Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Although in Washington under our community property laws your pre-marital student loans are considered separate debts for which your future spouse would not be liable, there are situations under which a court may order him to be partly responsible for them. That said, to lock things up even more and make it even less likely that this could ever happen, your instinct is correct, that a pre-marital agreement is what you would want.

In pre-marital agreement negotiations, in order to ensure that it is upheld at a later time, it is extremely important that both sides have attorneys representing them. This way, later on down the road, if the couple wind up in a divorce situation, the court will not strike or ignore the pre-marital agreement on the basis that one spouse was unrepresented by counsel and therefore they should not be held liable under it now.

To that end, if you would like help with this, I can represent one of you and even make recommendations of another lawyer to represent the other party.