As the holidays approach, plenty of couples think about marriage. That includes older couples with kids, accumulated assets and debts and previous marriages behind them.

That’s why marriages for older individuals require a specific sort of planning. For couples making another effort at marriage, a prenuptial agreement can either set the groundwork for a new and trusting relationship or reveal that money issues may prevent the marriage from working well.

It’s actually not the agreement by itself that makes the difference – it’s the way the couple gets the agreement down on paper. When two parties sit down to formalize a prenuptial agreement with their respective mediators or attorneys, it requires both sides to make full disclosure of their current financial situation and long-term money goals.

Prenuptial agreements can be considerably more complex for couples making a repeat trip down the aisle. Money issues are not just a matter of full disclosure between two people – in remarriage, they can affect a much wider audience including aging parents, siblings and children and ex-spouses from previous marriages. In some cases, there are sizable business and personal assets gathered before the upcoming wedding day that must be protected.

It is always wise to consult a financial advisor such as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER ™ professional to set the ground rules for this process, though legal documents that hold up in court generally need review by respective family law and estate attorneys.

Here are the primary issues any remarrying couple should discuss ahead of a formal engagement:

Families first: Blended families bring their own financial complications. Indeed, if couples are bringing children from previous marriages into a blended family, it’s necessary to establish not only how they will be supported and educated, but also what percentage of the family assets they will be entitled to in case their biological parent dies. There may be alimony and other support arrangements already in place for ex-spouses and children from earlier marriages as well as elderly parents to support. All of these financial requirements need to be understood and spelled out beforehand.

Is there debt? And if so, how much?

The first money conversation should take place at a table with both sides showing their credit reports, savings, investments and debt figures – every dime. Both should start the process of talking about how that debt should be paid off – by the person who accrued it, or by both potential spouses. Couples also need to decide how they will handle debt going forward – jointly or separately.

What about investments?

If so, how will they be handled once the couple is married? Will these investments be held after the marriage is in joint tenancy? Are some of the investments promised to children, ex-spouses or other family members? From a tax or estate perspective, does it make sense to do anything specific with those assets before the wedding? And after the wedding – assuming debt is being dealt with – how will you maximize those investments?

What about company assets?

If one or both spouses run their own companies or partnerships, it’s a huge planning priority. That’s particularly true if other family members work for their respective companies. Depending on the size and complexity of the operation, some advisors might encourage couples to go through a formal valuation process of those assets to establish a base of wealth going into the marriage. A prenup could spell out who will get future percentages of those assets if the couple splits – this is particularly necessary if the goal is to keep the company in the hands of the founding family.

Handling daily expenses:

This is a universal question in any marriage, the first or the sixth. Couples need to agree on how they’ll share accounts and pay bills. The most common option is to create one joint account. Others work with three accounts – one joint and then one for each individual.

What about insurance?

Life, health, home, and disability – all coverage that singles hold separately needs to be reviewed and consolidated to make sure the couples and their families have adequate coverage after the wedding.

What about our estates?

Blended families with means produce a surprisingly complex estate picture. Engaged couples need to begin addressing this need before the wedding. A qualified estate attorney who understands the variety of estate issues affecting the assets, business issues and philanthropic commitments of blended families is a particularly good investment and can work with financial planners, tax attorneys and accountants to create an estate plan for the couple that makes sense and minimizes conflict among heirs.

What about retirement?

Retirement discussions go beyond money. Couples should decide how they want to live in retirement, whether they’ll continue to work and what will happen if one or both get sick. This is a particularly important discussion if one spouse is significantly older than the other and may retire years ahead. There needs to be a close look at what retirement assets have been accumulated by both parties and how they’ll be shared during the marriage and after the death of one or both of the spouses.

What about our tax status?

It makes sense for couples to consider their tax status before they marry, particularly if there are sizable business or personal assets being brought into the marriage or past tax liabilities. In any event, remarrying couples should involve a tax expert in all pre-marital financial planning.

November 2009 — This column is produced by the Financial Planning Association, the membership organization for the financial planning community, and is provided by Martin V Higgins, CFP, CLU, AEP, a local member of FPA.

In the seven months since it recorded its panic low close of 676, the S&P 500 has risen over 60%, and stands substantially higher than it did a year ago.No one seems to want to believe it.

Set aside for a moment the economic backdrop of this remarkable and even historic recovery (which, like the crash that preceded it, has no precedent since the 1930s). That discussion will get us nowhere, since no one can agree on what the economic backdrop is, much less on an economic forecast. Concentrate, if you will, on equities themselves, on the fortunes of the companies they represent…and on the rather odd response of investors to this marvelous upsurge in equity prices.

It would take a heap of skepticism to regard a 60% rise in stock prices as anything other than a new bull market, however one defines that term. And such skepticism certainly appears to be in bounteous supply. Consider cash, for example.

It will be forever remarked upon by future market historians (who will shake their heads in wonder that anyone could have missed this signal) that for several months surrounding the panic lows, the sum of cash in bank savings accounts and money market funds exceeded the total market capitalization of the Wilshire 5000. That is, Americans could have reached out and, using only their cash on hand, bought the American equity market in its entirety. This, however, they declined to do, as they had become convinced that the world was coming to an end.

When the world once again stubbornly refused to end, and instead the buds of spring returned to its trees, this wall of cash began to crumble. Indeed, something like $400 billion dollars has exited money market funds over these seven months. Surely this one-time surge is behind the equity market’s wild runup, say the skeptics; surely cash has shot its bolt.

This argument is extremely compelling, right up until you discover where the money actually went. Because it seems largely to have gone not into equities at all, but into bonds. Indeed, the well-regarded research firm Strategas recently noted that over the last three months eleven dollars in net inflows have gone into bond funds for every net dollar into equity funds.

This just makes sense. You may conclude—as apparently most people have—that the world is not ending without going so far as to actually become, in any real sense, optimistic. You just think the radiation levels have declined sufficiently that you can get out of near-zero-yielding cash equivalents, and inch your way cautiously up the yield curve. But that’s still money which hasn’t entered the equity market…yet.

Nor—and in the long run this may turn out to be an even more important point—is the individual investor’s cash the only cash around. Far from it. For as JPMorgan Global Wealth Management’s chief investment officer Michael Cembalest recently noted, “Cash and liquid securities on corporate balance sheets are at the highest levels since 1951.”

He went on to say that another measure of corporate cash flow net of capital spending and inventories has only been higher on a few occasions in the last half century. The recent spate of merger and acquisition activity—Abbott/Solvay, Unilever/Sara Lee, Dell/Perot Systems—may be the opening round in a major strategic deployment of this corporate cash hoard. For it is too easily overlooked that, even as the financial sector went into the recent crisis hideously overleveraged, the rest of corporate America (ex-autos) was keeping its powder bone dry.

And, as economic activity cratered, companies moved aggressively to protect those assets, through production shutdowns, inventory runoffs, and (most notably) layoffs. Mr. Cembalest at JPMorgan estimates that for every dollar of reduced revenue in the recent cataclysm, S&P 500 companies cut expenses by 88 cents. That’s precisely where the huge spike in unemployment came from.

But it’s also why just about every earnings report you’ve heard so far in the third quarter has been ritually prefaced with the phrase “better than expected.” It’s operating leverage, and we may see a lot more of it as production recovers. So much so that the emerging consensus earnings estimate for the S&P of $75 in 2010 looks a bit less far-fetched with each passing day—and each earnings report.

And still, no one seems to want to believe it. This is perfectly understandable if one panicked out of the market on the way down, and is still out. With the S&P 500 at 1100, everybody who fled the market since the first week in October of last year—when the $700 billion bailout bill finally passed, and global markets crashed to new lows in celebration—is under water. Can’t blame them for wanting to believe that this recovery is unsustainable: it’s about the only hope they’ve got left.

But of late one has begun to hear of people who stayed the course, suffered through the worst decline in our lifetimes, participated in the greatest rally—and now want to fly into cash and gold. Dow 10,000 has become for these people, in some mysterious way, the financial equivalent of the sound barrier. And one is hearing those stories a lot.

It is axiomatic, in Wall Street lore, that a bull market climbs a wall of worry. But this bull market is something special. It’s climbing a wall of sheer, systematic, single-minded and impenetrable disbelief.

Which, for some of us, becomes just one more powerful reason to believe.

© 2009 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Used by permission.