A Wyoming prenup is a contract, and it is enforced like one.

Trust interests, and the second marriage in detail

Trust interests need the same care as land. A right to distributions, a remainder that vests on a parent's death, and distributions already received are three different things, and the agreement should treat each, because a court may reach one and not another. A spouse marrying again with children from the first marriage has two sets of obligations that will collide without a document. Wyoming gives a surviving spouse the right to elect a share of the estate regardless of the will, one-half or one-fourth depending on whether the survivor is a parent of the decedent's children, and gives a divorcing spouse a claim on property acquired during the marriage regardless of whom it was meant for. A prenup can waive the elective share, designate what passes to the children, and keep the retirement accounts and the house from the first marriage on their own side of the ledger. It has to be coordinated with the will and the beneficiary designations, or the agreement will say one thing and the paperwork another. The owner's spouse has a claim on a company's marital-years growth that can only be paid by buying them out, borrowing against the company, or selling it; the valuation fight the agreement avoids is described on the high-net-worth page.

Read like a contract

When the language is clear the court looks only to the four corners of the document, and "where a contract is silent on a particular matter that easily could have been drafted into it, a court should refrain from supplying the missing language under the pretext of contract interpretation." That sentence, quoted by the Supreme Court in Morrison, is why the husband in that case could not persuade the court to infer a commingling rule the agreement did not contain, and why a prenup has to anticipate what married people actually do: buy a house together with separate money, deposit an inheritance in the joint account, put a spouse on the family company's payroll. Each needs a sentence. The agreement also needs an alimony clause that says what it means, a debt clause, a choice of governing law in case you move, and disclosure schedules stapled to it, because the argument that a spouse did not know what she was signing is answered by the list of what she was shown. The Combs court, which called the custody clause "void as against public policy," also struck a clause that tried to keep the divorce out of court. Lifestyle clauses and penalties for conduct are the terms a court is least likely to enforce, and the ones most likely to color how it reads the rest. The post on what makes a prenup invalid collects the ways these agreements fail.

Postnuptial agreements

A postnuptial agreement does the same work after the wedding, with one added requirement. A prenup is supported by the marriage itself; once you are married, the Supreme Court has held, "the existing marital relationship cannot provide adequate consideration," and there must be "an exchange of other identifiable consideration" for the agreement to bind (Combs, 1993). In practice each spouse gives something: a transfer of property, a release of a claim on the business, a funded account in the other's name. Wyoming lets married people contract with each other as if unmarried (W.S. § 20-1-202(a)), and the occasions are ordinary: a company founded in year five, an inheritance in year ten, a prenup signed in a hurry that both spouses would rather replace, or a reconciliation both want to protect. The limits are the same as before the wedding: nothing about the children, nothing that ousts the court, nothing a judge would refuse to enforce as a contract.

Two practical notes

Nothing requires a prenup to be filed anywhere, so keep signed originals in two places and give your estate-planning documents a copy. And an agreement is only as good as the conduct that follows it: a separate account that becomes the household account, or a "separate" ranch whose mortgage is paid from joint funds for fifteen years, hands the other side its strongest argument. The division of assets page shows how a court traces money when the agreement and the bank statements disagree; the alimony page shows what a waiver is worth. I represent one of you, and I say so at the first meeting; your fiancé should have a lawyer of their own.