A basic premise of contract law is that parties can bargain for whatever they want — provided the “whatever” is legal and that basic contract requirements and formalities are satisfied in order to make the contract valid.
Although most people in Tennessee and elsewhere think of prenuptial and post-marital contracts only as asset protection or property division tools, they can and frequently are used for other purposes. Today, we want to keep it light-hearted and talk about a few of the more bizarre provisions you’re ever likely to see in the context of family law.
Please keep in mind that we’re not advocating you make or even consider these types of requests, but here they are just the same:
- No piano playing while the husband is home.
- No TV sets allowed in the house.
- Wife is not allowed to cut her hair.
- Wife is not allowed to wear the color green; husband has the right to destroy wife’s green-colored articles of clothing.
- Husband and wife must go to the Rice Diet Program facility every year.
- If husband is rude or cruel to wife’s parents, husband agrees to pay $10,000 for each infraction.
- In the event that husband’s weight exceeds 240, he agrees to pay wife $10,000.
- Husband gets four home-cooked meals a week or wife loses her shopping allowance.
- If wife gets pregnant, she must have an abortion.
- If wife becomes pregnant, husband agrees to pay wife $50,000 for carrying each child.
- If Spouse A cheats, he or she gets nothing in the divorce.
- If Spouse B cheats, Spouse A gets more in the property division settlement.
Lastly, one lawyer who thought she had seen it all in divorce and property division was recently shocked by a would-be-bride’s demand to be compensated for sex (which wasn’t legal in that particular state and thus didn’t get included in the final draft).
Source: New York Post, “New York City’s craziest prenup agreements,” Doree Lewak, Sep. 25, 2012
