Q. I am getting married in October and my fiancé just told me that he had a child when he was 18 who is now 12. He has no relationship with the mother or the child and has been paying child support for years. He got hurt at work and fell behind in payments when he was out before he started receiving workers compensation. He just got notice that the mother is taking him to court for contempt because he fell behind. We are worried that my assets and income can be at risk in the contempt case.

Is there anything I can do to protect my assets? Also, once we are married, can I be ordered to pay his child support?

A. I highly recommend you and your fiancé sign a pre-nuptial agreement before getting married. This would serve to define each of your pre-marital assets, and you can make your pre-marital assets separate property so that under no circumstances could your assets come in to play as part of a contempt action against him. You can also define how much of your respective incomes will be contributed to marital assets and what, if any part of your income, you want to designate as separate property. If you do not like the idea of keeping things separate and apart forever, you can write in a so-called sunset clause which means if you marriage lasts longer than a certain number of years, the agreement is dissolved.

Regardless of whether you have a pre-nuptial agreement, the court should not consider any assets in your name at the time of the marriage to be something they can leverage for his child support arrears – just don’t add his name to the asset. Further, your income cannot be considered for his child support obligation in the strict sense. The court will not add your income to his in the child support guidelines worksheet. That being said, when the judge is trying to determine his ability to pay arrears, your contribution to household expenses will be considered because having your contribution reduces his need to pay all of the household expenses. The best way for him to handle this is to reflect only his share of household expenses on his financial statement with a footnote indicating that the amount listed is half (or whatever the actual percentage is) of the total expense and that you pay the other half. This eliminates the argument that he should report your income on his financial statement.

Email questions towhickey@brickjones.com