One of my friends is about to be dumped off their parents' health insurance and are in the all-american sweet spot of 'too-poor to afford insurance', 'too-rich for medicaid'. We joked about getting married so they could get on my insurance because my union takes care of me pretty good but I'm worried I don't understand the implications enough to make a good decision.
What does getting married actually mean?
If you decide to get divorced, your assets earned during this marriage will be most likely be divided. Personally, I would never do this because the idea of splitting assets with someone who I don’t even love romantically at any point seems absurd.
Could a pre-nup stop this? We want to be a roommates at some point, too, but want to keep our finances separate.
I’m not a marriage lawyer, but my understanding is that they can help mitigate the effects but aren’t fool proof. And apparently expensive to generate for some reason.
not a lawyer, but pre-nup is for managing assets acquired BEFORE the marriage. Once you are married, all your partners assets are owned by you 100% and vice versa, minus anything in the prenup.
Importantly, this includes your preexisting income after the marriage happens, court doesn’t care if you never got a raise. If you made X before the marriage, after the marriage they get a share of X
But what if they pull the card of "it was a sham marriage from the start, here is the proof we signed and dated before doing the fraud"
I’m not entirely sure it would be fraud, assuming the forms are all filled out properly. The risk is in the marriage itself, if I’m understanding properly.
No, some states it helps, but if you are forced into a no fault you’re screwed over no matter what if you earn more (which the context makes me believe you do)
Check divorce law if your in a place that doesn’t allow for no fault divorces but I’m pretty confident that there is no mandatory dividing of things if the parties aren’t fighting each other about who gets what stuff and pays which bills.
Pretty confident that its only if the parties are actively fighting each other will a court step in to divide assets, kids, and debts.
My parents split with a no fault divorce with no fighting over who got the house, alimony, or possession of the kid (me), or visitation to the kid (also me). So no court mandatorily divided anything.