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To Half or Half Not: Prenuptial Agreements in the Social Media Era

It is a long standing belief that when you divorce, your spouse gets one-half of everything. For that reason, many people enter into marital contracts to protect themselves. Marital contracts, prenuptial agreements, are agreements made between couples before they marry concerning the ownership of each parties’ respective assets should the marriage not succeed. Prenuptial agreements, prenups for short, have been around for thousands of years. Some sources say that prenups date all the way back to ancient Egypt.

Social media, however, has not been around as long. So naturally as technology evolves, the world around has to evolve as well.

The new realm of social media has introduced a new idea to prenuptial agreements: social media clauses. Social media clauses have become a recent trend and are something to consider if you are entering into a prenuptial agreement. For years, prenuptial agreements have been designed to protect one’s assets upon divorce. Typical assets that are normally protected by prenups include: businesses, real property, personal property, finances, etc. Our reputation and personal image, however, is one of the biggest assets that we have and it is one that has traditionally gone unprotected by prenuptial agreements. That is . . . until now!

A social media clause is essentially a clause that dictates how each party talks and posts about the other post-divorce, and during the divorce for that matter. Through social media clauses, you can potentially control whether your spouse can negatively portray you to the public. With revenge porn becoming such a fad, a despicable one, a social media clause can also prevent a bitter ex from publicly releasing lewd or obscene images of you as well.

Although there is no guarantee that you can actually prevent your ex from exposing any negative information about you, including a social media clause in your prenuptial agreement can permit you to recover damages from your spouse for violating the agreement. Without such clause, there may not be any remedy for someone bad talking you or sharing your intimate moments on-line. And with such a clause, a bitter soon-to-be ex might think twice or even thrice before posting anything negative. It’s the power of the purse at work.

A wise man, notably Andre Agassi, once said, “Image is everything.” And it is. Our personal image is one of the most prize possessions that we have and what better way to protect it from a bitter ex than by a social media clause. So many people focus on whether their ex will take half of their personal finances and design prenups to avoid that result, but can you imagine how it would be to move through the world with half of your personal image destroyed? Think about it. Now consider whether, when it comes to your image, is it better to half or half not? All of your image or only some of it?

Protect yourself and your image with a social media clause in your prenuptial agreement.

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