Did Prince William get a prenuptial agreement before reserving Westminster Abbey for his marriage to Kate? The Fleet Street rumor mill says “no.” In England, it still just isn’t done. Financial planners on this side of the pond, however, say, “Dumb decision, Will. Remember what happened to mom and dad.”

Prenups set down how the income and assets will be divided if the marriage comes apart. In the U.S., they’re In. In England, however, courts didn’t enforce them until quite recently. British Judges divided disputed marital property as they thought fair. The only reason to write a prenup was to spark discussion, manage expectations, or maybe encourage a judge to give you a tiny break.

The British tabloids report that Prince Charles didn’t ask Diana to sign a prenup. His financial advisor, Geoffrey Bignall, has been quoted as saying that the princess “took him to the cleaners,” but you have to consider the source. Diana got a reported £17 million (about $6 million in 1996, the year of their divorce). That doesn’t sound like a clean-out, considering his family wealth and her position. The tabloids say that Charles didn’t ask Camilla to sign a prenup, either.

Last October, however, Britain’s Supreme Court unexpectedly changed the rules. The millionaire ex-husband of German heiress worth more than $163 million brought a lawsuit in London, trying to overturn their German prenup. He wanted more than the contract allowed. The court said, sorry, you get the deal you signed up for, and advised other British courts to honor prenups, too. Britain’s Law Commission, which advises on new legislation, will prepare a report to Parliament on whether to pass a law outlining how these contracts ought to work.

Unlike in England, prenups are enforceable in the U.S. In fact, they’re almost impossible to break, even if you were bullied into signing. The judge will say, “you knew when you agreed to the deal that you were marrying a bully, so suck it up.” You can potentially undo the contract only if your spouse hid assets or liabilities from you, so you didn’t realize your financial risks or how much you were giving up…. continue reading

Stay with your stocks, is the message that investors are getting from some key market and economic forecasters. They’re betting that the economy can stand up by itself, as the government cuts its budget and the stimulus programs gradually wind down.

Not that there isn’t plenty to worry about: high gasoline prices, unfinished revolutions in the Middle East, Japan’s nuclear meltdown, Europe’s ongoing banking crisis, simmering global inflation, and unsustainable U.S. debt.

If you had been able to foresee these events, you’d have rushed out of stocks many months ago – and you’d have been wrong. The market’s animal spirits, greased by stimulus from the Federal Reserve, kept propelling prices higher – up 25 percent since last September. Prices dipped in March, on the spike in oil prices, then rose again.

What the bulls see is rising numbers of jobs, stellar corporate profits, and inflation rising but not by enough to knock the expansion down. The U.S. currently looks like the strongest performer among the developed countries (Europe, Japan).

Market analyst Doug Ramsay, of the Leuthold Group, an institutional stock research service, thinks that stocks might be in a “bull market extension” – climbing 15 to 20 percent into 2012. He bases his forecast on Leuthold’s technical research into stock momentum…. continue reading

Are you planning on filing your last-minute tax returns electronically? Make sure that a crook isn’t secretly looking over your shoulder while you’re online. “The bad guys are always surfing for mistakes,” says Fred Touchette, senior security analyst for AppRiver, an Internet security company. “The weakest link in computer security is usually the individual user.”

The software programs sold for e-filing, such as TurboTax or H&R Block Software, are secure, Touchette says. It’s your own computer or the way you use it that could get you into trouble.

The IRS has been steering more taxpayers toward electronic filing, which is not only cheaper and more efficient but also less error-prone. The software programs make accurate calculations, prompt you to add missing information, suggest possible deductions, and can catch mistakes. They help speed your refunds, too.

Last year, 70 percent of all individual tax return were filed electronically. An even higher percentage is expected this year. If you’re joining the crowd this week, here’s how to keep your data super-secure:… continue reading

Opt out of marketing data bases! Do it now! And don’t give out any personal information in response to an email, even if it appears to come from your bank or favorite store.

Another major hacker attack last week exposed the names and emails of millions of consumers to cyber criminals — and you might be on the list. As a practical matter, you can’t get out of all of the massive data banks that hold your personal data. Even the names of people who opted out might be retained. But you can do your best to minimize your risk.

The latest breach occurred at a company called Epsilon, a division of Alliance Data Systems Corp. Epsilon holds the names, email addresses, marital status, credit data, and other personal information of 235 million people. It mines the names for personal shopping habits, interests, life changes such as marriage or moving, and credit capacity, and sends out targeted marketing pitches. If you get a 30 percent discount offer from Target, to take just one example, it probably came from Epsilon. The company broadcasts 40 billion email messages annually, to consumers it considers most likely to buy…. continue reading

Is your employer blindsiding you with your 401(k)? You might think you’re on track to retirement because your company enrolled you in the plan automatically. What they didn’t say is that they set you up to fail.

Auto-enrollment has been a great step forward, because it catches people who otherwise wouldn’t save. But, left alone, your contributions won’t build a nest egg even close to what you’ll need.

Who besides you will care if you run out of money when you retire? “Your children will,” says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Already, Baby Boomers complain about being a “sandwich generation,” busy taking care of kids and aging parents, too. If the Boomers themselves retire broke, they’ll stress family support systems to the breaking point. “We’re generations away from the time when taking in parents was a social norm,” Munnell says. For Boomers’ children, “It would come as a major shock.”… continue reading