Here is a very interesting article posted on the Wall Street Journal.  It may certainly be worth taking the time to revisit the agreement you and your spouse originally negotiated during this time of economic downturn.

Here is a link to the full article.

Why Your Prenup May Need a Check-Up: By Melissa Korn (WSJ Blogs)

Lawyers used to tell clients to put their prenuptial agreemeents in a locked drawer and keep them there unless the marriage goes south.

These days, however, some are recommending a second look at those documents, no matter how stable your relationship may be.

As asset values plummeted over the past year, your net worth probably did, too. And don’t think you have to be a gazillionaire to need a pre-nup, anyway. Any couple who saw the value of their house or vacation home skyrocket then plummet over the past decade or a couple with substantial individual savings or investment assets could be due for a review.

So if you were once valued at $1 million in real estate and other assets, you could now be down to $500,000. If your pre-nup said you would fork over $300,000 (rather than 30% of your assets) in the case of divorce, you’d still be on the hook for that amount. Thirty percent might be manageable; $300,000, a lot less so, especially if you worked on Wall Street and are now sitting on the couch

Ivan Tabek, a partner in the personal-planning practice at Proskauer Rose LLP, warns that many pre-nuptial agreements (and post-nuptials, for that matter) could be “woefully out of date.” He recommends reviewing all the numbers in a document to see if they’re still relevant and, if not, updating them. He notes that pre-nuptial agreements usually take into account projected asset value and income, which may need to be re-checked as people scale back investment expectations and lose their jobs.

From a legal standpoint, changing a pre-nup is fairly simple, Mr. Taback says. The awkwardness comes in because a couple must acknowledge a potential split. He says spouses should have separate legal counsel, since their interests are different.

Renegotiating can get messy when the less-affluent spouse is unwilling to give up what he or she believes is rightfully theirs, even if the money isn’t there anymore. Lawyers, property appraisals and bank statements come in handy here.