By
Esteban Rada
Colombian lawyer
email: info@lawyerscolombia.com
telephone 57-604-2682435
One of the most common questions I receive from US clients is if in Colombia we have prenuptial agreements. The answer is Yes, We do have.
This article will describe only prenuptial agreements for civil marriage. In the case of the common law or union libre as known in Colombia, I will write other article.
Regulated by Colombian civil code, most of US citizens agree to have prenuptial agreement and sign one before the marriage because one of the following reasons
- You or your partner have been married before and divorce was painful, so US citizens don’t want their assets to be split with ex Colombian wife.
- You or your partner have children of previous relationships.
- One person has significantly more wealth.
- One person has significantly more debt.
- You or your partner own a business.
- You or your partner own real estate.
- One person will likely not work.
- You have doubt regarding if spousal truly loves you.
Once couple has agreed that it is necessary to sign a prenuptial, the next step is to choose the type of prenuptial and make the inventory of assets and how they will be protected.
This is the job to be done with a lawyer. I have seen many cases in which prenuptials were done by paralegals, assistant of notary, junior lawyers, taxi drivers and even same US clients who believe they can do all just to save some lawyer fee and at the end, during a divorce, judge voids the prenuptial and ends having to split 50% of the US citizens assets.
Careful, Colombian prenuptial must follow certain rules in order to be valid and missing one of them has a penalty by law to have the prenuptial agreement considered as NONE written. This means that judge will liquidate assets normally, as 50% to each member of the couple.
Another item to be considered is that Assets bought before your marriage in Colombia are not usually part of the divorce, however in the absence of prenuptial. Any increase of their appraisal value or if during the marriage, money from the marriage was spent to make changes or remodelations; in that case, you do as owner of the assets would have to pay back to the community of assets the money or the value appraisal increase suffered by your property.
In case you want this item specific of increase or improvements eliminated from the marriage, you should include that in the prenuptial.
Certain type of prenuptial will require more than just the notary procedure, it depends on the type of business you have and the assets.
By
Esteban Rada
Colombian lawyer
email: info@lawyerscolombia.com
telephone 57-604-2682435
