Oddities of Prenuptial Agreements

By and large, a prenuptialagreement in Canada between a couple is a serious thing which is used to dictate events and settlements should the marriage end in divorce. These events usually just entail the division of property and take into account prior assets, with alimony occasionally being discussed. However, occasionally a prenuptial agreement strays off the beaten path somewhat, and some odd stipulations are made in these pre-wedding agreements.

A prime example of a type of bizarre prenuptial agreement is when a penalty for infidelity is imposed on one or both individuals. Rather than going with the old fashioned methods of trust and hope, some individuals genuinely do insert a financial penalty if their other half commits adultery during the marriage.

There are celebrity examples of this. When actors Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards were married, beforehand they signed a prenuptial agreeing that if either party were to commit adultery, the other would receive a cool $4 million for the transgression. The couple are now divorced, and as far as one knows, the payout was never collected. It is, nevertheless, an odd stipulation that does not exactly give a feeling of trust.

Another interesting way of handling a prenuptial agreement is to make it almost a substitute for an employment contract. This may sound bizarre, but for actress Catherine Zeta Jones, it feels like a reality. When she married actor Michael Douglas, their prenuptial agreement said that for each year the couple were married, she would be entitled to $2.8 million; so if they divorce after ten years, she'll be awarded $28 million - just for being married!

This type of pay marriage agreement is not unusual in the celebrity world, though it never stops being bizarre. When actor Tom Cruise married actress Katie Holmes, their prenuptial agreement worked in a similar though more complex way. For each year the marriage lasts, Holmes is entitled to $3 million of Cruise's fortune up to the eleventh year of marriage. If they do stay married for 11 years, the agreement is void and she collects half of his entire fortune.

Cruise may have wanted to study the divorce case of former head of General Electric, Jack Welch, before he agreed to his prenuptial with Holmes. Welch, too, inserted a clause that after a certain period of time - in this case, ten years - the prenuptial agreement became invalid. When the time was up, his wife Jane Beasley Welch divorced him and received a payout of $150 million.

It is not just money that appears as a consideration in bizarre prenuptial agreements, though it is frequently used as a penalty. For example, American attorneys have reported that some of the more bizarre prenuptial penalties include a wife being forced to pay $100,000 if her weight rises about 120lbs, and a husband being forced to pay $10,000 if he is ever rude to his wife's parents. Incredibly, these are actually enforceable in a court of law - everything from child custody and support in a prenuptial agreement is legally binding.