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A prenuptial agreement

A prenuptial agreement is a document that defines how a couple’s assets and

property will be divided if the marriage happens to end in divorce, or in the case of a
death of one spouse. Prenuptial agreements are filed before the couple is married as
opposed to a post-nuptial agreement, which is essentially the same document; however it
is filed while the two people are married.
Both of these documents can also address issues such as child support payments,
spousal support payments, and child custody, in addition to the division of assets and
property.

There are many reasons why someone may want to file a prenuptial agreement.
Some reasons are: if your net worth is significantly greater than that of your future
spouse’s, a prenuptial agreement can ensure that your partner is marrying you for who
you are, rather than your money. Another reason to file would be if your partner has a lot
of debt, if your marriage were to end in divorce, you could be responsible for a large
portion of your ex-spouse’s debt, or if they file for bankruptcy, creditors could still target
you to obtain payments. One more very important reason to file, among others, is if you
are remarrying. If you have been married one or more times in the past, your financial
situation and concerns are often very different now than in your first or earlier marriages.
At this point in your life it is possible you may have children, support obligations to
children or previous spouses, and a home or other significant assets. In this case with a
prenuptial agreement, when you pass away, you can prevent your dependents, past or
present, from being cut off.

Oftentimes there are major objections to prenuptial agreements; sometimes these

agreements can be difficult or sensitive topics. One of the most common miss-associations
with this kind of agreement is that the two parties don’t trust each other. This is not
always true; a prenuptial agreement can only be created in a trusting relationship where
both parties are concerned about the wellbeing of the other person, as well as themselves.
Another objection is that one party believes it is unnecessary because they will never get
divorced. Unfortunately this is not wise counsel; almost 49 percent of marriages in the
United States end up in divorce according to Divorce Rate 2011. In addition, prenuptial
agreements are not limited to directing the assets in case of divorce; they also define what
will happen to the assets in the case of death.

Prenuptial agreements are complicated documents, and especially if this is your first
marriage, there may be many conditions you would like covered in the agreement, but do
not know the proper way to ensure that they comprehensively cover the issue. In the case
that a marriage ends in divorce, and one member wishes to contest the agreement,
loopholes can be found in prenuptial agreements, given the right circumstance, an
experienced attorney and if it was prepared by an inexperienced person.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hanson, Gorian & Bradford

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The attorneys at Hanson, Gorian & Bradford are not limited in their experience and
knowledge to just prenuptial agreements. They handle many cases involving divorce,
contested divorce, legal separation, mediation, child custody and support, adoptions,
grandparents’ rights and much more. If you or a loved one are facing any sort of issue
pertaining to family law, then contact a Riverside divorce lawyer at Hanson, Gorian &
Bradford today to discuss your case. These attorneys are very experienced, and they
understand the pressure and stress that any kind of divorce case can bring.

Copyright Hanson, Gorian & Bradford

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the constitution, added by Congress as a block in

1789 and ratified by 1791, guarantee civil liberties to citizens and rights of the states
and citizens. That this charter is often taken “as the Constitution” shows how
important contemporary debates over its provisions, often decided by the Supreme
Court, have been to changing fundamental American practices. As a living charter,
however, one should be aware that the interpretation of these provisions also has
shifted, especially from a focus on the engagement of public citizens with the limits
of the state to a focus on individual rights within the state.

The 1st Amendment, for example, guarantees freedom of religion, speech, the
press, assembly and petition, which have been worked out through a number of
critical court cases in the postwar period, constraining censorship, separating
church and state and defining political and public discourse. Much of this debate
has involved the actions of liberal interest groups before judicial activist courts like
those of the Warren era. The 2nd Amendment, by contrast, deals with the right to
bear arms, creating a focus for debates on guns and gun control. Here,
constitutional defense has tended to be on the Right, while those on the Left have
sought to limit applications of the amendment or even to repeal it.

After the 3rd Amendment, which prohibits forced quartering of soldiers in

peacetime, the next five amendments deal with citizens’ rights in criminal
prosecution and punishment. Hence, the 4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable
search and seizure, while the Fifth precludes double jeopardy or self-
incrimination—often heard in the movie cliché “I refuse to answer on the grounds
of the 5th Amendment self-incrimination.” The 6th Amendment guarantees civil
rights in trials—a speedy process, the ability to confront witnesses and evidence,
the rights to defense and to a jury. The 7th Amendment ensures rights to a jury in
civil trials, and the Eighth precludes cruel and unusual punishment. Again, under
the Warren court all five of these amendments became charters for rethinking the
rights of the accused and the conduct of fair trials in the 1960s. Subsequent courts
have sought to trim back these guarantees as they are sometimes seen as
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hindrances to effective police work or the conviction of criminals. The cruel and
unusual punishment clause has appeared repeatedly in arguments about capital
punishment.

The final two amendments limit government by reserving rights not

delegated to the states and ultimately to the people. These have also provoked
controversy as to whether interpretations of the federal Bill of Rights can be
extended to state circumstances.

Not everyone's a wannabe

~ Posted by Robert Butler, March 15th 2012

The trends manager at YouTube, Kevin Allocca, gave a TED talk recently on the
three factors that make videos go viral: one was “tastemakers”, another was a
“communities of participation” and the third was “unexpectedness”. But the bit of the talk
that caught my attention was his opening remark. He told his young audience, "We all
want to be stars, celebrities, singers, comedians." Not "most of us", or "some of us", but "we
all".

Allocca is not alone in generalising about the public. The Republican candidate, Mitt
Romney, says in his new book, "It seems as if virtually everyone in America dreams of
starting a business". Well, except for the ones who want to be doctors, teachers, musicians,
diplomats, judges, actors, full-time parents, even bloggers.

It’s refreshing, after this, to read an extract in yesterday's Guardian from Susan
Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking". Cain writes
that we live with a value system she calls “the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that
the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight." For Cain, this is "an
oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform".

The Guardian only slightly spoilt the feature. They ran pictures of Einstein, Spielberg
and J.K. Rowling as if examples of well-known introverts would reassure readers they
could still end up famous. If only they had run pictures of people who were fairly
anonymous and really quite content.

I'm not expecting the trends manager of YouTube to advocate reticence and
discretion, or a Republican candidate to champion modest ambition, but it would be
cheering if they didn't exclude those qualities from others. These are, after all, ones that
have been commended by far greater minds. As George Eliot wrote, 140 years ago, at the
very end of "Middlemarch":
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for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that
things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number
who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Robert Butler is online editor of Intelligent Life

Argentina's stolen children

~ Posted by Simon Willis, March 14th 2012

Late last year I wrote about the English publication of "Purgatory", the last novel the
Argentinian writer Tomás Eloy Martínez wrote before he died in 2010. It tells the story of
Emilia Dupuy, and her search for her husband, one of the thousands of desaparecidos—
the disappeared—who went missing, most of them tortured and murdered, during
Argentina's Dirty War between 1976 and 1983.

In the current New Yorker, Francisco Goldman follows a story which goes even
further. In a formidable piece of reporting he writes about the 500 children who were
abducted by the military regime. They were the children of parents detained and killed, of
women pregnant when they were arrested (and later killed), and of women raped in
detention by their captors. These children were then adopted by the families of police
officers, military staff and those friendly with the junta. Since then, a group known as the
Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, grandmothers searching for grandchildren stolen during the
dictatorship, have campaigned to uncover the real identities of many appropriated
children. Significant advances in testing now enable grandchildren to be identified
through the DNA of their grandparents. In August 2011, Goldman writes, the 105th child
of disappeared parents—now grown-up, of course—had her true origin revealed.

In a New Yorker podcast Goldman talks about his experience researching this story.
He's been reporting from Central and South America since the 1980s and in 2007 he
published an acclaimed book, "The Art of Political Murder", about the disappearance of as
many of 200,000 people in Guatemala. Looking back now at his experience interviewing
relatives, he says, "I thought I understood it, but I didn't. I understood it in the way
someone who has not had a real personal experience of it understands it." The year he
published that book his wife, Aura, was killed in an accident in Mexico. For the next four
years, he wrote and thought about her death, which culminated in a book called "Say Her
Name" (2011). Interviewing people in Argentina this time, he says, "I felt very at home,
horribly I guess, with a lot of the people involved in this case. I mean, grief that lasts for
years is not something I don't understand how to relate to."

Simon Willis is apps editor of Intelligent Life and a former associate editor of Granta