The Marriage-Friendly Prenup - by Laurie Israel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

GETTING MARRIED?

Thinking About Prenuptial Agreements?

For anyone who is getting married, embarking on a prenuptial agreement can often be a distressing and disappointing journey. Sometimes the negotiations irreparably damage the impending marriage and may even cause a couple to break up. People considering prenuptial agreements almost invariably face what seems to be an insurmountable task filled with angst. But it doesn't have to be this way.

The Marriage-Friendly Prenup: How to Create a Thoughtful and Caring Prenuptial Agreement contains ideas and methods for future spouses to find common ground and create positive outcomes for each other when formulating a prenup. It provides guidance on how to mitigate the harm often caused by the usual process of getting a prenup. The Marriage-Friendly Prenup provides concepts and tools that will help foster creative and collaborative decision-making and mutual problem-solving. This results in better prenups, ones that that can actually increase marital harmony and goodwill.

With a clarity and grace that comes from years of experience helping couples through the pain of divorce, and now, more joyfully, helping couples create healthy prenuptial agreements, Laurie Israel shares her insightful, optimistic, and grounded wisdom on building a strong, healthy marriage, with, or without, a prenup.

The Marriage-Friendly Prenup is a must-read for couples at all stages of their relationship. It is also a vital resource for lawyers, financial advisers, couples' therapists, clergy, and friends and family of people who are embarking on prenuptial agreements.

The Marriage-Friendly Prenup is not only legally, but financially and emotionally sophisticated, and covers all the most important topics - it is a genuine classic. The book provides solid advice for building a happy life with a new spouse, digs us out of the era of marriage-weakening prenups, and spiritedly charts a new way forward.

Laurie Israel's analysis adds humanity and generosity of spirit to the inherently emotionally complex and traditionally purely money-focused process and helps spouses to be the best people they can be. Her approach is based on a simple observation that the dynamics around money are inseparable from other interpersonal dynamics. This means that a poorly negotiated prenup can easily cause so much damage that it becomes a tearful roadmap for divorce.

In this accessible, succinct, and surprisingly happy book, the author asks the reader to respect the existing laws on marriage and divorce by understanding them, and not to treat them as "the enemy" but as a guiding template to creating a healthy prenuptial agreement. Laurie Israel capably provides couples with a practical framework for creating agreements that strengthen, rather than weaken, their relationships.

Review Quotes

After I began helping couples negotiate their prenups, what immediately struck me was how the lawyer-driven process of creating prenups almost guaranteed that the marriage would end in divorce. Laurie Israel has written a brilliant, much-needed book with detailed, practical advice that shows couples how to avoid this result and negotiate in ways that actually strengthen their marriage.

-Kenneth Cloke, Mediator and Collaborative Lawyer, author of The Magic in Mediation: A Search for Symmetries, Metaphors, and Scale-Free Practices, Santa Monica, California

I wish I had this book 25 years ago. Laurie's analysis of the prenuptial process is methodical, thorough, insightful and revolutionary. It adds humanity and generosity of spirit to the inherently emotionally complex and traditionally purely money-focused process. It helps bring collaborative law and mediation squarely into the prenuptial process. Laurie's style is easy to read, rendering an otherwise heady legal topic accessible to lawyer and lay person alike. Any couple considering a prenuptial agreement or lawyer involved in a prenuptial agreement should read this book.

-Oran Kaufman, Esq., Attorney/Mediator, Amherst, Massachusetts

With a clarity and grace that comes from years of experience helping couples through the pain of divorce, and now, more joyfully, helping couples create healthy prenuptial agreements, Laurie Israel shares her insightful, optimistic, and grounded wisdom on building a strong, healthy marriage, with, or without, a prenup.

-Karen Van Kooy, Collaborative Lawyer, Mediator. Skylark Law & Mediation, P.C., Southborough, Massachusetts

Laurie's approach is based on a simple observation: since dynamics around money are inseparable from other interpersonal dynamics, a poorly negotiated prenup can easily cause such damage it becomes a tearful roadmap for divorce. The Marriage Friendly Prenup explains how - in the right circumstances, negotiated the right way and with the right terms - a well-crafted prenuptial agreement can actually contribute to the glue that holds a marriage together.

-Jeffrey Fink, Esq. Kerstein, Coren & Lichtenstein, LLP, Wellesley, Massachusetts

This book is a must-read and a vital resource for couples at all stages of their relationship - and for the family lawyers, financial advisors and couples' therapists who can support them. Laurie offers narratives, thought-provoking questions and encouraging tips for sustaining and nourishing relationships.

-Jacinta Gallant, Collaborative Lawyer and Mediator, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The Marriage-Friendly Prenup is the essential manual for any couple considering a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement. Laurie is hands-down the most knowledgeable person on the planet regarding prenups and brings to this important work vital experience as a mediator and collaborative law attorney.

-David A. Hoffman, Esq., Founder, Boston Law Collaborative, LLC and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School, Boston, Massachusetts

With her wonderful new book, "The Marriage-Friendly Prenup," Laurie Israel helps all readers, professionals and "ordinary people" alike, to understand that the process and terms of a couple's prenup will reverberate, for good or bad, throughout one's marriage. Simply put: the prenup sets the tone for a marriage. Laurie helps us to understand how to most capably set that reverberating tone.

-Jim Melamed, Founder and General Counsel for Mediate.com and ODR.com