Texas Prenuptial Agreement Form

The Texas prenuptial agreement, or a prenup, is a specific contract that two people create before getting married to define their financial and property rights just in case they separate later or one of the spouses dies.

The prenup should be done before your wedding, and it starts working immediately after you two are officially married.

In this document, you can specify your rights according to separate property, common law property, savings, business ownership, and alimonies that the spouses have or will have.

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Prenup Laws and Requirements in Texas

It does not matter why you are making a premarital agreement because it never proved to negatively impact the divorce process. Anyone can make a prenup.

There are many reasons why you might need a premarital agreement, such as:

Having a previously horrible divorce experience
Raising children from earlier marriages that will depend on your inheritance
Coming into the marriage with enormous amounts of money previously earned
Either of the spouses-to-be have incurred huge debts before marriage, etc.

UPAA in Texas: What Is It?

UPAA is a Uniform Premarital Agreements Act supported by 26 states in the USA, including Texas.

It allows the parties to have a clearer and fairer process when making a prenuptial agreement. UPAA provides certain limitations to the spouses-to-be terms of a prenup: it does so by the powers of state reviewing your prenup and concluding whether the conditions are satisfactory for both parties at the current moment. Therefore, the state can decline your prenup agreement.

Furthermore, UPAA establishes situations in which the rights agreed upon in the prenup agreement can be waived or modified in cases of divorce or death.

If you, as a couple, would like to make a prenup agreement under UPAA, you can choose one of 26 states where you would like to enforce the prenup agreement: it can be either the state where one of the parties lives or will live, or a state where you will be married.

When making a premarital agreement in a state that falls under UPAA jurisdiction, you can be sure to receive a fairer resolution of your problems in court. With this law, the judges have concrete statutes that regulate, for example, the division of your property or alimony.

Also, do not forget that for your prenup to be valid in Texas, it should be in a written form, not oral.

For more information about UPAA regulations, please read the general recommendations or subchapter A of the Texas Family Code.

What Can Be Included in Texas Prenup Agreement?

The Texas Prenuptial Agreement can cover a lot of ground regarding financial and property rights of each of the parties, such as:

The division of rights concerning the possibility of selling, buying, and managing the property
The division of rights in regard to the property that spouses acquired before marriage
The division of rights in respect to the profit of businesses that were established before the marriage
How loans and debts payments will be managed
Plans for health insurance and pensions
Alimonies
Heirlooms and gifts’ rights

Important for the partners, but not as popular, other topics can include:

The acceptance of a joint family name after getting married
Division of responsibilities for various common (or not) expenses
Possibility of creating joint bank accounts
The impact of extramarital relationships on the future division of property, and so on

What is more, certain laws and regulations can influence what can and cannot be included in the prenup. Please note that you cannot resolve anything about the future of your mutual children in the prenup. This issue lies in the hands of the courts and the children’s desires after your divorce.

Moreover, as bigamy is prohibited by Texas law, you cannot include in the prenup any information about your possibility of having two spouses at the same time.

Texas Living Will (Advance Directive) Form

The Texas Directive to Physicians and Family or Surrogates is the same as a Living Will form, and it is commonly used in the healthcare system.

Texas Last Will Form

Texas last will and testament is a paper that determines the way to distribute and transfer rights for a property after the testator’s death.

Texas Eviction Notice Forms

The Texas eviction notice form is a legal document that real property owners (also known as landlords) use in Texas to notify their renters (or tenants) about an impending eviction.

Texas Marital Property Law

Unlike almost all other states, Texas has a unique regulation of the property acquired during your marriage, which is called community property law but has the same meaning as marital property.

If you entered into the marriage without a prenuptial agreement, all the property that was acquired by both parties will count as common and will be divided equally when you divorce or separate.

The only way for you to establish another way of dividing your common property is with the help of a premarital agreement, or postmarital one, where you would specify how to share the property and debts. Otherwise, all will be divided 50/50.

And if you wish to change some conditions of your prenup or simply terminate it when you are already married, you can do that. Both parties should agree to make changes to the premarital agreement in written form and then record their new decisions.

Use Title 1, Subtitle B, Chapter 3 to learn about general rules of Texas for different types of properties, and Title 1, Subtitle C, Chapter 7 to read about the awards of marital property.