of the idea of a post-nup to prevent custody battles?
