Let’s say you are a foreigner who owns properties in your home country and also Taiwan, and you are looking to get married in Taiwan (and have it recognized in your home country).
How do you protect yourself against a possible contentious divorce where your spouse wants half of all your worldwide assets plus claiming alimony (assuming no kids involved, and you married a gold digger)?
Ideally I am thinking the prenup should say something like, in case of a contentious divorce, the assets of both parties should be kept separate unless it’s a joint bank account / joint asset. But maybe there’s some conditions where the prenup expires, such as you both reach 60 years old and are still married, you have 2 kids, etc.
Are such prenups recognizable by the courts in Taiwan?
I’m thinking I can sponsor my future spouse with Canadian citizenship so I can get Taiwan citizenship (but I’d have to renounce my Canadian citizenship), and then my spouse sponsors me for Canadian citizenship again, so a strong prenup is required or it seems I could be really screwed over here with split of assets + alimony in Canada if my future spouse decided to bail after I renounced my Canadian citizenship? Just trying to do some planning here on risks of marrying a local without a strong prenup in place.
you can do the separation of wealth regimen at the district court. Nothing special, just needs you and your future missus to go (after you registered marriage) to your competent district court and ask for 分別財產制.
In addition there’s a bunch of laws here that say your spouse needs to give you special permission to do things. I wonder if those can be added to the prenup that they’re not enforceable for the marriage? In this case it’s more like a marriage contract plus a prenup all in one. For example, I shouldn’t have to ask my spouse permission if I want to store my sperm at a sperm bank (and vice versa).
The separation of wealth just says that anything before and after the wedding, if in your name only, remains in your name, and the other party can’t touch it.
Well, each country each law. Here it seems to be pretty straightforward. Only if you don’t do the separation the spouse during divorce settlement can have claims, with separation that’s yours.
In Italy is very similar concept, separation of wealth during marriage. What’s in my name it’s in my name and viceversa, we share during wedding, but reverts to private and personal after divorce.
It seems the risk here is they refuse after marriage and you’re stuck
Perhaps need to sign a separate contract that says if they do not do this by X date, they will owe you a contract termination penalty, but not sure if that’s enforceable.
First, by default, there is separation of properties acquired before marriage, unless one of the other two other property regimes are specified
This blog post describes how assets are distributed during inheritance when one spouse dies, but does introduce the 3 property systems and that Statutory is the default system
There are three kinds of marital property systems under Taiwan law:
(1) statutory property system,
(2) separate property systems, and
(3) joint property systems.
If a married couple in Taiwan did not register under either a separate property system or a joint property system, then by default the statutory property system applies to their estate. Most of married couples in Taiwan are subject to the statutory property system.
This is something you need a lawyer to handle. You will screw it up if you try to do it yourself.
This is an excellent family law firm. They have people who speak English and plenty of international experience. If I recall correctly, it costs NT$10,000 for a mandatory consultation to start things off.
I think Canada offers a way to resume citizenship after renouncing. I don’t think you need a sponsor for this.
If you renounce Canadian citizenship while in Canada, you automatically become a permanent resident. Then you can resume citizenship after staying in Canada for 365 days.
I’m reasonably sure you do not need to be present in Taiwan during your Taiwanese citizenship application as long as you’ve met all the requirements. But maybe others would know more.
I think everyone here is wildly optimistic about what such a “pre-nup” or “separation-wealth-before-marriage” would end up meaning if the marriage did go sour and the other party had malicious intent. Has any foreigner with such a separation of wealth agreement actually gone through a contentious divorce?
Can’t renounce while in Canada, and it requires two years of residency in Canada before qualifying for PR. Express entry is hard to get these days with all the immigration and less likely as you age (I saw TikTok video saying latest acceptance are around 560 points). So it’s not guaranteed Canada will accept you back as PR afterwards. Many are stuck in Canada without being able to get PR these days. PR is a black box unless you have a spouse.