When you’re busy building wealth, the last thing you expect is to be caught off guard in your personal life. In family law, we see it daily. The most successful people can lose big not because they aren’t smart but because they assumed wealth could shield them from personal disaster. It doesn’t. If anything, wealth adds fuel to the fire when things go wrong. And when you’re dealing with divorce, bad planning can cost you your peace of mind, reputation, and years of your life. Here are the five most common mistakes our Chicago, IL spousal support lawyer who has been in the business for over 15 years sees high-net-worth individuals make (and how to avoid them).
1. Skipping The Prenup Because “We Trust Each Other”
Prenups get a bad reputation because people think they kill the vibe. They don’t. They actually can save relationships if done right.
The biggest misunderstanding is that a prenup means you expect a divorce. In reality, a prenup is just an insurance policy. You get it hoping you never need it, but you’ll be glad it’s there if you do.
The most common refrain we hear is: “We love and trust each other. We don’t need one.”
Life changes. People change. The person you marry may not be the person you divorce. Without a prenup, divorce negotiations become longer, nastier, and more expensive, especially when millions are on the table.
Having one doesn’t mean you love each other less. It means you’re willing to be honest about expectations upfront, which ironically leads to fewer problems down the road!
2. Mixing Business And Personal Finances Without A Plan
This one is a silent killer, especially for entrepreneurs who own their own business.
When you’re scaling a business, it’s easy to blur the lines. Your spouse might help here and there, your personal accounts might fund some startup costs, or you just assume the business is yours.
Until divorce happens.
Courts don’t care who worked harder. They care about what’s marital property. If you used joint assets or mixed personal and business accounts, you may have unintentionally made your spouse a silent partner.
This is how people end up splitting businesses or paying out massive settlements just to keep what they built.
The solution is to formalize ownership, get agreements in writing, and stop assuming that they’d never go after the business. People change during divorce. Protect your life’s work before emotions get involved.
3. Blindly Trusting Verbal Agreements
Verbal agreements don’t hold up when things go south.
“We agreed I’d always keep the house.”
“She said she’d never touch the business.”
“We said we’d never go after each other’s retirement.”
Cool. Prove it.
Spoiler: You can’t.
Judges don’t operate on good faith or promises. They operate on paper.
We see people who swore they had an understanding lose properties, businesses, and assets they thought were safe all because they never put it in writing.
It’s not mistrust. It’s protecting both parties from future misunderstandings. The couples who get this upfront usually have less conflict later. The ones who don’t risk a courtroom battle.
4. Failing To Protect Reputation And Privacy
Divorce is a legal process, and it’s a PR nightmare if you’re not careful.
High-net-worth divorces tend to attract lots of attention. If you haven’t locked down privacy protections, you’re exposed.
Imagine private texts, business dealings, or personal skeletons becoming part of the public record. We’ve seen people’s professional reputations damaged not because of the divorce itself but because of what got revealed during the divorce.
Confidentiality clauses, non-disclosure agreements, and even pre-agreed social media rules can protect you.
If you don’t have these in place, it’s not just your assets on the line. It’s your name.
5. Ignoring Lifestyle Expectations
Courts don’t only look at numbers. They look at lifestyle.
If you’ve been taking annual trips to Aspen, driving $200k cars, and sending the kids to private schools, the court might decide your spouse is entitled to keep living that way even after the divorce.
Suddenly, you’re staring at large support payments you never anticipated not because you were reckless but because you didn’t plan ahead. And you now have a large divorce bill to tackle as well, particularly if you try to DIY your divorce.
Don’t underestimate how much your lifestyle can come back to bite you. A simple legal conversation today can help you avoid bankrolling someone else’s luxury lifestyle for the next decade.
We see wealthy and successful people thinking these problems only happen to other people daily.
Until it happens to them.
Plan ahead. The alternative is far messier. Contact a lawyer at Merel Family Law who has helped over 5,500 clients in situation just like yours.
