With Aaron Thomas, a three-time winner of Atlanta’s Best Divorce Attorney and one of the nation’s leading family law experts, we explored the world of family law and relationship dynamics. A Harvard Law School graduate, Aaron has represented over 1,000 clients, including NBA hall of famers, Super Bowl winners, and Grammy award-winning artists. As the founder of Prenups.com and author of The Prenup Prescription, he’s passionate about helping couples establish solid financial foundations to prevent common marital disputes.

Join our conversation with Aaron as he discusses the importance of financial planning during engagement, busts myths about prenuptial agreements, and shares insights from his experience in family law. Discover how thoughtful financial discussions can strengthen relationships and prevent disputes. Tune in to gain practical advice for building a healthy marriage from the start.

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Takeaways & quotes you don’t want to miss from this episode:

• The importance of discussing money rules and setting financial expectations during marriage.
• How a good prenup can create a successful financial partnership, not just plan for divorce.
• The impact of financial infidelity and why it can be harder to overcome than other types of infidelity.
• How having provisions for mandatory counseling in a prenup can help strengthen relationships.
• The concept of an annual “shareholders meeting” to align financial goals and values as a couple.

“Prenups aren’t about planning for divorce; they’re about planning for a successful financial partnership during the marriage.”

-Aaron Thomas

Check out these highlights:

• 10:24 Aaron shares how he started in family law and shifted his perspective on marriage.
• 18:57 What is the value of prenups beyond divorce planning?
• 23:08 The importance of financial transparency and setting spending limits in a relationship.
• 49:04 Understanding the implications of marital property…
• 53:16 Aaron’s advice for lower-earning spouses in prenup/postnup negotiations.

How to get in touch with Aaron on Social Media:

Special gift to the listeners: Get the “7 Steps to a Marriage-Saving Prenup” ebook, your financial partnership plan for a successful relationship for FREE here: https://prenups.com/free-ebook/

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below:

GGGB Intro  00:00

Here’s what you get on today’s episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®…

Aaron Thomas  00:04

So many people think prenup is just your plan for divorce. All you were talking about is what happens to your money when you get divorced. But good prenups should talk about, how are you going to manage your money during the marriage? How are your bank accounts set up? What’s paid from your joint bank account? These are the kinds of things that you have to talk about in the process of preparing a prenuptial agreement to help your marital financial relationship run smoothly during your marriage itself, and hopefully make for a successful marriage and never lead the contingency provisions of you know when the marriage comes to an end

GGGB Intro  00:42

The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell  01:10

Alrighty, welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell. Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®, I’m an attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington, serving online information entrepreneurs throughout the US and around the world. I am so excited to bring you a fellow attorney today. We’ve only had a couple others on the podcast. Aaron Thomas, welcome Aaron.

Aaron Thomas  01:35

Thank you for having me. Heather. It’s great to be here.

Heather Pearce Campbell  01:37

Yeah. Well, you are the first official recording in the new year. It’s now 2024, it’s early January. So we’re going to have a great conversation. I told Aaron before we got started, Aaron, I needed you like 13 years ago, for those of you that are married, for those of you that aren’t married, for those of you that are single and dating like it really doesn’t matter your status, this is going to be a super valuable conversation for you today. Aaron lives in a completely different area of law than I do. So if you don’t know Aaron, I let’s get him introduced, but you’re going to want to stick around, because this conversation, I mean, in my mind, is one of the most important conversations that we can have in life. And it really is about how to treat money conversations money rules in the context of a relationship, a marriage, and for those of you with businesses, so many of us, I mean, I’ll speak for myself, had a first marriage, right? So by the time we’re getting around to a second marriage, we’re in our mid 30s. We’re in our 40s, like we’ve lived some life, we’ve established couple businesses, by that point, like we have some things going on, and the financial conversation is just paramount to success in both of our personal spheres and our business spheres. And so Aaron, I am personally super excited to have you here today. I know that we’re going to learn a lot, and we’re going to get some real gems for those of you that don’t know Aaron. Aaron Thomas is a three-time winner of Atlanta’s Best Divorce Attorney, and one of the nation’s top experts in family law issues. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Thomas has represented over 1,000 clients – including NBA hall of famers, Super Bowl winners and Grammy award winning artists – in a range of family law matters, including divorce, custody, child support, and prenuptial and postnuptial agreements. After years of helping clients navigate the demise of their toxic marriages, he decided to launch Prenups.com to help couples establish a solid financial foundation during engagement so they could prevent common marital disputes. Thomas regularly shares his expertise on podcasts and with other media outlets. His first book, The Prenup Prescription was released October 2023. Woohoo. Aaron, that was just around the past corner, we survived the holidays. Here we are. You’ve got a new book. Congratulations. That’s a big deal.

Aaron Thomas  04:28

Thank you, yeah, yeah. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a wild ride. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  04:31

I bet it has, yeah? Well, you know, on top of being a dad to a little person and having a busy practice, and, you know, this online business like I can imagine what it took to get that book done. 

Aaron Thomas  04:43

Yeah, yeah. No one should ever tell you how much work goes into getting a book and publicizing before you do it, because no one would ever write it. But it has been a super rewarding experience and and the feedback has really been great. So yeah.

Heather Pearce Campbell  04:57

I bet, yeah, absolutely. Well. I think you know where I would like to start. We all hear that the number one cause of divorce is financial strains and struggles. Is that true in your opinion?

Aaron Thomas  05:11

Yeah. I mean money. Yeah, it’s gotta be one of the top, if not the top, reason that couples break up or that couples argue, and particularly the broader issue of communication, or communication around money is so super tricky and so rife with pitfalls that, you know, it’s something that has to be addressed. It has to be talked about. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  05:35

Oh yeah, well, it is a really fascinating topic. I mean, I think of what it took in my young life and even my early adulthood life to get to where I felt like I understood money I was capable of handling it. Let’s be clear, some days I still don’t feel like I’m capable of handling as a mom, I get stressed out and tired and cranky, and you know, all the things. But then you throw into the equation having to have this what is already a difficult topic and difficult conversation with somebody else who might have a totally different set of values around money, or the meaning of money, or what it means for their personal choices or freedom. It can really be like a swamp.

Aaron Thomas  06:28

Yeah, yeah, it is super difficult to navigate the issue of money in a relationship, and it is only getting tougher as time goes on. It’s tougher for our generation, for this generation, than it is for our parents generation. I mean, you think about it, my folks got married in the 1960s, my parents got married in the 1960s, and the couples back then one they got married at like, age 2021, and their finances, was very common for them to have one bank account between the two of them, and that was all they had. The credit cards were a very new thing, so people didn’t usually have them. There were, the couple of 2021 they had no businesses, no equity in a business, no assets, no retirement accounts. People worked their way through college back then, imagine that. So something that is non existent today almost. So the idea of having 10s or hundreds of 1000s of student loans was a new thing. And, they just come out of their parents house. So they were like they were in an absolute blank slate. Whereas think about the average couple getting married today, they’re more likely to be 30 or older than they were to be 20. Each spouse likely has four or five bank accounts, three or four credit cards, a car loan, maybe some equity in a condo or a house, a small business, multiple retirement accounts, the student loans that we talked about. And so it is a much more complex equation, and beyond the assets and debts. They’ve each probably got a decade worth of financial habits that they have built up since moving out of their parents house, which may be, you know, more important than the amount of money in their bank accounts. And so, I liken it to the couple in the 60s who got married, they’re like a startup company in your garage, to use a business analogy, whereas, like the couple getting married today, it is like merging to already formed corporations.

Heather Pearce Campbell  08:28

Oh, totally even, oh, my gosh, I laugh. Like, that’s such a great example. It is like a business merger. I even think about the furniture struggle we had when we both got married. Like, who’s giving up what? We both had a full household of furniture, right? That was hard enough to finally whittle down through all of that. And then you start adding kids, and it’s like, suddenly you realize, like, your years into this, and you haven’t sorted out even some of the most important topics, right? The other thing that comes to mind that, for better or worse. And I joke a little bit about when I say that for better or worse, but in our parents generation, and my parents were right behind yours, married, probably early 70s, you know, started having kids and single income, really, single manager of the money, right? Due to fairly traditional gender roles. And I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but from the standpoint of simplicity, it simplifies the scenario, right? And so when you talk about the merger, you know reality of today’s couples, it really is true. We all and it’s a really important thing that we understand how to deal with money and manage money and then, you know, deal with it together. I’m so curious, because I remember when I met you thinking, oh my gosh, we’ve got to get your stuff everywhere. Because. Right? It goes way beyond just people who are like, ready to get married, right, way beyond even the world of like, family law, right? It’s like you have a resource that everybody needs. Tell me how you came to see what you’re doing now as the solution.

Aaron Thomas  10:24

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for asking me that. So I’ll share a little bit of the journey. I kind of stumbled into family law. I was not someone who said, I want to be a divorce lawyer when I grow up. I don’t know if there’s anyone that says that.

Heather Pearce Campbell  10:40

I’ll tell you what I said real quick. I said to myself, family law is one of the two areas I can’t do like, I knew that, like, I don’t have thick enough skin to deal with family law or criminal law. I just thought, There’s no way. So Mad. Mad props to you for accidenting your way into family law.

Aaron Thomas  11:01

And funny enough, those are the two areas that I practiced in. I was a criminal lawyer, and then I got, you know, adopted into family law. No pun intended, and…

Heather Pearce Campbell  11:11

Right? They’re unrelated. I’m joking, but really.

Aaron Thomas  11:15

They can be, hopefully, I know, but yeah, I mean, I wanted to be in the courtroom, and those are the areas that lend themselves to. You know, courtroom litigation, and I got recruited into family law, and I started doing it about 14 years ago. At that time, I had no experience with the family court system. My parents just celebrated 57 years together, and I didn’t have any family members who had been divorced, close family members who had been divorced at that time. None of my friends, most of my friends, weren’t even married yet, much less were they divorced. And so I really had no idea what that world looked like. And then here I was thrust into, you know, the job of having to help people navigate their divorce cases and just being absolutely blown away by, you know, the difficult struggle that it was for my clients. I mean, I had, like, a general idea that, you know, okay, if things don’t work out, you kind of split everything, 50-50, nobody goes on their way. Is this, simple, right, wrong, not anywhere near that simple. And at first, my take was, well, you know, I never want to go through a messy divorce. I don’t think that that is a controversial opinion. And so I’m just never going to get married, you know. And I would tell any of my friends and family members, anyone who would listen to me, you know, just that was your solution. That’s right, that was my that was my advice, my great legal advice at the time was, don’t get married. I was against the idea of a lifelong relationship. I still wanted to have a lifelong relationship. I wanted to have kids, but I was just like, have a party instead. Invite all your friends. You can wear a white dress if you want to. You can throw rice in the air. You can change your last name, if that is your thing. But do not go through with the legal act of getting married, because most people don’t know what they’re signing up for. And I think it’s a lot, because we come up with in today’s society, this idea that marriage is just a romantic partnership. You know, it is about your interpersonal relationship with another person. And we discount the fact that it is that. It is definitely that, but it is also a legal relationship. It is a financial relationship, and I would argue that it is the most important financial contract that you’ll ever sign, the act of actually getting married,

Heather Pearce Campbell  13:41

100% and I think to your point even about your early conclusion, like, just don’t do it. Don’t get married. A lot of people end up there by having a bad experience through the legal system, going through a messy dissolution, right? And then you add children to the mix, and the pain of that. And I know folks who are in another primary relationship, but are like hell to the no, I will never get married again.

Aaron Thomas  14:08

Yeah, yeah, some people have sworn often, and it’s difficult to blame them if that has been their experience. And so you know that that was where I was, and then I met the woman that I wanted to marry, that I wanted to spend my life with. And initially she was, you know, she had been through a divorce herself, and so initially we were both like, yeah, marriage, no, that we’re good. We’re good. Yeah, we’re good. But as our relationship evolved. I think, you know, our thinking about it evolved, and we started shifting from anti marriage to if we were going to get married, how could we do it, right? Is there a way that we could reverse engineer a happy marriage by eliminating or trying to avoid all of the pitfalls? I’ve seen at this point, 1000 divorce clients over the years go through, and we started saying, okay, couples argue about money. Is there a way that we can kind of come up with, you know, a plan to manage our money that we both agree to on the front end, that you know, isn’t going to put us in that position, or a couple other things that couples argue about, you know, we knew that we wanted to avoid a messy divorce, and the best tool that I found to do that is number one is staying married, and number two is to have a prenup that makes your divorce essentially impossible to be messy and turn into the drag out years long, money wasting disasters that you know, I litigated over the majority of my career. And so that was kind of the genesis of the idea for prenups.com was we wrote our own prenup before we got married. My wife is also a lawyer, and we sat down and we negotiate. We had our first of what I call the first of your many marital negotiations that you will have. And we sat down and we came up with, you know, a financial plan, not just if we got divorced, but to facilitate easy managing of our finances and really our lives during the marriage itself.

Heather Pearce Campbell  16:23

Well, you raise a really important point about like, even when you described two people getting married in modern times as a business merger, I feel like your primary relationship like whether it involves parenting, whether it’s finances, whether it’s just navigating the responsibilities of life is really like a business. I mean, in so many ways, like we need to delegate all these responsibilities between two of us. We need to figure out who’s doing what in order to be successful and eliminate so many of the stressors that come with not figuring it out and not putting rules in place. So there’s so much I love about about your story, about the fact that even what you’re doing now originated out of your personal journey, you know, and figuring out, like, oh, there’s a way we can do it differently. And I just love people who think in ways like that, like, how can we do it differently and better? I would love to ask you, because I feel like there’s a lot of, for lack of a better word, just kind of a lot of myths around prenups. I think a lot of people hear prenup or postnup, and it immediately turns them off, and kind of like, well, why would I get married if I had to put a prenup in place, right? And so I’m going to speak to a few of those, and then I would love your insights on them, because I think some folks think that, and I’m like, listen, and I have this conversation regularly with my clients, like, especially those getting into business with, partners, with even team with whatever it is they’re doing. Like, you have to plan for the end of this relationship, because it’s inevitable. And like nobody starts a marriage that way, right? Planning for the end. I think there’s like a kind of a downer feeling about it, and yet it’s so practical, in my perspective, it’s so practical to put that plan in place. So that’s one thing. The other thing is, I think a lot of folks think, well, if I don’t have loads of money or loads of assets that I’m super concerned about, like, it just feels like maybe it might be more work than it’s worth. Or, you know what I mean, those kinds of thoughts around like, well, we’re not just, like, rolling in it, so we don’t need that level of documentation. What do you say to those kinds of myths? And I’m sure there’s others that you’ve seen.

Aaron Thomas  18:57

Yeah, yeah. But those are great places to start. They’re super common. And honestly, they match what I thought about free notes before I got into law too. I thought the exact same thing. I thought they’re unromantic. They’re planning for your divorce before your marriage even begins. And if I’m not super rolling in dough, why would I even need one? And so, if we can back up a second, you know, let’s, let’s define what is a freedom. A prenup is a set of rules that defines your rights and responsibilities, particularly regarding your finances, for both during your marriage and in the event your marriage comes to an end. And I’m emphasizing that part because I think so many people think, you know, a prenup is just your plan for divorce. All you were talking about is like, you know what happens to your money when you get divorced? I like to liken a prenup more to a business partnership agreement, right? Like any business partnership agreement that you draft that is worth the paper it’s written on is going to have something. In there about what happens if the business comes to an end or if a partner leaves the business right, you’re gonna have some kind of contingency plan in there, but that’s not the purpose of the business partnership agreement. The purpose of the business partnership agreement is to let the business run smoothly while the business is running right. You want it to be successful, and that is how I look at a prenup. A good prenup should talk about, how are you going to manage your money during the marriage? How are your bank accounts set up? What’s paid from your joint bank account, how much money is in your separate bank account? How do you fund the joint bank account? You know, what are the rules around spending for your household? I mean, these are the kinds of things that you have to talk about in the process of preparing a prenuptial agreement to help your marital financial relationship run smoothly during your marriage itself, and hopefully make for a successful marriage and never leave. Never need the contingency provisions of you know when the marriage comes to an end. And so I think that if you look at it like we are planning for a successful marriage. We’re planning for a successful financial relationship, rather than just the end of the marriage, then it’s a little less objectionable. You know, I understand that the word prenup, it has a stigma, and you know, it just some people recall just when they hear the word, but if you think about it as kind of a partnership plan for your relationship is a little bit more palatable. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  21:24

Totally, it’s like a financial rules plan. I mean, I even think now, like, how many people listening have been through the experience, whether it was in a first marriage, whether it was in a current relationship, where you suddenly learn, like, oh my gosh, my partner went and pulled a $20,000 line of credit, or opened this new credit card, and then used it all year, and I had no idea, right? Like this is a common experience, even for folks who are together and tend to stay together. But should that be the way that it works?

Aaron Thomas  22:01

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you make such a great point, because I have seen more relationships recover from sexual infidelity than financial infidelity. It feels like such a betrayal. And you know, laying out some ground rules at the beginning of your relationship is something that, you know some people shy away from doing, but it can yield so many benefits throughout the rest of your relationship. So for example, the first step in getting a prenuptial agreement for a prenup to be enforceable, and this is in all 50 states, both spouses have to disclose all their assets and debts to each other, usually in writing. We literally prepare a net worth statement for each spouse and attach it to the back of the agreement. And for some couples, this is the first time that they have ever gotten this granular in like disclosing their financial situation to each other, because of a lot of reasons, right? It’s not exactly first date material, right? You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna lay out your finances on the first day, just probably not third date material. You know, we’re trying to put our best foot forward. And, you know, show the best side of ourselves. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  23:08

Yeah, you don’t start with, oh, I spent $20,000 eating out last year, you know, right?

Aaron Thomas  23:14

Right. And then when do you bring it up? There’s no natural time to bring it up after that. And so people find themselves on the verge of getting married, and, you know, they haven’t disclosed kind of, maybe the dirty secrets, or maybe even the good things about their financial situation, and so forcing that conversation where you lay everything out on the table and share with each other just that one act alone, I find spurs so many important conversations about, you know, how did you get it’s a no judgment conversation, no judgment zone, right? We’re putting on everything out there. This is where I am in life. And let’s have a conversation about, how do we get here? You know, what are that’s naturally going to lead to conversations about your financial habits. Do you carry credit card debt all the time? Are you a pay it off every month? Kind of person, you know? Are you putting all of your money in the SB 500 index funds? Or are is all your money in crypto? What’s your investment strategy? Are you saving at all for retirement? Or are you kind of like living check to check, and having those commerce kind of conversations that are going to help you get aligned for the benefit of your future relationship. Another example is, you know, people fighting about spending, and a very common thing is one spouse is a spender and the other spouse is a saver. And so we kind of came up with a plan to address that in our relationship, and wrote this into our prenup, so our money goes into, you know, some people will set up their accounts to where they have a joint bank account, and they each keep separate bank accounts. That’s what a lot of couples do today. And you can either use what I call the inside out plan, where all of your money, all your income, goes into the joint account, and then you each get an allotment, or an allowance, if you will, money that flows out of that into your separate accounts because. I think it’s super important for everyone to have their own spending money that they can do with what they want, or people would do what is called the outside in plan, where they their money and their income goes into their separate bank accounts and then they contribute to a joint pot that pays for the joint expenses of the household. And a lot of couples, I found find it helpful to have a rule about spending from the joint account. Me and my wife decided that neither of us can spend more than $500 from the joint account without discussing it with the other one. First, for some people, that number is going to be $200 some people maybe $1,000 but I have found in years of doing this that everybody has a number that if it goes missing from the joint bank account, they would like there to have been a discussion ahead of time. And in reality, me and my wife, we actually discuss things that are way under the $500 threshold. You know, we discuss when we’re spending $200 from the joint bank account. Because now it has become like an ingrained habit in our relationship to discuss things that impact the other person. And I think it actually bleeds out in other parts of our relationship, because it’s now become like our practice, like, if this is going to impact my spouse, we’re going to discuss it. And so that’s just like, that’s just one example of, you know, something that you can do in the context of preparing a prenuptial agreement that benefits the marriage itself, rather than just, you know, planning for divorce.

Heather Pearce Campbell  26:19

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Heather Pearce Campbell  28:03

Well, I love your example. It’s a true demonstration of a respectful practice that builds and strengthens the relationship, even though it takes work right to figure out those conversations and get good at them, whereas, like for some people, I mean, we were talking about how people come from very different money stories in their families. You know, like, I’m married to somebody whose parents didn’t talk about money, so he never felt like money is a thing that you should have to talk about, right? And that makes for a really challenging time actually having many conversations, and, you know, no blame there. Just like, this process is so real impacts so many areas of life, like I was thinking about, first of all, reflecting on the fact that some days you must really feel like a money therapist, almost right, like you’re dealing with this, this topic, and helping people through it. That is like a sticky wicket. It really feels like a lot of people can benefit from that type of money therapy, putting that in air quotes, but also when you’re having those conversations. I mean, money touches, how do you value vacations. How do you think about spending for children’s issues and support. You know, therapies, child care, summer camps. You did it like money touches every area of decision making in life.

Aaron Thomas  29:40

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean everything that you talked about plus plus plus, right? Private school versus public school, and yeah, like you said, all of those things. And you know, creating a framework where those discussions can happen is critical to the success of your. Financial relationship, and by extension, your relationship as a whole, right? And you know, along those lines, another thing that my wife and I, we put in our agreement, that a lot of people put in their prenups these days, are rules around counseling. So one thing that I noticed in my divorce work is that, you know, when one spouse wanted to go to counseling, then the other spouse said, No, we don’t need it. You can go do it by yourself. We don’t need counseling. And then the other spouse will come around. And the first one had given up on the idea, and so me and my wife said, All right, we’re never going to let that happen. If one of us wants to go to counseling, we’re going to counseling. And we wrote into our prenup a provision that either one of us can trigger once per year that says we’re going to counseling. And so if I want to go to counsel, we’re going to three sessions. I can trigger that once a year. She can trigger once a year. And if everybody wants to file for divorce, we gotta do six. We gotta double it up before you are even allowed to go to the courthouse, which will actually enforce that provision. Yeah, yeah. They’ll kick your your case out. And I think has created a framework where, all right, I’ve got an emergency valve, you know, I can pull it. It doesn’t have to be. The relationship has gone from a 10 to a two. We can be at a seven, and I want to get back up to an eight and a half in our relationship. And I have the ability to start counseling and, you know, let’s go get, let’s talk this out. Just having that in there has been a huge benefit. And so if we go back to kind of like the overarching problem is communication, creating a framework where communication about these things is easier is helpful to our relationship. One more, and you’re going to love this one, because it is another business analogy we have, what I call the annual shareholders meeting in our household, right? And so another one of my tips is to appoint a CFO of your relationship. Usually when I just say that people know, people know who the CFO is in their relationship, without me saying anything else, right, you know. But there is a chief financial officer. There is the person who keeps spreadsheets for fun in the relationship. And what I the way that I describe it is that person, a CFO of a company, doesn’t get to do whatever they want with the money, right? They’re responsible to the company. They have to report back to the company. They have to get permission from the company to make these decisions. They can make recommendations, and they track the finances. And you know, they may pay the bills, but they are not the person who has necessarily final decision making over all the finances. And so I am the CFO of my relationship, as you might have guessed, but I give the reports back to us so that we have our annual shareholders meeting. Some people do it quarterly, you know, present all of the books. We lay everything out on the table, and we have an agenda that we go through. You know, what was our spending like this past year? You know, were there any big surprises? Anything that we didn’t plan for? Did we overspend in some area, given our values, you know, do we underspend in some areas? And then we can use that information to inform, you know, our budget for the next year. We literally have a repeating event on our account every December 1. It doesn’t always happen on that day, but as a reminder, hey, we need to open up the books. We need to sit down and talk about it. And that has created a situation where, now, years later, we naturally talk about these things much more often than annually. And we instituted something that I could, you know, we used it as a way to identify, what are the things that we value as a couple and what do we want to spend our money on, right? And so one thing that we identified early on is we both love traveling, and so we created a travel fund, and we decided that 5% of all the income that comes into our household is going to be set aside for a travel fund. So when we want to take a trip, the money is already there, and the more money we make the more extravagant vacations, or the longer vacations, you know, we’re able to take. But we are, you know, supporting our values ahead of time. You know, over time, you know, we’re getting older, and it’s not as easy to keep, you know, my trim figure, and so health has become something that we’ve decided, you know, like, Okay, anything you know associated with health. So we’re not going to hold back on, you know, getting that peloton or paying for, you know, the personal trainer expenses, because we decided ahead of time that health is something that we both value as a couple, and we want to devote a certain percentage or a significant amount of our resources towards that. And I find that when couples can talk about, what are the things that are important to us as a couple, what do we value together? That from there, it can turn into, Okay, now let’s put that into action. How do we want to you can make the conversation about money a little less stressful and a little more fun when you’re talking about your trip to Hawaii and not smacking the other one’s hand about your you know, the number of Amazon boxes that are showing up on your front step, right?

Heather Pearce Campbell  34:35

Right? Oh my gosh, so true. So couple of questions for you. Does your process that you guys go through annually, does that show up in your book?

Aaron Thomas  34:46

Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. So we go through kind of like step one all the way to the end of how to think about preparing a prenuptial agreement that is going to benefit. It your marriage from kind of due diligence portion, you know, the full disclosure at the beginning of your marriage to structuring your bank accounts, how to set those up, how to decide if you’re an inside out couple or outside in couple. You know, one thing I’ve learned is, you know, two spouses living in the same household, but in totally different socioeconomic brackets tends to lead to resentment. So you’ve got to factor in, when there is earning differentials in the household, and make sure that everyone feels respected all the way to, you know, kind of having those annual conversations or quarterly conversations and the check ins, you know, as as you may know, just like a business, a marriage is not set it and forget it. You know, the budget and the kids systems from year one will not work in year three, and those in year three won’t work in year seven. And so you’ve got to create a framework where you have natural times check in, because otherwise, you know, you’ve got kids, you got lives, you got businesses. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  35:59

Yeah, a year goes by and you’re looking back, going, like, Oops, Well, where did our money go? You know? And I think that’s so common, yes. The other thing I love about what you’ve said is, like, this pre planning process and how, like, I just went through a New Year’s process that I loved. A friend introduced me to somebody who actually is in the therapy world, but she leads people through this kind of design your life process at the start of every year, and it was a really cool process, but it getting to the to the part that you just mentioned about, what are our values, and what are the metrics for those? What are the metrics that are the proof that we are spending our time, money, attention, in accordance with our values, right? And I think that’s it’s such an important question, like, what is the metric? And I love that you were like, Okay, 5% because we value vacations and travel and these new experiences. Like, we’re gonna set that rule and forget it. I think that really makes it so much easier. It’s like people just putting into their calendars, their workout appointments or whatever, right? It’s like, what is the metric that you know you can look at and say, Yes, we are living in accordance with these values. And I love the way that that shows up for you around money and how you can create those rules.

Aaron Thomas  37:23

Yeah. I mean, what you said, I think, is so spot on and brilliant. Like, look at your calendar and look at your bank account, and I’ll tell you what your values are. I mean, what you state your values are is one thing, but if you go look at my bank account, oh, you know, Chick Fil-A is creeping up in my values, you know, above, am I spending more money on fast food than, you know, on my personal trainer? That might indicate, you know, that there’s a little bit of a disconnect there. But yeah, having something objective that you can go back to and say, All right, you know, if we value date night, what’s our budget for that? What are we going to set aside for that every month to make sure that it happens and to create less friction, so the things that we say benefit our relationship are going to happen more automatically, rather than just frosting our fingers. And you know, hope it all works out by chance.

Heather Pearce Campbell  38:10

So good, so good. So talk to me. What do you say to the folks who are sitting here going like, oh my gosh, I know I need this resource. I missed the boat on the prenup. Right? What do you think of those folks that are that are in the middle of it and trying to figure out, like, what is the best path? 

Aaron Thomas  38:31

Yeah, I mean, I think it is not too late for a reset. First of all, there is such thing as a postnup so that, yeah, it is not too late. And there’s different flavors of people who get post ups. There are people who they wanted to get a prenup, and maybe they started the process too late, or wedding planning took over, and they never, they never did it. And you know, after the marriage, they’re signing, you know, essentially what is their prenup, but too late. But there are many couples who realize that the way that they have structured their finances is not in line with what I call the default freeing up, or the rules of the state you happen to live in. And they want to create their own financial contract, their own financial relationship, and they can use this as a way to reset their financial relationship with their partner. Get on the same page. Make sure that they have clarity, get aligned, and you know, really use this as the jumping off point for a successful and healthy financial relationship. And so it is not too late to go through these steps to, you know, do the due diligence, to open up the books. You know, schedule your first shareholders meeting of the household. And you know, start talking about what your values are and what it is you want to, you know, accomplish with your finances. And I think that will naturally lead to, you know, some of these important conversations, one of which is, as much as we want to avoid it, what would happen if we don’t make it? Can we agree? What’s fair? You know. It’s not going to jinx your relationship. If you talk about a hypothetical of like, you know, what do Can we agree on, what’s mine, what’s yours and what’s ours? If we get to set up those three buckets and get on the same page about, you know, where those three things lie, then I think that goes a long way towards helping couples get on the same page. And then a lot of people will take that and say, let’s put this into an agreement so we both have the comfort and security of knowing exactly where we stand, not just in our household, but legally. And certainly hope we never need it. But you don’t have that question mark hanging out there.

Heather Pearce Campbell  40:41

There’s a couple of points that I’d like to make, mostly to the folks who are thinking, like, ah, like this all sounds good, but I like they. They naturally shy away from the law, from the legal process, etc. There’s a couple of thoughts that come to mind about the power of a couple of legal concepts that you’ve applied here. One is, and I meant to point this out earlier, but in the context of putting the prenups together, I love how you put some procedural things in place as buffers like this, like any of us can, either of us can pull the trigger and start this, you know, three session therapy process or whatever. Legal can be brilliant when it comes to helping people meet in the middle, even if there’s communication issues, simply by outlining a process like maybe we can’t agree on the topic, but we can agree on a process that will go through to get help around making a decision on the topic, right? So I love that about the way that you’ve kind of built that into your prenup post nup approach. And I also want to talk about the power of contracts. I even think about like some things that we’ve learned from a parenting perspective about we’ve got a kiddo who’s 11, and, you know, we’ve learned some hard lessons as parents, like so many of us do, and we’ve had to achieve some resets with this kiddo. And we use contracts like, Okay, this is what you’re agreeing to as far as what you’re responsible for during the week, you know, and this is what we’re agreeing to. And like contracts, this, this whole thing around, like achieving clarity, achieving buy in, achieving a reset. I really think it’s an important point to make that there are some really brilliant things that come out of legal tools and legal processes that can help us in our day to day life.

Aaron Thomas  42:46

Yeah, I love that you have this approach too, and this is like the benefit of talking to another lawyer. Because, you know, a lot of people.

Heather Pearce Campbell  42:54

They are like, neat, you’re putting contracts in place with your kids, right?

Aaron Thomas  42:58

Right? Because a lot of people will look at that and say, Oh, you’re gonna drag your kid to court. And it has nothing to do with that. It is so much more about, you know, getting clear. And there’s such power with putting it down on paper and having something you can refer back to, not that you’re gonna bring it out and beat them over the head with it every day, but having something, you know, people naturally, we wanna live up to our word, and we put our name on something, we put our signature on something, we want to live up to that. And you have something, you can go back and say, Hey, this is what we agreed. This is what we agreed. The deal was going to be, and we’re straying from it. You know, we agree. We were going to be transparent about these things. We agreed. We were going to adhere to these certain principles and rules that we agreed is is for the benefit of our household and and having something like that in place, I think, just sets the tone for everything else that you want to accomplish from that, regardless of if you ever see the inside of a courtroom, right? 

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:54

Well, that’s right. And it’s also such a powerful demonstration of commitment this, you know, like, I think even of the time that we put the first little we it’s like a list, but we called it an agreement in place with our kiddo. He wrote it out because we sat down and chat about it, and I said, Okay, I want you in your handwriting, to write the list of what you’re doing daily, what we’re doing weekly, what are kind of like the bonus items, and then what are the ones that are like, non negotiables, right? And so we talked about the context, and, you know, he wrote like, this is my agreement, and then put his little list down, and we just put it on the kitchen wall. And as a mom, what it did for me is in the mornings when we’re racing around and trying to get him out the door, and, you know, and he wants to, like, earn the weekly allowance or whatever, I can simply say, Did you do your agreements right? And he gets to go check the list and hold himself accountable. And, like, I’ve realized that may not be a great example. Except it really does make life easier. And in the context of partnering with somebody, like, my question would be, if they’re not willing to commit to an agreement around this stuff, like, How committed are you to the relationship? Right? Right, right, it’s like the reverse.

Aaron Thomas  45:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, some people, you know, I’ve gone from just in my own journey, from someone who says, you know, if you want a prenup, then you don’t have faith in relationship, to if you’re not willing to commit to a fair framework, you know, ahead of time, if we can’t write down on paper and agree, what’s mine, what’s yours, what’s ours, what are our rights and responsibilities. Can we have basic rules around spending, you know, and saving and investing and our different you know, funds and buckets like you know, if you’re not willing to commit to that and that is so critical, money touches on every part of our lives and every part of our relationship, then how committed are you to this whole process of making this thing work. You know, marriage is tricky to say the least, right? And we need every advantage we could possibly get if we can take just a portion of these arguments off the table at the beginning of this relationship. How much is that going to benefit us down the line? And you know, for me and a lot of the people I’ve worked with, it has truly been an investment in their relationship that they see pay off from month after month, year after year.

Heather Pearce Campbell  46:29

So many goosebumps moments right there. The other thing I would say is like it will literally give you years of your life back when you think of the collective strain of sorting out finances if you don’t have the rules. Like, that’s how I personally feel about it, is, like it would actually give us years of our life back.

Aaron Thomas  46:48

Yeah, yeah, the stress and strain of…

Heather Pearce Campbell  46:51

The stress and strain of dealing with it the right way is really, like, it’s that in the coaching world, there’s a word called, like, tolerations, and it’s basically all the invisible things that have an actual emotional, physical weight on you, that you carry around, these, these things that you’re tolerating, that you really shouldn’t right? This is a huge one. It is the heavy backpack so many of us want to put down. We want to have that area resolved?

Aaron Thomas  47:21

Yeah, yeah, and it all ties together. And you know, the couples who are able to be on the same page about their finances, you know, if those couples don’t work out their divorces are much smoother, and they don’t spend two years of their life and a quarter of their net worth on divorce lawyers to battle it out, you know, over what. And the ones who can’t get on the same page about the finances, those are the ones who have the messiest cases and throw all of their money, you know, at lawyers to try to sort things out for them due to them not being able to, you know, figure out kind of where they each stand during the relationship itself. And so I am just a big believer. You know, a lot of people raise an eyebrow when I say that, you know, a prenup can actually save your marriage. But this is what I’m talking about. When I say that is it, I have seen it, you know, over the years, that the the damage that it causes to relationships, you know, not trying to get a handle on this, and the benefit that accrues to relationship from, you know, taking these, these issues and arguments off the table, or at least, like you said, creating a process and a framework where you can resolve these issues with your spouse, with your partner?

Heather Pearce Campbell  48:44

No, absolutely. We’re out of respect for your time. I have a couple of final questions for you, and then I want to you know we can direct traffic and find out where you are online and all of that stuff, but I know you have something called the one paycheck rule. Will you tell us briefly about what that is? 

Aaron Thomas  49:04

Yes, the one paycheck rule is the way that I explain to people how the law treats your money once you get married. So there is separate property and there’s marital property. And I think most people have a general understanding that what you brought into your marriage, what you had before you got married, is considered your separate property, and what you accumulate over the course your marriage is considered your marital property. And if it were that simple that you keep your separate property, you split your marital property, if your marriage doesn’t work out, then there would be no need for people like divorce lawyers, because it would be dummy proof. The one paycheck rule explains why that is a little bit more difficult. Every dollar that you earn over the course of your marriage is considered to be marital property. And it doesn’t matter what bank account that money goes into or what happens to it, it is considered marital property. And so the way that I explain it is the first paycheck, that one paycheck that comes in two weeks after your wedding date. Dollars, and a little bit of that paycheck goes into your checking, some goes to your savings, some goes into your retirement account, maybe you some to pay a car note. A little goes to a credit card. A little goes to a mortgage. Everything that that one paycheck has touched has now been commingled. So if those things were all your separate property before the marriage, each of those things is now partially your separate property and partially your merit marital property. And then you multiply that by 26 paychecks a year for 10-15 years down the road. And you can see why it’s extremely difficult, and it takes a team of lawyers and forensic accountants to separate out what’s yours, what’s your spouse’s, and what it belongs to the two of you together. And that is the reason that I think that most couples will decide, all right, whatever we put in my name is mine. Whatever we put in your name is yours, and whatever we put in joint names will belong to the both of us, so that you have clarity about you know, and write that into an agreement, a prenup or a post nub, so that you don’t have a situation where nobody really knows how they stand because all of your separate property that you brought in your marriage has been commingled. And you know, it’s just such a best to try to separate things out if you need to do so and so, yes, once you get married, that first paycheck kind of destroys that distinction between separate property and marital property. So, yeah, thank you for asking me that.

Heather Pearce Campbell  51:17

Oh, well, it’s such a good example. I mean, you just that simple scenario highlighted the complexity of of the reality of that financial world, once you enter into this relationship and it, you know, you even talk about people unwind. Because the reality is, even though I don’t do family law, I went through my own divorce, and then I ended up helping some people who just came to me almost like a facilitator through their divorce divorces, they were very they were very cooperative, and they were super incentivized not to waste a lot of money on attorneys, and so they were easier scenarios. And still, there’s a lot of issues to deal with. Like, well, you know my spouse, she donated $500 every month to her church, and I always hated her church. Do I get credit for that? You know, that donation that I didn’t agree with? You know what I mean? And it’s like, right? Stuff like this that come and it’s like, boom, you should have had the rules beforehand. You know, you don’t get to claw back some of that stuff. And that’s a painful reality for people on the back end dealing with like, Well, my spouse made a lot of choices I didn’t agree with.

Aaron Thomas  52:26

100%, and once you start going down that road, once you start pulling that thread, it is never ending. You know, everyone is, you know, is, is unclothed at the end of the day, when you start pulling that thread.

Heather Pearce Campbell  52:37

Oh my gosh. It’s so tricky. You mentioned earlier, sometimes folks come together that have financial disparities, right, and that there are things that the lower earning spouse should know or do, even to protect themselves. Will you talk to us a little bit about that scenario and a couple pointers for folks who are in that category, whether it’s because of education or career choices, or because they’re the primary parent that’s going to stay at home with those little kids that require so much of us, right? There’s various reasons we might end up in that scenario. Give us a point or two on that.

Aaron Thomas  53:16

Yeah, and thanks so much for bringing that up, because I think there is also a misconception out there when it comes to prenups that like, if you’re presented with a prenup, you either sign it or you don’t sign it, like those are the two options, and that is not the answer you negotiated, right? And so there are things that you know, if you are the lower earning spouse, that you should be thinking about, and one of those big things is alimony. A lot of people don’t like to talk about it. You don’t like to think about it. And most couples that come to me, particularly the ones that are young, they’re in their 20s, early 30s, they say neither ones want to pay the other one alimony under no circumstance. Why would I pay my ex spouse? We’re no longer together. Why would I pay the money? And then I try to walk them through the different scenarios, right? So if you as a couple, if the two of you decide that one of you is going to take a break from the workforce, one of you is going to take, you know, like, stop pushing so hard on your career, because the other one is the higher earner in the relationship. If that relationship comes to an end, 10, 15, 20 years down the line, and you have essentially removed yourself from the workforce or taken a backseat, how are you supposed to support yourself, for the rest of your life, and should there be some compensation for someone essentially sacrificing their career aspirations to be a homemaker or to move for their spouse’s job, and maybe they can’t get the same employment in the new area. Or maybe you agree as a couple that somebody’s going to take care of an aging parent, or someone’s going to be disabled, or maybe you have a child with special needs and you need to stay home. And it’s not just about somebody not pulling their weight on the income. And now all of a sudden, we have to consider there are several other types of scenarios where you might end up in a situation where your career has been compromised. And so a lot of people will put in a provision that creates a formula for how they will determine that the lower. Earning spouse will be taken care of if the marriage comes to an end. For example, a lot of people say for every two years of the relationship, there will be one year of alimony, or for every two years that the disparity in income one person’s making double or triple what the other spouse is making, there will be one year of alimony. And we’re going to calculate that alimony at 15% in the difference in gross incomes, 20% of the difference in their gross incomes. And that way, the hiring spouse knows that alimony is something they’re going to be able to afford. It’s not going to be never ending. We got to form it for how long it lasts. The learning spouse knows, if this relationship takes an end, I’m not going to be I’m not, you know, shooting myself in the foot by staying home to raise our kids, because that’s the decision that we both made together, and I’m going to be given a certain period of time to get myself, you know, reeducated, back out there in the workforce, to refresh my skills if necessary. And I’m not going to be left holding the bag, you know, and raising our kids with no money if this relationship comes to an end. And I think when people start thinking about the different scenarios, oh, I never thought about taking care of an aging parent. Never thought about being disabled or other things that could interrupt one career or the other. And sometimes the person who’s making the most money at the time of the marriage is not the person making the most money, you know, in 10 years. And so this can be something that benefits both spouses, even if you know, the original scenario is I’m planning on being the homemaker. I’m planning, I’m the low earning spouse at the beginning, and so that and, you know, ensuring that, you know it’s not just going to be, you know, the hiring spouse keeps every single dollar that they make, and the low earning spouse, you know, walks away with what they had, you know, the clothes they had on their back coming in that there, that there is a joint pot that is growing over the course of the marriage. So that even if you were the lowering spouse, there are joint accounts. Your name is on it. You can see what’s in it. You can see exactly, all right, these are the accounts and the assets, and you know the property that will be split 5050, if the relationship comes to an end, and you should negotiate for your share of what you are building together if you are the lower earning spouse. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  57:07

Well, this conversation, I think, is particularly relevant right now. You know, we are in the beginning of 2024 we’ve obviously been through multiple years of COVID by this point, and it had a dramatic impact from a variety perspective, but largely what you’re talking about, taking care of young children, taking care of aging parents or somebody who’s ill. And so many women left the workforce or were forced to in these really challenging scenarios where maybe they didn’t feel like they had a choice, right? And I know having walked the path of a mom now for you know, 11 or 12 years, there were times I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I’ve got a kid with special needs and the first five years of his life, childcare support was not an option for us. We tried and tried and tried and tried, and he would get kicked out and we couldn’t keep any childcare options in place. I didn’t know that I was signing up to be a full time stay at home parent until he was like, basically on a mandatory basis, placed in public school, right? So there are these things that we don’t know we’re signing up for. And you know you mentioned the list, like special needs children or somebody’s parents fall ill, and whether that’s the the higher earning spouse or the lower earning spouse, like we just don’t know life is unpredictable. And so do you draft these formulas in a way that that allow for that? Right? Because I think some people just think, like, I can’t plan for all the what ifs and it, it can put women, in particular, in a really precarious position just based on how often they’re the ones that pick up the weight of that. 

Aaron Thomas  59:01

Yes, we always, I mean, and that’s such a such a great point and a great question, but we always try to draft these agreements so that they are not spouse specific, so that they apply to either spouse no matter what happens. Because, just like you said, the unpredictable is almost guaranteed, right? The unpredictable is more likely to happen than the idea that you’re going to get married at 30 and have zero surprises between age 30 and age 80, right? The you know, something every 10 years, something unforeseen is going to happen. You can almost count on it, right?

Heather Pearce Campbell  59:36

Oh my gosh, it was every year of our marriage for the first 10 years, you know, it was failed pregnancies and really significant metal medical costs, and then my husband’s mom being terminally ill, and us having to move her from across the country to Seattle and take care of her in her final months and of course, we couldn’t anticipated that, and that was a left for him, right? So you’re right, like you cannot predict, and sometimes it’s one spouse and sometimes it’s the other. And so yeah, I just think it’s a really important conversation for people to be hearing that there is still a way to account for those unknowns and do it fairly in the context of a prenup or a post snap? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, awesome. Well, I know I ran you five minutes over. I have loved this conversation. It’s been so enlightening and so rich. It’s so relevant for all of us. It’s just, you know, I think very timely. I really appreciate you and hearing about your work. Erin, where do you show up online, and where would you like for people to either find you or connect with you or get access to the amazing resources that you’ve created?

Aaron Thomas  1:00:49

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s been a great conversation. Thank you so much for having me, and I would love for people to come and check us out @prenups.com it’s just like it sounds, and that’s kind of the hub where you can find everything else we’ve got if you need a good starting point, a jumping off spot, we’ve got a free ebook on the website. It’s called Seven Steps to a Marriage Saving prenup, even if you’re already married, it is going to apply to you, so you can go there and download it.

Heather Pearce Campbell  1:01:15

I’m going to go get your full book, and we are going to start the annual review. And I think so much more. I can’t wait to dig in.

Aaron Thomas  1:01:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yes, you can. You can get the book, The prenup prescription, meet the premarital contract designed to save your marriage the link. You can get it on Amazon, but the link to find that is also on the website @prenups.com and if you want to kind of keep up with us more today and get some of the bite sized chunks of hopefully wisdom that we’re trying to put out there. I’m prenup guy on Instagram and Tiktok. Prenup guy.

Heather Pearce Campbell  1:01:48

Awesome. Well, we will share your links. We’re going to share your website. We’ll also separately share your book link at the show notes page. So folks hop over to legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast, and find Aaron Thomas’s episode. Aaron, I’m so excited for people to hear this. I think it’s an awesome topic. I think it’s really going to provide some surprising clarity to people around I mean, the financial conversation in general, but for sure, prenups and the power of contracts in this way.

Aaron Thomas  1:02:22

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Heather. It has been a pleasure and a real honor. Thank you.

Heather Pearce Campbell  1:02:27

Absolutely. Well, I look forward to connecting with you again soon. All right, folks, drop a rating for the podcast. You know, if you enjoyed this conversation and you felt like you learned some things that can apply to your life as an entrepreneur, as somebody in a relationship, I’d love for you to leave us a comment. Give us a good rating. Hop over and check out Aaron’s resources, and we will see you soon back on the podcast. Bye, bye.

GGGB Outro  1:02:53

Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways, links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, see the show notes which can be found at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us too. Keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.