Divorce insurance is a new insurance product that lets a person pay a small monthly fee – $15.99 per month per unit of insurance – and, once the policy has matured, get a lump sum in case of divorce. (The lump sum is to cover divorce-related expenses.)
Fraud and moral hazard both seem like big glaring issues with regard to divorce insurance – but, more emotionally, divorce insurance also seems like the kind of thing where if your spouse-to-be says he or she wants divorce insurance, that might make you not want to marry them in the first place.
But people sign prenups all the time – another quite unromantic instrument that allows a person to plan for marital failure. Does the signing of a prenup also make a person question their intended? I called a family lawyer – let’s call him “Dad” – to see what he thinks.
Dad said that he’s done about ten prenups, and that every time he’s done a prenup, it’s been when there were unequal assets and kids from previous relationships involved. No matter how optimistically a person might view their impending nuptials, he said, people know their kids have to be protected.
Dad also said that for the most part, people signing prenups have acted remarkably normal toward each other – acting like they act when they’re not in his office signing a prenup – even when they’re contemplating the division of assets should the marriage fail.
“No one has ever said to me, ‘I really hate doing this,’” he told me. “They act much differently than I think I would act.”
