3. Make your agreement

A marriage contract has to follow certain rules to be binding and enforceable. This means your agreement is made in a way that allows the court to order you or your partner to do what the agreement says.

For example, the law says that you and your partner must honestly tell each other about all your finances before making an agreement about spousal support or dividing property. This is sometimes called financial disclosure.

Later, if one of you doesn't want to follow the agreement, the court checks to see if the process was fair at the time you discussed and signed your agreement. The court looks at what happened when you first signed the agreement, not at the time that you or your partner challenge the agreement.

The court might decide that the process wasn't fair if:

• one of you, or someone else, forced or pressured the other partner to sign the agreement
• one of you gave false information to the other partner to get them to sign the agreement
• the agreement is very unfair to one partner

If you get independent legal advice (ILA), it can help to show that the process was fair if the agreement is challenged in the future.