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Define how your marital property will be managed and divided in case of a separation or divorce by creating the Texas prenuptial agreement.
Customized for Texas This document may be legally binding in Texas according to your state specific regulations.
The Texas prenuptial agreement is a legal document that enables the parties that are about to get married to define their rights and responsibilities towards the property they will acquire during the marriage and in case they get divorced.
As indicated above, the parties don’t only use the prenuptial agreement after marriage—they also use the document to define their financial relationship during it.
The prenuptial or prenup agreement is not only used between wealthy spouses, either. This document can be used in any situation where one or both parties have accumulated certain assets before the marriage, and they want to keep them as individual property during the marriage.
The laws and legal requirements for a prenuptial agreement in Texas are summarized in sections 4.001 to 4.010 of the Texas Statutes—Family Code.
The state law refers to the prenuptial agreement as the premarital agreement since Texas is one of the states that has adopted the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act.
Section 4.001 defines the prenuptial agreement as “an agreement between prospective spouses made in contemplation of marriage and to be effective on marriage.”
Moreover, it defines property as “an interest, present or future, legal or equitable, vested or contingent, in real or personal property, including income and earnings.”
Section 4.002 provides that the prenuptial agreement must be made in writing. Moreover, it provides that both parties to the agreement must sign it.
The state law doesn’t explicitly require parties to notarize the prenuptial agreement. However, the notarization will additionally confirm the authenticity of the document and prevent potential fraud. The notary public will identify the parties to the agreement and acknowledge that they have personally signed the document.
The main precondition for the enforcement of the Texas prenuptial agreement form is that both parties entered into it voluntarily and that the agreement is fair for both of them.
The court can declare the prenuptial agreement unenforceable if one of the parties proves that they have signed the agreement against their will or that the agreement was unconscionable at the time of its execution.
The agreement can be unconscionable if one of the parties didn’t make a complete disclosure of their financial status in the document when there was no waiver of the full disclosure of the financial status or when the parties didn’t or couldn’t reasonably have knowledge of the other party’s financial status.
The prenuptial agreement in Texas can cover any aspect of the financial relationship between the future spouses as long as it is in line with state law and public policy.
Section 4.003 provides the most common matters that are regulated by the prenuptial agreement template:
However, the prenuptial agreement cannot regulate matters like child support since that matter is in the exclusive jurisdiction of the court.
If the parties don’t make the prenuptial agreement in written form and if both parties fail to sign it, the agreement will be considered invalid.
The second reason for the invalidity of the prenuptial agreement is connected to the existence of marriage. If it is declared void, the prenuptial agreement will remain valid only in situations where the property would otherwise remain undivided if it weren’t for the agreement.
