Episode: 68 - Moving In Without an Agreement? Big Mistake

FREE Digital Download: Prenup/Cohab Agreement Checklist

Nothing kills the vibe faster than “we should talk about a prenup”… or does it?

In this episode, we’re breaking down prenups and cohabitation agreements without the drama. Because let’s be real—love is great, but clarity is better.

We’re talking about:

•  What prenups and cohab agreements actually are 
•  Why they’re not a “breakup plan” 
•  The biggest myths that keep people avoiding them 
•  Real-life situations where NOT having one goes sideways 
•  And how to have the conversation without ruining your relationship 

Because being grownups in love sometimes means choosing paperwork over pretending vibes are legally binding.

Transcript

Vicki: [00:00:00] If you can't talk about a prenup and you can't talk about sex, you got no business doing either of those things, right? 

Amber: Nothing kills a romantic vibe faster than the phrase we should talk about a prenup. Well, I mean, except realizing that you've been building a whole life with somebody and absolutely none of it is written down. Today we're talking prenups, cohabbitation agreements, and why being a grownup in love sometimes means choosing paperwork.

Over pretending vibes are legally binding.

Coralie: I love vibes.

[00:01:00] 

Coralie: I think, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it would've killed the vibe. But at the age I'm at now, if I ever was in that situation, I would be like, oh, this is a serious, important thing that we're discussing and we're

not just basing it on emotions. And um, and that's 

Vicki: Totally. So let's write this cohab and then tell me how I can reward you, because now I'm excited.

Coralie: Yes, yes. So let's talk about what prenups and cohabbitation agreements actually are. So strip stripping the drama right out of it. A prenup is a financial agreement people create before marriage, and a cohabbitation agreement is for people who live together but aren't married. So that's especially great if you own a condo and your partner's moving in with you.

You need that cohab agreement, like really for anything. But, that they're so important and it's not a breakup plan, it's a clarity plan. Because if you do break up, you are gonna be so emotional, you know? [00:02:00] And people, you might think someone would never get evil. They would get evil. You might get evil, so it's important. They outline things like what happens to assets, how shared expenses are handled, what happens if someone pauses a career, and how it's properly divided if you separate. So it's like emotional maturity, but in a document form, like in a legal document. And we all need a little more emotional maturity, right? Yeah, and I actually just little side story. There's this lady on TikTok that I've been following for a while. She's getting divorced. You gotta watch your prenups, man, because this woman signed a prenup and she's getting absolutely hosed because she didn't go get her prenup checked out. So.

Amber: Damn

Vicki: You need.

Coralie: You just don't rely on the person giving the prenup.

Like you take, you have your

own lawyer, you take it. Because especially if you're a woman, and you plan on staying at home, raising kids, you're sacrificing a lot. So you need to make sure you're [00:03:00] still financially compensated for that. But yeah, it's a shit show out there, so definitely get a lawyer.

You need it. It's smart.

Vicki: Yeah, you have to look at it as a part of an investment. You know, some people do premarital counseling, whatever that looks like, it just has to be built into. The system of how are we gonna set ourselves up for success moving forward? What does that look like? Yeah, I respect, respect the process of this for sure.

Coralie: Marriages are business agreements. And I would've never said that when I got married in the last century, but where we're at now, where we're both at now, like we love each other, and of course it's about love, but it's also a business agreement. You're in business with this person, you're in the business bed. The rest.

Vicki: Well, and then you think about it as well, if you've had life already happening, maybe this is a second cohab or marriage or whatever that looks like. You're coming in with assets. When we were in our twenties, we didn't have shit, so it didn't matter, right? We created our wealth and our debt together and it was [00:04:00] what it was. But your second go around or additional go around, that's a different story,

Coralie: Yeah. I think if we did a prenup, Chad would've been like, I want my Sony Walkman.

Vicki: right? I want the lazy girl.

Coralie: Yeah.

Amber: Well, it's, it's not just, you've gotta look at it too. It's not just about what you have currently, it's what comes later too. So, I mean, just because you're in your twenties and you're getting married and you have nothing, but a lot of maybe student debt, you can still do this as a plan and, looking forward to the future.

Right. And I mean, people will often see contracts as unromantic. But we're taught that if you love someone, everything should just be intuitive. And if you need to define things, it means something's wrong. And that's definitely not the case at all. So you want everything else in life to have like contracts, right?

Jobs have contracts. Your insurance has a contract, [00:05:00] like everything has contracts. Your phone has a contract. And you're getting into this marriage that's such a huge, like Coralie said, business agreement. Like you might not think, oh, we're so in love and la la, la, la, la. Well, I mean, not to sound awful, but romanticizing everything doesn't help you in the long run.

And having that in place doesn't mean that you're gonna break up. It just means. You guys have a plan for each other if something ever happens,

Coralie: mm-hmm.

Vicki: Yeah. I mean, property's the most expensive thing we own, but we're not gonna protect ourselves within

that. Like what? It just doesn't make sense.

Coralie: A lot of that talk is part of the patriarchy, right? You women we're the ones that like fairytale, it's love, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And historically it's been men bringing forth the prenups and then the woman gets offended and because we've been raised in this like it's love, I should just know.

And it should be intuitive like Amber said, and that [00:06:00] is bullshit. It is just bullshit, so.

Vicki: Yeah, we live in a different world now. We're looking at two income households, sometimes two income households or three income households. We're looking at building wealth together. People are. Really hustling in a different way, and it has to be accounted for and it needs to be.

Coralie: Mm.

Amber: Yeah. I mean, agreements don't assume failure like I had mentioned. But here's a fact that I actually found, and 15% of married or engaged individuals have a signed prenuptial agreement according to a 2022 Harris poll that's up you guys from 3% who had a prenup in 2010.

Vicki: Whew. Yay.

Amber: So things are changing.

Vicki: I love that.

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: Yeah. Yeah. It's smart business, and I think that you're right, people romanticize. The idea of marriage and cohabbiting and what all of that looks [00:07:00] like, and it's so sad if we are getting offended at this isn't about me protecting myself from him or him protecting himself from me.

It's how can we protect ourselves together? What makes sense for us? I just, yeah, I wish people would embrace it more.

Amber: Well, and it takes all the guessing out of it if, if something does happen, right? Like you all know what you get, assuming you walked into it with a level head and you, each of you got a lawyer, right? Not taking that example like, Coralie said, you don't wanna just walk in and go, oh, I trust my husband or my partner or my wife and they want this prenup and I'm just gonna sign it.

Vicki: Yeah.

Amber: Like, man, woman, doesn't matter who you are, never do that.

Vicki: Independent legal counsel,

Coralie: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: the 

takeaway. 

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Coralie: Yeah, 

Vicki: Yeah. And I also think that this isn't a place to, land your greed or what you think you deserve [00:08:00] or really be methodical in this. Try to take the emotion out. That's, that would be my advice. Be methodical, really think about how, what makes sense, what is fair? Because I will tell you what you said earlier, what's fair when we're friends, feels very different than fair when we're not.

Coralie: Right.

Amber: Yes. Yeah.

Vicki: Mm-hmm.

Coralie: I mean, we've all seen some nasty divorces. Right?

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Coralie: And I've seen this happen quite a few times, generally with people that are my parents' age. The spouse, long-term marriage spouse dies. The partner gets remarried. The spouse, the original spouse that passed away and the partner built up a fortune.

Maybe not a big one, but enough where their kids were gonna have a good inheritance, marries the next partner and then that partner gets that. If you don't have a prenup, ? There's always, and we've talked about this, like we are very happily married, not getting a divorce, but we've talked about this and we've talked about this with [00:09:00] our kids, that if anything ever happened, we would wanna make sure that what we've built together is yours and anything the next partner, just because I've seen it happen, it's happened with good friends of mine and it's awful.

And to know that, and then that person that remarried passed away shortly after. So the new wife got all the things, the original kids got nothing, and that money was from the original parents. so important, so important. Protect your assets, protect your kids' assets.

Vicki: Mm-hmm. I, I, I totally agree. I think it's about protecting the family,

protecting the future, not dictating it.

Coralie: Right.

Vicki: Yeah,

Amber: Yeah, 

Vicki: So let's talk about cohabbitation. It's, it's not neutral. Moving in together feels casual, but it isn't, it doesn't feel casual to me at all. So someone usually takes on more household labor. Someone absorbs some emotional labor. Someone's usually [00:10:00] compromising more. And without an agreement, none of that is acknowledged in a way that matters if things end.

It's not that everyone is evil in those moments, it's just that it gets messy and it gets clouded, so no one's planned for it. Because silence. Always benefits, whoever already has the most leverage, right? So if somebody just kind of sits back and says, it just doesn't matter to me. They already recognize that. They're not emotionally equipped to probably dive through all of the things that they would need to dive through. So agreements just turn all the invisible contributions into visible ones. So they're just in front of you now.

You're just having a pre-conversation about it. And I think. For me, that's comfort.

Amber: Well, I think that as far as the cohab agreement. A lot of people overlook that and you know, you wanna move in with me, I'd love for you to move in with me, yada, yada, whatever. you're not thinking of it [00:11:00] as a marriage contract, but the moment that that happens, dynamics change and things change.

Vicki: I don't know about in your provinces, but here it's three years plus a day. , If we cohab for three years, plus a day as a couple, and we live as a couple, I immediately have homestead rights on that home or vice versa. If you've moved in with me, you have homestead rights on mine, three years plus a day. If you have a child within that three years, I believe it starts immediately. Don't quote me on that. I would have

Amber: Well.

Vicki: that information.

Amber: That's a good point though, based on where you live, find out what the rules are.

Vicki: That's why you have a lawyer.

Coralie: Yeah. And, and how the cohab agreement protects that.

Vicki: Right?

Right. So it's not just that you have to be legally bound in marriage, but if you live together, you're right Amber, that, that's tricky.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Vicki: It's tricky.

Coralie: So let's talk about some myths that surround prenups, co habs so that we can kill [00:12:00] them and maybe give you an option of things to say if someone is countering you with the prenups. The long one we hear our whole lives is like, if you loved me, you wouldn't need this. When the reversal to that is, if you loved me, wouldn't you want me protected?

Vicki: Mm-hmm.

Coralie: Yeah. So that's more important. And I think for a lot of us, security is important, and that is just security, right?

Amber: Right.

Coralie: We don't have anything worth protecting, which that's why I walked into this marriage. Neither of us had shit, but. Yet

you don't have anything worth protecting yet. You don't know what you could build, what you could grow. So you don't have anything worth protecting yet. If someone, says or thinks, you know, this means you think we'll fail, no. Look at the divorce rates. Like,

Amber: Fair enough.

Coralie: you know, and fortunately. [00:13:00] I haven't fact checked this, but because people are waiting to get married, the divorce rate's actually dropping as steadily because people aren't getting married in their early twenties anymore. They're waiting, which is great, but also too, you have to understand like real life and you don't know if you're gonna be the anomaly.

You don't know. I am fully aware that my husband and I are the, the rare breed that we've been together so young and are still together and, there's a lot of couples, like we've watched a lot of divorce happen and people we never thought would get divorced have gotten divorced, and people we knew would get divorced have gotten divorced. It's really just about understanding real life and not being in la la land in your head, because a fair agreement is gonna be about winning. It's about preventing resentment and protecting both of the people in that 

Vicki: Thank you. I'm so glad you said that. Protecting both of the people, because it's exactly what it is. This isn't about, Ooh, look at me. I'm just this woman and I'm just coming into this relationship and I'm gonna take all your money and bail. It's not about that. It's [00:14:00] about I'm gonna be bringing shit to the table too, friend. So how are we gonna manage that? How does that look moving forward? What did you have pri previously? What did I have previously? How do we move and build? Because you could get together in your late years and build an empire. Who knows? Right. So

that's important stuff,

Coralie: That example that you gave of a woman coming in and, and if she didn't want to sign it, she would automatically be labeled a gold digger. But really he's digging gold too because he's a. Expecting her to give up her youth, her body, her freedom to raise these children and walk away with nothing who's really digging for gold here. So let's 

Vicki: a good cohabb or a prenup gonna have, it's not gonna be skewed just to one person.

She gets nothing. He gets everything, or vice versa. It's literally going to be an agreement that financially cares for both parties based on. Whatever we talked about the emotional labor, like you said, she's gonna raise the children possibly, whatever that looks like. But, rules are reversed. So let's just be [00:15:00] really conscious when we're doing this, so it just gets me all excited. Sorry. Sometimes I think I should have been a lawyer. I. so sometimes people will just have an emotional reaction as we were talking about, to, hearing that a prenup or a cohab is on the table so they hear agreement, they translate it to you, don't trust me, but it's actually, I trust us enough to talk about the hard things.

It's a matter of being mature enough to have the conversation. So if someone can't handle the calm conversation about protection of both people, they probably can't handle, handle, you know, conflict, illness, financial stress, long-term planning, how are you gonna life

together? Which is the whole damn point, right?

Coralie: Yes. So let's give the basics on what a fair agreement looks like. Of course, we are not lawyers, so take this to your professionals, but we wanna make sure that you have an idea of what a fair agreement is gonna cover. It's gonna be clear, balanced, it's gonna be specific, it's gonna go over your assets and debts.

It's gonna go [00:16:00] over shared expenses. What happens if either one of your careers. Pause. The woman, she might stop for pregnancy and decide to stay home for a couple years, or maybe the dad wants to be a stay at home dad. His career is gonna be paused. Maybe one person wants to quit their job to start a business and they were already doing pretty good, with their job.

So it's gonna cover all of that. It's gonna cover property. And it is going to cover an exit plan. You want an exit plan, like

go into any building, you can see where you get out. You wanna know what's gonna happen, how to get out if you need to. Like Vicki said, a good agreement isn't going to favor one person.

It is going to be clear, fair, balanced for everyone.

Vicki: Yep.

Amber: absolutely. And I think who struggles with these agreements most are people who avoid hard conversations.. People who rely on ambiguity, people who think love should erase logistics. Love doesn't erase logistics. It survives them.

Vicki: yes. Yes. That's such a great point actually. And I wanna talk about [00:17:00] actual logistics. What happens in careers? What if there's a move? What if all of a sudden your partner is like, well, we have to move to blah, blah, blah. Wait, what? No. Are we living in two different cities? What does this look like? I have my career here.

You have your career. Like, there's just so many things that we don't. That is not covered in couples therapy Right. In premarital talks, and we really need to consider all of the moving pieces. And you just never freaking know.

Coralie: And

even if it is talked about in couples therapy, that's not legally binding.

That's a discussion. 

Amber: Right.

Vicki: Correct. I've seen that scenario play out numerous

times. Not good.

Coralie: Yeah.

Vicki: because then one person saying, but I earn more money, so now we have to move where my job is. Or, this is better for our family, but Oh, it's, it's,

Coralie: Yeah.

Vicki: It's just, it's messy if it's not writing. My first, marriage, we did not have, uh, an agreement of any kind in place. We were young, we [00:18:00] did the things, we grew a family, we separated, period. I just believe that, especially because I was established, having a prenup in my second marriage was really important for me.

Coralie: Mm-hmm. 

Vicki: This is a question for our listeners. You know, have you ever moved in with someone without an agreement? Tell us, we wanna hear about it. What did it cost you financially? Emotionally, how did that look for you? What would you do differently now if you could do it over or tell a friend? Right. Because when we have an experience, we always tell a friend because we need to give them the other side of it. What would you do differently? I, we, we wanna hear, so email

us, contact us on social media.

Not safe for brunch@gmail.com. But yeah, we wanna know, we wanna know what's going on over there.

So protecting yourselves isn't pessimistic. It's respectful. It says that I care enough about you, to plan for real life, not just for the honeymoon version of it, what the fairytale, what we see on tv.

So get the [00:19:00] chemistry, get the commitment, get the paperwork.