Marriage contracts
In view of the diversity of modern lifestyles, the legal regulations on marriage do not always offer suitable solutions. Here, marriage contracts offer more flexible options that can provide legal security and protection as well as fair and sustainable solutions with tried and tested design variants. The interests of a young dual-earner marriage with the desire to have children or the same-sex family of choice are different from preventive marriage contracts of “wealthy” heirs or entrepreneurial marriages. Remarried older spouses also often have other interests (especially with regard to children from previous relationships).
They can contain agreements on matrimonial property regimes, agreements on post-marital maintenance, provisions on pension equalization, general property-related agreements and the division of assets, as well as child-related agreements.
Marriage contract
Separation agreements to avoid divorce and agreements on the consequences of divorce form a special group of cases:
Notarized divorce agreements are a special form of marriage contract. They are sought by the (still) spouses in order to speed up the divorce proceedings. The divorce settlement agreement clarifies in advance issues such as the equalization of gains, the allocation of the marital home/house and the household effects, regulates the distribution of assets, pension equalization and, if applicable, inheritance matters as well as the repayment of joint debts. This considerably shortens the duration of the divorce.
Divorce settlement agreement
Asset transfer design
Marriage contracts may also be desired for tax reasons for the distribution of assets or the preparation of a business succession, e.g. matrimonial property regime swings.
Adoption
The application for “adoption as a child” must be notarized, § 1752 para. 2 sentence 2 BGB. However, the adoption does not come into being when the application is submitted to the notary. The notarial deed must first be submitted to the family court together with other documents. Here you can find information about adoption.
Link document adoption
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