Thanks for your answer, I don't think marriage is a mistake the mistake is believing you are choosing the right person and you mistakenly are not. I'm trying to protect myself from myself doing this mistake. My guess is most of the people that get married don't think it will end up in divorce and they do. I don't know if you have been in the dating game lately , but I have put a lot of effort on it and it has been hard to find someone. In regards to kids and stay home mom, I don't think I could marry someone that will be a stay home mom and of course I understand the responsibilities that I will have once we have kids and I will put my best effort to maintain my marriage since that is the example that I have had from my parents but If you browse sdn there are cases here of people that are married in medical school and the spouse just said "Hey I don't want to be with you anymore but I won't give you a divorce so I can reap the benefits off you being a doctor".
So, I'm not sure you are aware of this, but most states have no fault divorce, and either party can file for any reason. So if someone doesn't want to be with you except for your paycheck, you are more than free to divorce them.
If your worry is someone would want to marry you for your money, the pre-nup gives an incentive for your last stated worry.
As far as, having a pre-nup keeps someone from marrying you for your money, that wouldn't stop someone. Being married to someone with more money will always improve your quality of life while you are with them, even if in a divorce you walk away with nothing. And if you have kids, you can rest assured your kids have a better quality of life from money no matter what happens with the relationship. Or why else would a woman ever choose to breed with Trump? I'm sure Melania had to sign a pre-nup. Ivanka's kids are doing pretty well. It doesn't matter if Trump discards those women, the children have been made, they are his, he generally has cared for them financially and continues to do so. And even if that was not why they married him, once you become a mother that is generally the most important thing, whereupon not much else matters all that much. So gold diggers can still win even with a pre-nup.
Also, you have not had children. Rather than judging women that stay at home with the kids, consider for a moment, that having all the money you will have, you might greatly prefer the idea of the mother of your children being the one to watch over them every spare minute, rather than entrusting a stranger often with minimal education, often underpaid, where your infant is only one of 4 that person is watching. Battles with daycare over the care of your child. Endless sniffles. Maybe you want your children to be fed directly from the breast, held close for every meal by the only other person on the planet that loves them as much as you do. I don't say this to hate on anyone that chooses work and daycare or doesn't breastfeed, but consider for a moment that some people who can afford it prefer to do the care themselves or have their spouse do it. But more importantly, consider that having a family, having children, is not something that you can know ahead of time all your feelings and all of how you want things done. And the most "cheap" way to do it often ends up not being the greatest priority. (Also full time at home nanny is not without its own challenges and struggles, and costs money).
Consider that once that precious babe is borne, you or the mother or both, may change how you feel about their care.
And if the mother says, you make 600k a year, why would you rather pay a stranger to care for your baby, than allow me to stay home and be the one to do it? Are you going to tell her what a gold digger she is at that point?
And it could be the most dedicated career woman you know. Children change you. It is biological and hormonal, and just as one cannot predict who gets hyperemesis gravidarum with pregnancy, one cannot ahead of time account for all the things that will change postpartum. The whole thing is a wildcard.
Which leads me to the last thing. Any number of things can happen to a woman during pregnancy, and some of those things can actually be disabling.
Consider as well, that if you were to spend decades with a woman, and she gave you children, and she cared for them, especially when you couldn't be there because you were busy, how do you think those children will feel about you divorcing their mother and riding off into the sunset with all your wealth to start over with a new wife, and leaving her poor? I've seen it happen. While she will be the "freeloader would-be gold digger were it not for the pre-nup" to you, she will not be that to them.
Consider that in that case, the lack of a pre-nup (but not a total abandonment of some asset protection), and your ex wife being entitled to a slice of the pie of a life you have both put blood tears and sweat into, that the courts looking at the situation and deciding "fair," may be what keeps you honest and keeps you from making a decision that benefits you evolutionarily speaking (dump the woman financially and take your wealth to the next marriage and set of kids, look at many Kevin Costner), but could alienate you from your own children. Because that woman will always be the mother of your children, and it is on THEIR account, not yours, not hers, that you should consider what you owe her.
If you don't want to share half your stuff and pay out the nose for your own children regardless of what happens, why do you even want to get legally married?
I mean, you haven't discussed what you think is fair for her and the kids to have should there be a divorce. When one person makes a lot of money and the other doesn't, I mean the kids are shared regardless. So should she get half the house so you both take your half and get decent separate houses? Or the kids spend half their time with you in the mansion, and the other half they stay with mom and grandma in the hovel their father left their mother in?
If you pick the right person to marry and have kids with, by the time alimony would even be an issue, do you really think the other party isn't entitled to some of the house, money, and retirement? Wasn't being married and binding yourselves by blood in shared children --- I mean, what greater way can you lash your fortunes to another person than in children? --- wasn’t the intention to share? And why, when 2 people walk away from one another, why is one person entitled to all the fruits of those labors and the other person is just **** out of luck?
I have a relative that pays my other relative alimony. The one getting alimony lives in a nice condo and has a decent car, and goes on a couple trips a year in retirement. The one paying alimony, it hasn't stopped him from living in a multimillion dollar house, having a yacht, traveling the globe all year round, buying whatever he wants, and enjoying retirement with the new wife.
So is one-half of your salary really not enough for you? I think you need to reconsider your finances.
Also, rather than considering yourself parasitized in this scenario, consider that if that person hadn't been with YOU, what else could they have had? A better father for their children? Someone who keeps their promises? Someone to share everything with? Someone who puts a greater value on certain ethics than cold hard cash? Someone who respects their non-financial contributions?
For the record, if you flip around the genders I feel the same way.
Yes, it's nice when we no longer feel a certain way about someone, to just be done with them and walk away and if their life sucks, who cares. But that's not how every promise in life works out. With kids and decades of marriage, these promises don't just end when you're tired of them.
And if she decides to leave you, that doesn't mean she should have to forfeit all you worked together to build. If someone does all this with you and then leaves, they probably have a decent reason, one you are at least partly responsible for.
I don't know if you know this, but in a relationship, especially a good one, the value in it isn't the money. It's the love, care, emotional labor, and time put in. And that doesn't have a pricetag. And individual salaries don't measure them. There is no pre-nup that lets either party ever get that back. This is why the best that can be done in many scenarios is to try to have both parties separate in a way where neither person is making off with everything and the other person has nothing.
I don't think either party in a cardiologist marriage should walk away poor. There's no reason for that at all.