INSIDE THE BEZOS PRE-NUP

We go inside the the enormity, complication, and notoriety of the BEZOS PRE-NUP AGREEMENT with divorce attorney, MARILYN CHINITZ of BLANK ROME. https://youtu.be/nMMp6He056Y https://open.spotify.com/episode/39KMPMRhwGfYbdZVMJHEan?si=36c5c8a927bf4a6f Outline of the ISSUES INSIDE the BEZOS PRE-NUP General Concepts What happens without a pre-nup? Process for disclosing assets Previous marriages and those pre/post-nups? Community vs Equitable Distribution (Does the Pre-Nup contract this away?) Separate property Outside trusts?  Estate Planning? Pre-nup vs ultra high net worth pre-nup Financial Considerations (and Complication) Non-Financial- NDA, media activity, scope of negotiations, data and tech issues Let's go through the General Fact Pattern High Profile Asymmetric Net Worths Kids? Which state is used for choice of law? Portability?  How do you make sure this has teeth?  (Coercion penalties) Spousal support / alimony? Escalator or sunset clauses? Disqualifying or  "infidelity" or "weight gain" clauses? What happens if children? Other constituencies - charities, businesses, political causes etc  Integration with estate documents, life insurance, other vehicles Is there a check-in every five years? What else can we learn from what is inside the Bezos Pre-Nup? Transcript Frazer Rice (00:02.07) - Inside the Bezos Pre-Nup Welcome aboard, Marilyn. Marilyn Chinitz (00:04.088) Thank you, really nice to be here and nice to talk to you about what's inside the Bezos Pre-Nup. Frazer Rice (00:07.541) We sort of regaled ourselves with a mutual friend and we're already, I feel like we're already related. That's right. So we're going to talk a little bit about probably one of the highest profile marriages in the world that just happened with the Bezos Sanchez union and get inside the Bezos pre-Nup. But for just for a little bit here, let's talk about what happens in a sort of family law divorce setting. Marilyn Chinitz (00:13.39) Your best and glorious buddies are ready. Frazer Rice (00:35.232) With general concepts because we're going to be diving into some specifics with the case study here. What happens when something goes wrong and we have a divorce that happens without a prenup? Marilyn Chinitz (00:46.734) So it depends what state you're in. If you're in a state like New York, then we have equitable distribution laws. If you're in a state like community property in California, then those laws are very different. So if you have no prenup, and a lot of people don't because they start their marriage with very little assets, and everything that you acquired during your marriage is now subject to a division. Frazer Rice (00:49.569) Of course. Marilyn Chinitz (01:15.918) And what happens is you start to trace the assets and you look at, what do I have? You look at homes that you purchase, real estate that you purchase, stocks, securities that you purchased. It doesn't matter in whose name the asset is held. It's a marital asset if it was acquired during the marriage and it was not gifted or inherited. If you come into the marriage with assets and you have no prenuptial agreement and you keep those separate property assets clean, and I'll explain what that means. When they go up in value because you actively caused their appreciation, they may be subject to a marital claim, the appreciation aspect. If you… have an asset that went up in value because of passive reasons and you kept that asset separate, it will remain separate property. So let's talk about an example. If I owned a building before I got married and that building was worth five million dollars and then I get married and years later I get divorced, that building is now worth twenty million dollars. It appreciated by 15 million. Did it appreciate because of market fluctuation, because the market went up, real estate did better?