Oh man...You're helping me consider all the possibilities of what could happen and think about how I would prevent them from happening to me. And that's exactly what I hope to learn from this article. I keep wondering: How can I detect that a person would be, for example, the kind to quit his job and start mooching off me? If I could detect that before I married him, I'd know not to marry him. I keep thinking that if we're working through a pre-nup, and I see him resisting anything that's important to me--like any clauses about not being able to quit employment and rely on me, and no spousal support if they quit a job...then that resistance would be a hint that I'm not with a person I feel safe with. I'd be looking at their lifelong employment history and credit score and tendency to be self-reliant and bill-paying history and views about finances and their future plans for employment/retirement and whether they've developed a career as opposed to having a 'biding time' kind of job, as tho they're biding time til someone comes along to mooch off...I've already decided that I won't agree to buy mutual property--like a house--while married if the guy isn't willing to do a post-nup. If he said, "no post-nup", I'd say "then no buying a house together". One of my concerns has been marrying a guy with children. If I'm sharing a house and my husband passed and his kids think they're supposed to get their share of their inheritance a.s.a.p., then...I've got to have it built into the -nups that that won't happen, that I won't lose my home. I guess that means I'm a very pragmatic romantic. I want to have it 'all' in the sense that I can have this warm, trusting, healthy relationship, yet...not get shat upon if it turns out I trusted the wrong person...still trying to figure out what reasonable protections can be put in place so both of us are protected in the case that either of us becomes non-trustworthy. So maybe...we've all got to keep pooling our information about this...so thank you for sharing your story with me so I can learn more...