My Spouse Wants Me to Sign a Postnup. What Now?

1. What Am I Giving Up if I Sign a Postnup?

A postnup (an agreement between spouses signed after the wedding) can rewrite two sets of rights, and one draft often touches both. In a divorce, Florida starts from an equal division of what the marriage built, and growth in a business or a house caused by either spouse’s work or by marital money is divided too. A court can also award alimony in four forms, temporary, bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative or durational. At death, a surviving spouse holds claims that a will cannot remove.

Under Florida law, a waiver of “all rights” in the other spouse’s estate waives every death right in the table unless the waiver says otherwise. The same sentence also renounces whatever you were left in a will signed before the agreement. Look for those words first, because one clause can carry all of it.

If the draft moves the house, look for the word homestead. In Mendia v. Galvez, the Third District held in 2025 that a 1998 postnup giving the home to the wife, followed by the husband’s quitclaim deed, waived nothing because neither document mentioned homestead. Her later deed to a third party, without his signature, was void.

2. Do I Have to Sign a Postnup or Get a Divorce?

You do not have to sign. A deadline set by the other spouse is a fact a court weighs later, and Florida cases give it real weight. The cases involve premarital agreements, and Florida courts apply the same Casto principles to postnups, so they are the closest guidance.

Lutgert is the extreme example. A husband worth at least $3 million produced a prenup at the jeweler’s within 24 hours of a 12:30 a.m. airport wedding and said no agreement, no wedding. The court voided it. In Bakos, a dentist worth about $800,000 and a hygienist worth about $12,000 signed within 24 hours of the wedding under a “sign or no marriage” ultimatum, and the agreement was voidable. On the other side, one appellate court held that ten days was enough time to read a prenup and see a lawyer, and another said that an ultimatum alone is not duress.

A week sits close to the ten-day line, which is a reason to use all seven days and to ask for more, and no reason to expect a court to rescue you later. A common question I hear is, “My husband gave me one week to decide, postnup or divorce, so do I have a choice?” You have the choice to ask in writing for 30 days, for the financial disclosure below and for the date of the first draft.

No Florida appellate opinion in the ones I reviewed decides whether “sign or I file” is duress. My reading is that spouses owe each other a fiduciary duty until litigation starts, so an ultimatum between them gets looked at harder than one between strangers. The written request and the answer to it become your record either way.

3. What Financial Disclosure Am I Entitled To Before Signing?

For the death side, the statute is direct. Each spouse “shall make a fair disclosure to the other of that spouse’s estate if the agreement, contract, or waiver is executed after marriage.” A waiver of the elective share or homestead signed without that disclosure is open to attack.

For a divorce, the test is Casto v. Casto. A shopping-center developer’s wife signed a postnup for about $225,000 against assets that may have been worth $10 million, after her husband refused to give her a financial statement. The Florida Supreme Court approved setting the agreement aside, and a handwritten list of assets without values did not count as disclosure.

In Kearney v. Kearney, a wife gave up her interest in the family’s IBM-reseller company, later valued at about $48 million, for $3 million in installments. Her husband understated his income and left about $6.5 million in receivables off the schedule. The First District set the agreement aside and held that before full-fledged litigation “the parties have a fiduciary relationship.”

I ask for the disclosure as a schedule with values, in writing, with the date. The schedule lists every bank and brokerage account, each retirement account, each business interest with the basis for its value, each piece of real estate, each debt and the last three years of income. Do not sign a statement waiving further disclosure until the schedule is complete.

4. What Can a Postnup Not Take Away?

A postnup cannot take away your right to ask for temporary support and attorney’s fees while a divorce is pending. In Khan v. Khan, the Fourth District wrote that “an agreement of the parties that waives or limits the right to request temporary support and attorney’s fees to a spouse in need in a pending dissolution action is a violation of public policy.” In Lord v. Lord, a clause that made each side pay its own lawyer could not be enforced for the same reason.

A court also keeps authority over a child’s custody and support, whatever the agreement says. The limit runs the other way too. A clause making the loser pay the winner’s fees in a fight over the agreement itself can be enforced, so a challenge carries a cost if it fails.

5. Do I Need My Own Lawyer for a Postnup?

Florida does not require one, and the cases say that lack of a lawyer is not, by itself, a ground to set an agreement aside. The Florida Supreme Court added in Casto that incompetent legal advice is not a basis to vacate either, so choosing the lawyer matters. The lawyer who drafted the postnup works for your spouse.

Counsel does not decide the case either way. In Kearney, two lawyers told the wife not to sign, and she signed anyway. The agreement still fell for misrepresentation and nondisclosure. In Tenneboe, the court treated the signer’s lack of a lawyer as one factor that raised the other side’s duty of candor.

A lawyer does three things for the spouse who is asked. The lawyer reads the draft against Florida’s default rules and tells you in writing what each clause takes. The lawyer sends the disclosure request. And the lawyer negotiates the terms, which is the part a signer alone rarely does.

6. Can a Postnup Signed Under Pressure Be Challenged Later?

A challenge can succeed, and the grounds are fraud, deceit, duress, coercion, misrepresentation or overreaching, or an unfair agreement signed without knowledge of the other spouse’s finances. In Casto, the husband also threatened to blow up the house. Matos v. Matos reached the same place from the other direction, holding that coercive circumstances joined to concealed assets meant the spouse relying on the deal could not show real mutual assent.

Speed helps. In Tenneboe, the husband challenged the agreement within a month, and the court said the prompt challenge lent credence to his claim. Years of accepting money under the agreement give the other side a ratification argument, though Kearney rejected that argument on its facts.

One rule changes the test. When a settlement agreement is signed and then written into a divorce judgment, the Fifth District (en banc, December 2025) and the Sixth District (2024) hold that the challenge goes through rule 12.540, which gives no relief for unfairness. Other districts have not all decided the question, and a question has been certified. The safer course is to raise concerns before the agreement is signed.

7. What Can I Ask For Instead of Waiving Everything?

A waiver is not the only version of a postnup. The March and April 2026 Florida Bar Journal article by Jeffrey Baskies and Phillip Arencibia sets out three alternatives to a bare waiver of death rights. The three are a fixed sum, a percentage of the net estate computed from a pro forma estate tax return, and a schedule that grows with the length of the marriage.

For example, a schedule might pay $150,000 at five years of marriage and rise to $600,000 at twenty. A spouse at home with the children can ask for that payment in place of the 30 percent, and still give up the right to take the home away from the other spouse’s children. The same idea works in a divorce, a fixed payment for each year of marriage in place of waiving an equal division of growth.

Four other requests are common. Keep alimony or set a floor rather than waive it. Keep the right to live in the house for a set number of years. Take a life insurance policy on your spouse or a trust for your benefit. And ask that the agreement name what you keep, because courts read the words. In Williams-Paris, a clause saying the residence “shall not be affected by this Agreement” controlled over a general waiver, and the surviving spouse kept homestead rights.

8. When Does an Unfair Postnup Still Hold?

An unfair agreement signed freely and with knowledge holds. Casto says so directly. “If an agreement that is unreasonable is freely entered into, it is enforceable.” In Schreiber v. Schreiber, a wife’s lawyer drafted a settlement that left the unrepresented husband about $105 a month. The Fourth District called it one-sided and unfair, and enforced it, because the husband knew the finances and nothing showed he had no meaningful choice.

Fairness is measured at the signing, with what the signer knew then. Florida’s test since Del Vecchio asks for a fair provision, a full disclosure or a general and approximate knowledge of the other spouse’s property. The review happens before the signature for that reason. Afterward, the argument is that a bad term was a surprise, and the court asks what you knew.

9. What Does a Postnup Review Cost?

A review of the postnup the other side drafted is a flat fee from $750. A counterproposal drafted for you is a flat fee from $2,950. The fees are posted October 6, 2026 and honored for 90 days from that date, and government costs, if any, are additional and passed through at cost. What each fee covers is on the prenup page, and prenup review describes the review step by step.

We represent only the spouse who hires us, never both of you. The No-Cost Phone Consult creates no attorney-client relationship, so do not send the draft or confidential details until we have agreed to represent you.

Related guides cover the Florida postnuptial agreement from the drafting side, prenup versus postnup, what makes an agreement invalid and the spousal waiver of homestead. The hub is Florida prenuptial agreements, and what a Florida prenup costs explains the numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The spouse at home after ten years. The working spouse presents a postnup that waives alimony and the 30 percent. A review shows the draft carries no disclosure schedule and no payment in exchange. The request for a schedule of assets and a fixed sum is the starting point.

The spouse with a one-week deadline. A draft arrives on a Monday with a Monday deadline. The written request for 30 days and the disclosure goes out the same day, and the answer to it is the record.

The spouse whose partner’s business grew. A company that was worth little at the wedding is worth millions, and the postnup waives all growth. Florida divides growth caused by marital effort unless the agreement waives it in plain words, so the clause on enhancement is the one to read twice.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §732.702(1) to (3) (waiver before or after marriage before two subscribing witnesses; “all rights” language; fair disclosure when executed after marriage). §§732.2065, 732.401, 732.402, 732.403 (elective share, homestead, exempt property, family allowance). Fla. Stat. §61.075 (equitable distribution; enhancement of nonmarital assets). Fla. Stat. §61.08(1)(a) (forms of alimony). Fla. Stat. §61.079 (premarital agreements only; cited here for its timing analogies).
• Casto v. Casto, 508 So. 2d 330 (Fla. 1987). Kearney v. Kearney, 129 So. 3d 381 (Fla. 1st DCA 2013). Matos v. Matos, 932 So. 2d 316 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006). Tenneboe v. Tenneboe, 558 So. 2d 470 (Fla. 4th DCA 1990). Schreiber v. Schreiber, 795 So. 2d 1054 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001). Del Vecchio v. Del Vecchio, 143 So. 2d 17 (Fla. 1962). Tanner v. Jannis, 564 So. 2d 180 (Fla. 3d DCA 1990).
• Lutgert v. Lutgert, 338 So. 2d 1111 (Fla. 2d DCA 1976). Bakos v. Bakos, 950 So. 2d 1257 (Fla. 2d DCA 2007). Gordon v. Gordon, 25 So. 3d 615 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009). Eager v. Eager, 696 So. 2d 1235 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997). Cladis v. Cladis, 512 So. 2d 271 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987).
• Khan v. Khan, 79 So. 3d 99 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012). Lord v. Lord, 993 So. 2d 562 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008). Lashkajani v. Lashkajani, 911 So. 2d 1154 (Fla. 2005). Kennedy v. Kennedy, 583 So. 2d 415 (Fla. 5th DCA 1991). Martin v. Sater, No. 5D2024-1301 (Fla. 5th DCA Dec. 10, 2025) (en banc). O’Hair v. O’Hair, 396 So. 3d 630 (Fla. 6th DCA 2024).
• Mendia v. Galvez, No. 3D24-0798 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 27, 2025). Williams-Paris v. Joseph (Fla. 4th DCA Nov. 17, 2021). Jeffrey A. Baskies and Phillip J. Arencibia, “Post-Death Planning in Marital Agreements,” Fla. Bar J., Vol. 100, No. 2 (Mar./Apr. 2026).
• Statutes and opinions retrieved 2026-10-07.

When Someone Else’s Lawyer Explains the Deal

In one case I have reviewed, an electrician with six children signed a settlement agreement in the office of his wife’s lawyer, and that lawyer had drafted every page. The husband worked seven days a week at Pratt and Whitney and on outside jobs to gross about $1,000 a week, and the agreement required $700 a week from him, $340 of it permanent alimony. The husband told the lawyer at the table that the payments were more than he could handle and asked whether they were set for the rest of his life. The husband testified that the lawyer told him he could come back to court to have them reduced and did not mention that he would have to show a substantial change in circumstances. The lawyer testified to making a point of telling unrepresented people to get their own counsel, and did not remember discussing alimony beyond the amount.

The agreement left him $112.57 a week and gave his wife his share of the house, the family’s one real asset, with about $30,000 of equity. The husband challenged it within a month. The Fourth District reversed in 1990 and ordered the agreement set aside.

I have a few take-home points.

The first is that the explanation at the signing table counts. The court called the advice an oversimplification at best, and it treated the husband’s lack of a lawyer as the reason the other side owed him more candor.

The second is that the challenge was prompt. The court said the quick challenge lent credence to the claim and undercut any notion that it came as an afterthought.

The third is that the agreement was a divorce settlement signed two weeks after the petition, and the same principles run through postnups signed in an intact marriage, where the spouses owe each other the higher duty.

Practice pointer. Write down what the other side’s lawyer says about each clause, with the date, and ask your own lawyer the same question in writing. A question about modification, alimony or the house is the one that is oversimplified most often.

Avoid signing on the strength of a spoken promise that something can be fixed later.

The honest limit is that no Florida appellate opinion I found sets aside a postnup because the other spouse’s lawyer explained it badly. Tenneboe shows the principle, and a postnup case would turn on its own facts.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case above is a published opinion in other parties’ matter, not a matter this firm handled, and it predicts nothing about yours.

Updated on October 7, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. We represent only the spouse who hires us. Do not send the draft or any confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.