I agree I do "Marriage Agreements" by Ruthiey Paulson

 An Overview of Marriage Agreements

On a sunny July day, just before lunch, my dad, Harlan Paulson, was sitting next to me outside of our  house as I interviewed him about marriage agreements, or agreements to arbitrate. I had two pieces of paper in front of me, legal stuff, with places to sign at the bottom. I turned on the recorder and we began.
"These agreements are technically called pre-nuptials. Most pre-nuptials are about who's going to wash the dishes and all kinds of things like that so most christians really diss pre-nuptial agreements. They [the couple] are often trying to contemplate how they're going to divide things up again when they get divorced. This is different. This is an attempt to keep marriages together."
Having signed one himself with my mum before marriage, I asked him where and how he had decided on the importance of this. A big part of it, he explained, was the ease of divorce nowadays. Partly thanks to Ronald Reagan's support of no-fault divorce
when he was governor in California, divorce can be as easy as an aggrieved party entering into court and saying they didn't want to be married anymore. No-fault divorce opposes christian teaching in saying that you did not have to prove adultery, show desertion or any other cause to dissolve a marriage.
The marriage agreement could help short-circuit quick divorces. It's an agreement to arbitrate. Arbitration is binding; you agree in advance that whatever the chosen third party decides will be the end result. Arbitration agreements are commonplace with lawyers and at the doctor's office. They'd prefer to have arbitration than go to court. This particular marriage agreement appoints the church or some other organization to decide who would arbitrate. In a lot of ways, the church is a good appointment. The church has a spiritual interest in your life; they can counsel and discipline you, withholding the Lord's table if you are obstinate.
My dad wanted to emphasize that marriage is not a private decision between two people. It needs to be publicly done, witnessed by other people because it affects others.
"Marriage is like a three-legged stool, it is supported by the three spheres that God has ordained. The sphere of family, the sphere of the church and the sphere of the civil government, all three have interest and input into a marriage. The family, of course, for the next generation and for the passing on of inheritances and carrying on the name. The church for purity of the body and in a similar way to the family, with hopes for the next generation and marrying in the Lord. The stability of families is therefore really important in both of those. The state really does have interest in it too, they have different inheritances that have to be taken care of, they have to decide who's responsible for the children, who the guardians are and a number of other things like that."
He went on to point out that young people going into marriage probably aren't going to be concerned about this, believing that the intense love they have for each other will safeguard their marriage. Parents and pastors should encourage and require young people to think seriously about signing a marriage covenant. One pastor wrote it into the vows of couples he was marrying.
"In society in the past, our word was our bond and all these things were said in the marriage ceremony, but then the state comes along and puts things in writing things that are different, so we have to put what we mean in writing as well. We cannot just leave it as words and witnesses in the air when the state has made a whole different definition."
There are two kinds of agreements. One is if you agree to mow someone's lawn. If you fail to do it and he wants to prosecute, it's your word against his, if there are no witnesses. The other is being serious enough to put down the covenant down in writing. This is especially critical in marriage, since there's all kinds of liberal or constructionist people who are redefining marriage. Even before homosexuality, as far back as thirty years, people have been remaking marriage, primarily by expanding the faults that could make for fault-based divorce.  For hundreds of years the rabbis said a fault as little as the wife burning her husband's toast was grounds for divorce.
In his own life, his marriage agreement affected the permanency and way he thought about his marriage. I learned that my mum used it at least once when she felt he wasn't willing to receive counsel. Although she didn't actually pull out the paper, she talked to an elder and they received counsel. Even if the disagreement had been more serious, he wouldn't have thought about divorce. Knowing that the arbitration agreement was in place defined his actions for him. He'd already agreed to be in it for the long haul. I, for one, am glad he did.