California E&S Insurance

AITA for suggesting calling off the wedding because she thinks the prenup is unfair? **I am NOT OOP. OOP is** u/prethrowaway9 **Originally posted to** r/AITAH **AITA for suggesting calling off the wedding because she thinks the prenup is unfair?** Trigger Warnings: >!mentions of abortion, MRA tendencies!< ---   [Original Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/15d2bzk/aita_for_suggesting_calling_off_the_wedding/?share_id=Pzz4epngO5GEhQcbMtF_4&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1) - **July 29, 2023** My girlfriend(26F) and myself(M24) have just found out that she is pregnant. She is adamant about not wanting to have a child out of wedlock, so we have been discussing getting married. We’ve been together for 3 and a half years. Prior to finding out about the baby, we had only talked about marriage a little bit. I know she wants to get married badly, but I’m kind of on the otherwise of the fence. I’m not 100% against it, but definitely not eager/desperate to get married for multiple reasons. For one, my brother just recently got taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife (he pays her like 10k a month in addition to losing some of his properties!!) and that whole situation terrifies me and I’ve never really seen what a marriage provides that makes that risk worth it. To me, it’s just the same thing as being together how we are currently, but giving the state permission to be in our relationship. However, now that she’s pregnant, I’ve been more open to it just because I know how much it means to her. So, we’ve started this process and I’m slowly realizing that I may have bitten off more than I want to chew. While me and my girlfriend love each other very much and are compatible in pretty much every way. Our ideas about marriage, the wedding, ect seem to be a little different. For starters, for the wedding I was thinking we each pick some of our closest people (maybe 10 or so each idk the number can be a little flexible) and go get married on an island/beach, stay for a week or 2, or something cool like that, so we can have fun and enjoy it. She pretty much wants the exact opposite… ect massive wedding in a big venue. Now I don’t see anything wrong with that type of wedding, it just seems like such a colossal waste of resources to invite every person we know when we could instead have fun for a week or 2 then get married on the beach with our closest people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the beach(I’m flexible), but I think you get the idea I’m going for vs the idea she’s going for are completely 2 different schools of thought. She basically wants to invite every single person she knows like I’ve looked at her list and she’s got friends she hasn’t seen in years, third cousins, literally everyone. To me, if I’m gonna spend a boatload of money, we should do it for ourselves, not people we barely know. We’ve been talking about compromises and making slow progress on that end, but we were getting there. She knew prior to getting married I would require a prenup. I make about 4x her salary and own property and plan to acquire more. I had my lawyer draft up a prenup and she has her own lawyer reviewing it. This is where we came to an impasse. Her lawyer believed the prenup was unfair and we’ve been going back and forth making changes. I’ve made some concessions, but I’m kind of at a point where I don’t want to make anymore. While I admit, the prenup is definitely ironclad, I think it’s fair considering the situation. I’m taking all the risk, why would I continue to concede on things me and my lawyer both believe are fair? So, recently we got into a minor argument over wedding stuff in general regarding the prenup/wedding and I was just like maybe we should just keep things how they are? Of course, she flipped. We’ve cooled down since, and she says she still wants to make this happen, but that I need to be more open to compromise. I feel like given the situation, I’ve compromised more than I already should have. I talked to my brother about it and he told I’ve compromised more than enough and to hold firm and worst case, you stay gf/bf, which is realistically probably better anyways. My sister disagrees and says I’m being a jerk for not working with her more. The way I see it, why would I risk everything I’ve worked for when I’m not even getting the wedding I want nor the financial protection I want? Just so I can say I’m married? There’s just very few tangible benefits I’d be getting in relation to the risk. So, AITA? Edit: ok I feel like I made her look bad in the original post. 1. The price of the wedding isn’t the problem. The cost of the wedding I want vs what I want are damn near the same amount. It’s just the things we want to use that amount for. 2. I don’t think she’s maliciously going after me and I do see her as the person I want to spend the rest of my life with her. We were planning on moving in together regardless. However like I mentioned, prenup is ironclad. I’m not gonna go into the details of the prenup for obvious reasons, but I will say it probably favors me. The language she wants in the prenup leaves more interpretation to judge, it’s nothing necessarily crazy and from my understanding somewhat common in prenups vs the language I want is very precise with things I have specifically outlined regardless of the circumstance. She wouldn’t be screwed or anything and would still probably be doing better financially speaking than she is now, (she already does ok for herself) but the prenup is about as strong as it can while still being reliably enforceable. And another thing I want to make clear. It’s not that I don’t wanna get married. The idea of marriage and being married to someone you love is cool. I’m not against it like I may have made it sound. If anything I may be the paranoid one, my parents are divorced, both my brothers got divorced, my cousins ect. I just know how we feel now about each other may not be the case forever as sad as that may be. In the case, that something I happens I don’t want to give up a large portion of my assets. I would always support the kid and make sure he/she needs. It’s my child. 3. This isn’t a problem with the relationship. If we don’t get married, we’ll stay together and raise the kid. It’s not totally unexpected. I was pulling out, but shit happens. We both acknowledged the risk of getting pregnant and were ok with the possibility. I never promised her marriage if that was the case. In fact, in the first year of dating I told her I didn’t plan on getting married at all back when we weren’t that serious. I say all this to say this isn’t something that Ive been expecting and she had never made this much of a fuss about getting married before now. 4. Another thing I noticed a lot of comments are assuming she would be pregnant at the wedding. We would wait till after the birth. When I said she doesn’t want to have a baby out of wedlock, I didn’t mean it that literate. Like if we got married a couple months/year after, it wouldn’t be a big deal to her. My mistake. 5. We are in the process of moving in together and are going to raise the baby together regardless of the outcome of this dispute. Now I know this is where a bunch of Reddit people call me naive, but this possibility has already been discussed. We do not have any intention of raising in the baby in a dual household and if we did I would have no problem paying child support. 6. More details about the prenup. Yes, it’s ironclad but it’s not unfair. To answer some of the questions people are asking, yes it guarantees she will have a place to live if we were to get a divorce and she is guaranteed alimony for a certain period as well.   **ADDITIONAL INFORMATION** I did one more look through of this thread and I saw all your comments. As much as I would love to respond to each one, I sadly don’t have the time, but I’ll answer some of your questions that I remember seeing in the comments. I can tell you don’t understand finances or how legal documents work very well, so I’ll try to break everything down in simplistic way you can understand. 1. Yes, a divorce is way costlier than child support. You keep asking for sources, but a lot of this stuff should be common sense especially for someone with as much “life experience” as you especially considering you’re a divorced single mom yourself. I would think you would have some personal experience. Anyways, I’ll break this down with simple numbers to make it easy for you to comprehend. Let’s say she were to get 2k month in child support (avg in cali is 430$ and usually tops out at 800$ according to Google), but I wanted to make this example fun for you and leave no room for you to twist the situation. 2,000(monthly support) x 12(months in a year) = 24,000. 24,000 x 18(years of support) = 432,000. Now in a divorce, things like property are on the table. So, let’s say she gets 1 property (extremely unrealistic, she would definitely get more but again just trying to help you understand, so keeping it as simple as I can so you don’t get confused) valued at 500,000 (again on the low end. Most properties in California go for way more. Let’s just say you’re not gonna find a decent house for 500,000 in California). Now if you still don’t understand, I’ll spell it out. Just losing 1 valuable property is more of a financial loss than child support ever would be, and in most cases, you’re not just losing 1 property if you have multiple. That’s not to even mention child support is spread over years, whereas you could lose hundreds of thousands in value in a single day. The losses are in no way comparable and I’m genuinely curious about the mental gymnastics you could be doing to believe that or if it’s you just don’t understand basic finances. Either way, I hope my explanation was able to educate you a little bit. 2. You don’t have to get married to have a baby. The fact that you keep implying that it is morally wrong when the majority of baby’s are born out of wedlock is showing your ignorance about reality. 3. As you should know, prenups deemed unfair are often thrown out. My lawyer literally told me any prenup we drew up without alimony would likely be tossed. How is that for a source? 4. I think we are compatible as roommates because while yes, she doesn’t live with me. She probably stays at my house 4-5 nights out of the week if not more some weeks. Half her clothes are over here, the majority of the food she makes is over here, point being us “living” together is not something foreign to us as you like to make it seem. 5. Yes, the verdict is totally unanimous! That’s why you have 30+ comments arguing with people in the comments because it’s so unanimous… Based on the fact that you have like 30 separate comments full of long paragraphs arguing with everyone on a situation that you have no part in, you clearly have some bitterness because the situation resonates with you, and for that I’m sorry. I do hope you can find a way to heal and get past your trauma. Best of luck! **RELEVANT COMMENTS** **mollycoddle4704:** Actually he did not. He specifically said with the prenup she would only probably be doing slightly better than “ok”, which is how she’s doing pre-baby, with a job. Doesn’t sound like he’s interested in putting in the duties as primary caregiver, and would probably balk at paying for a caregiver, so she’d end up way worse if the marriage ended, and that’s how he wants it to be. >**OP:** I would happily pay for a caregiver if she wanted to continue working. As of right now, she said she would prefer to stay home, but she said she may change her mind after the birth. I’m am totally fine with either option.   [Update](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/184h86v/update_wedding_postponed_due_to_prenup/) - **Nov 26, 2023** So, my last post ended up getting way more attention than I anticipated and a lot of you guys dm’ed me with advice and asking for an update. Thanks to everyone who reached out with advice. A couple of you guys stories & pieces of advice are what ended up helping me stand firm on the decision. I tried to respond to some of you, but apologies if i didn’t get to you. Also, not sure about the rules about updates so if this isn’t allowed sorry mods just delete it. First, I’ll answer some of the common questions I saw throughout the thread. I realized if I don’t specify something everyone will just fill in the blanks themselves, which I guess I can’t be too mad at. 1. Yes, we are both aware of what birth control is and how to use it. For the first 2 years of our relationship, she was on the pill, but told me she wanted to get off of it because it was messing with her hormones. She said I could use condoms if I wanted too, but that didn’t last for too long. We both knew & accepted this could potentially happen. 2. Yes, I said she doesn’t live with me, but I should have provided more context. Yes, she doesn’t technically live with me but she primarily stays at my place. She has her own apartment, but sleeps at my place minimum 4-5 nights a week. Sometimes even more. Most of her clothes are over here, the food she makes is over here ect I think you get my point. 3. For everyone that keeps saying abortion, she’s had the option for that the entire time. I’ve made that clear to her the whole time. She is choosing this. We live in California, so it’s not like it’s illegal or anything. When she asked my opinion, I told her I preferred she keep it, but if she wanted an abortion, I would get her one and support her decision regardless. She chose to keep it. I think those were peoples main questions, so onto the update. We ended up having a discussion about the whole marriage thing where we both were able to get our opinions/concerns out there. Just me and her, no lawyers, no anything. It was really helpful because it let both of us get our concerns out there. We ended up agreeing that the whole marriage / prenup situation was too stressful right now while we were dealing with so many things. Pregnancy, moving in, ect. So, we agreed that for now we would focus on the baby and pend the marriage conversation for now. I agreed I would be open to discussing it again in a couple years once everything has settled down and she ended up being satisfied with that. That was last week and as of a couple days ago, we finished moving the rest of her stuff to my place. Her lease ends at the end of this month & all that is left in the apartment is some furniture she plans to give to her family. And since this is my last post about this situation I’ll provide some clarity about why I didn’t want to compromise any further on the prenup. The language that my lawyer and I chose to use was very definitive about what would happen in the event of a divorce. On the other hand, hers was not. Again, still not going into details but I’ll say what my lawyer told me. He basically said that if I were to concede the language any further, he could no longer give me a guarantee on what I stand to lose. He said at that point, I would pretty much be at the mercy of the judges interpretation meaning anything could happen especially considering the fact that we live in CA. For me, that would defeat the entire purpose of the prenup, which is why I wasn’t willing to concede on it. I actually was willing to concede on the actual wedding plans, but I just couldn’t imagine letting a court system that is historically pretty unfair to men have the final say over my assets. I assured my girlfriend that in the event that we separated, I would make sure she was still taken care of which made her feel better about the whole situation as well. I don’t think my problem was necessarily the commitment to her. It was more the fact that someone else would have the final say over everything in the scenario where things go wrong vs myself having the final say, which as many of you pointed out, means I’m just not ready for marriage.   **RELEVANT COMMENTS** **Drunkendonkeytail;** Sure. Okay. So long as you understand what your stance will engender. Your GF/baby mama will understand that she is largely on her own. Certainly if she has any sense she will understand that she must be very prudent with her finances. This means that she needs to work continuously to protect herself. I do hope that you’ve considered what lump sum to transfer to gf to reimburse her for the career hit this pregnancy will cause (due to diminished energy, having to take on less challenging assignments, distrust by superiors). If the baby is born with special needs she knows that she cannot be the one to sacrifice her work to take them to medical care. Despite it being the most healthy option, this baby cannot be breastfed since the time and energy would eat away at gf’s work energies,unless you plan to reimburse her. You need to prepare to be the parent who stays home whenever the child is ill. You need to prepare to attend the various appointments, meetings, school events, play dates, shop for the birthday presents, throw the parties. Your gf cannot afford to jeopardize her financial security since her resources are less than yours. Men feel they’ve been screwed by women out to take their money. I just don’t think they’ve calculated all the innumerable small financial hits those “opportunistic women” took during the course of rearing their children. Certainly, if no children or joint efforts to build a business are involved then you support you, I support myself is perfectly equitable. >**OP:** She’s not on her own. I pay for pretty much anything she needs. What a ridiculous, out of touch thing to say lol. She also is choosing not to work. If she wanted to continue with her career, I told her we could get a nanny/daycare whatever. She is adamant about being sahm, which is cool I totally support, but you phrase this entire thing like I’m making her do this or making her have the kid… I don’t discount the things she will have to give up/sacrifice. I’ll always make sure she’s taken care of, but I don’t think I should be at the mercy of the government/her in the event something goes wrong. And of course I’ll do my part in raising the kid, I feel like I’ve made that clear.   **THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP**

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