Is it possible to keep your money after getting divorce in the US? If an F-1 student in the US, gets married with a US citizen, how can he protect his money if a divorce happened in the future? Specifically if he has a plan to establish a company and run a business after he graduated, how can he keep all the rights and money/stuck/profit he will earn from his company and won't share it after a probable divorce? Should they wright something like &quot;we promise we won't have any claims about each other's money after the divorce&quot; before they get married?
If an F-1 student in the US, gets married with a US citizen, how can he protect his money if a divorce happened in the future? Specifically if he has a plan to establish a company and run a business after he graduated, how can he keep all the rights and money/stuck/profit he will earn from his company and won't share it after a probable divorce? Should they wright something like &quot;we promise we won't have any claims about each other's money after the divorce&quot; before they get married? A prenuptial agreement is possible, and only an idiot or fool would draft one himself. An agreement drafted without legal representation would be highly likely to be invalidated in an effort to enforce it in the event of a divorce. Generally, both parties should have separate counsel. This must be accompanied by full financial disclosure by both parties, at least an opportunity to confer with legal counsel providing full informed consent regarding the rights given up in the agreement, and no undue pressure to sign it on the eve of a wedding. It cannot impact child support or child custody. It must also not be unconscionable to either spouse, either at the time it is executed or at the time of a divorce. If the company makes millions of dollars over the course of a ten year marriage, a court would not enforce the agreement according to those terms. In the case of an immigrant marrying a U.S. citizen, having a prenuptial agreement is usually a significant barrier to obtaining a spousal visa, which may be the only visa available after the marriage, on the grounds that this is considered a &quot;yellow flag&quot; that the marriage may actually be a sham for citizenship purposes only. A typical immigration officer who would read a post like this one or hearing an explanation for its purpose in an interview in those words would seriously consider denying a spousal visa or U.S. citizenship on the ground that the marriage is a fraud. The notion of a &quot;probable divorce&quot; in particular would almost certainly doom visa approval or a citizenship application, and would also, at the margins, make it less likely that it would be enforced at all. This is particularly true in the event of the very one-sided agreement proposed when you have a young couple that doesn't have established assets and children from prior marriages, or a pre-existing substantial amount of inherited wealth. Why else would a spouse agree to it?
On what grounds would you sue? Contract Well, I think that you would struggle to find the necessary elements (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) In particular, you would struggle to prove that there was intention to create legal relations on their part and possibly on yours. Are you able to identify in your "back &amp; forth" a clear, unequivocal offer and acceptance? Without knowing the details of the "back &amp; forth": I was hoping that someone at $organization might be willing to write an article explaining what you do, the history of the organization and how it works appears on the face of it to be a request for a gift; not an offer to treat. Promissory Estoppel If you don't have a contract then it is possible (IMO unlikely) that they induced you by your actions to commit resources (your time in writing) in anticipation of a reward (them publishing what you wrote). To be estopped they would have to have known that you were writing the article in the expectation that it would have your organisation's name in it, that they did not intend for that to happen and that they allowed you to invest those resources notwithstanding. If you can prove all of that then you can require them to do what they promised. The big difficulty I see in this is did you tell them that a) you were writing the article, b) it would have your name in it and c) you expected it to be published in that form. Copyright If they publish the work or a derivative work without your permission you can sue for breach of copyright. As it stands, they probably have an implied licence to publish and you would need to explicitly revoke that. Options There are two reasons to go to court: Money Principle If you are going to court for money then this is at best a risky investment and at worst a gamble: balance your risk and reward carefully. If you are going to court for a principle then I simultaneously admire your principles and think you're an idiot. Make a deal Explain that the reason that you wrote the article was a) to support their fine publication and the fantastic work it does (even if you don't) and b) to garner good publicity for your organisation. You understand and admire their strong editorial stance (especially if you don't) but the article involved a considerable amount of work and could they see their way clear to give you a significant discount (~80%) on a full page ad facing the article.
at what point can you just leave? Is it always technically illegal in the UK to leave without paying the bill? Probably depends on what you mean with just leaving. If just leaving translates I haven't paid and I won't pay (because of the hassle with the card) then that's probably Making Off Without Payment, section 3 Theft Act 1978 (Thanks @bdsl). Could the restaurant just force you to wait until close of business if necessary? What if they still hadn't fixed the payment system by then? I don't think a restaurant can physically detain you. Not even the 45 min you have been waiting. But if you leave without paying and without an agreement with them how &amp; when to pay they can of course call the police because again that looks very much like making off without payment. According to your post, they did provide a payment system (cash) which was working all the time and that moreover has the special status of being legal tender. if you don't physically have the cash on you, you can be sued? You can be sued if you don't pay your bill (assuming the bill itself is correct) when it's due. In order to avoid endless hassle of the "I tried to pay via x, but they wouldn't accept this." type, legal tender defines ways of payment of a debt that the creditor/seller must accept. In many legislations, cash in the local currency provides such a fallback if other payment methods fail. Note that cash payment is very robust against internet failure, broken devices and power The UK (+ US) meaning of legal tender is that the restaurant must accept this means of settling the debt (at this time, the food is already eaten but not payed) - but they don't have to accept any other means of payment. (Note that e.g. for the EUR-countries there is at least a recommendation to make acceptance of legal tender mandatory also in retail, which includes simultaneous exchange food vs. payment). The 2nd important implication of this is that any argumentation along the lines that no reasonable means of payment were available would be very weak. You are not required to have sufficient cash with you to pay your bill if you can reasonably assume that some other way of payment will be acceptable to the restaurant. I see that like a spare wheel for a car: if you have a flat tire (card doesn't work) having a spare wheel (cash) allows you to deal with the issue with less hassle than if you don't: change your wheel vs. having to get your car brought to a workshop and wait until they put on a new tire (pay cash instead of waiting for the card to work again or a tedious hunt for another payment method). I'd like to point out that card doesn't work and not sufficient cash at hand (or forgotten purse) is something that happens quite often in general (rarely for any given transaction, but we have lots of transactions). I'd expect a restaurant or a gas station to be experienced in dealing with that. In any case, there are several possibilities to resolve the issue short of "just leaving": The key to all this is communication: talk to the restaurant to find a way to resolve the issue. Reassure them that you're not trying to use the opportunity to defraud them - that's what they are afraid of in this situation. "Where can I find an ATM?" Possibly offering a deposit: "And would you mind looking after my bag [phone] until I'm back?" Possibly showing them your ID card (or similar, if you have any) so they have your address: remember that so far you are an anonymous customer for them: which means that suing you for the money would be somewhere between too expensive and impossible. If you are a group, it should be sufficient if only one of you leaves in search of cash. Credit cards can be charged in a total offline way (MOTO = mail order/telephone order) where the credit card data is entered manually by the seller: the restaurant may be able to charge your credit card if fill in a paper credit card payment form. They may accept settlement via other payment systems: paypal &amp; Co. wire the money via your online banking account (even if that doesn't give an instantaneous transfer, ask them if that's OK with them if you show/forward them the "transfer accepted message" for now) allow them to withdraw the money from your account via direct debit or something similar I'd not expect a restaurant to accept this possibility as they're probably not familiar with it and it means a lot of hassle for them with their bank to get listed to receive money that way. if you are in a region where cheques are still in regular use, that may be a solution as well. Restaurants like any other business can write invoices. They usually don't like this because their risk of having costly trouble to get the money is high. While your printout bill is technically an invoice already, it can be turned into an invoice (+ copy for them) giving your name + address and specifying how and when you'll pay. Which would keep track of how you (pl. = you + restaurant) decided to settle the bill under the peculiar circumstances. This works even in case of e.g. a power outage that prevents you from getting cash from an ATM in the neighborhood.
The court in France would not enforce a debt collection against you; but the person who owed you the money could - very easily. They would apply to the court in Scotland to enforce the judgement of the French court, the Scottish court would look at it, say "yup, the French court has made a decision", and then tell you to pay up. After that, the French company has the same range of options as a Scottish company would. I think (but I could be wrong), that the decision of the French court might well not go on your credit record - but the corresponding decision of the Scottish court would. Note that a CCJ doesn't go on your credit record if you pay within a short period (seven days?). In your case though, the right thing to do is Pay the amount you don't dispute you owe Wait for them to sue (they may well not). Defend the case (probably in writing, not in person). If you lose, pay up straight away (at this point the court has decided that you were wrong, and you do owe the money. As such you should pay.)
No, the only purpose of a money order is that it's effectively a form of guaranteed cash that only one person can access. There are no additional protections offered by it. However, given that you are amenable to paying a little extra to facilitate your payments, you may want to consider using a credit card in the future. Provided it's not an all the time thing, credit cards will withhold payments on your behalf if a vendor fails to fulfill their obligations. This means that you're not liable for the cost of the merchant sending you the wrong thing or ignoring your order requests. I've personally done this for several things: Hotel reservation that was borderline unsuitable for human habitation. When a vendor failed to send something I'd purchased. When proceeding with this, bear in mind that the credit card company will want you to make such a claim as soon as possible and to provide as much information as possible to support your claim. If you've e-mail chains, save them. If you've been communicating by phone, write down and provide a summary of your communications. If you have an issue, don't wait a month to raise the concern, do it within a week. Probably about once a year I need to do something like this. Generally what this does is it starts a dispute process whereby the credit company will contact the vendor to get their side of the story (usually they don't respond to them either). After 60 days, the charge is dropped from your bill and presumably the credit card company refuses to pay for the disputed item. Ultimately, this gets you the best possible result. You get your money back and you didn't have to go to court to do it.
the ratio of divorced men paying the ex wife versus divorced women paying the ex husband should more or less reflect the ratio of employed men vs. employed women Not necessarily. Some states (NC for example) look at more than just the work scenario that you propose. From § 50-16.3A: (1) The marital misconduct of either of the spouses. Nothing herein shall prevent a court from considering incidents of post date-of-separation marital misconduct as corroborating evidence supporting other evidence that marital misconduct occurred during the marriage and prior to date of separation; (2) The relative earnings and earning capacities of the spouses; (3) The ages and the physical, mental, and emotional conditions of the spouses; (4) The amount and sources of earned and unearned income of both spouses, including, but not limited to, earnings, dividends, and benefits such as medical, retirement, insurance, social security, or others; (5) The duration of the marriage; (6) The contribution by one spouse to the education, training, or increased earning power of the other spouse; (7) The extent to which the earning power, expenses, or financial obligations of a spouse will be affected by reason of serving as the custodian of a minor child; (8) The standard of living of the spouses established during the marriage; (9) The relative education of the spouses and the time necessary to acquire sufficient education or training to enable the spouse seeking alimony to find employment to meet his or her reasonable economic needs; (10) The relative assets and liabilities of the spouses and the relative debt service requirements of the spouses, including legal obligations of support; (11) The property brought to the marriage by either spouse; (12) The contribution of a spouse as homemaker; (13) The relative needs of the spouses; (14) The federal, State, and local tax ramifications of the alimony award; (15) Any other factor relating to the economic circumstances of the parties that the court finds to be just and proper. (16) The fact that income received by either party was previously considered by the court in determining the value of a marital or divisible asset in an equitable distribution of the parties' marital or divisible property. Take a look at § 50-16.1A also, where they define Marital Misconduct. Some may be of the opinion that alimony in NC is partly about punishment. (3) "Marital misconduct" means any of the following acts that occur during the marriage and prior to or on the date of separation: a. Illicit sexual behavior. For the purpose of this section, illicit sexual behavior means acts of sexual or deviate sexual intercourse, deviate sexual acts, or sexual acts defined in G.S. 14-27.1(4), voluntarily engaged in by a spouse with someone other than the other spouse; b. Involuntary separation of the spouses in consequence of a criminal act committed prior to the proceeding in which alimony is sought; c. Abandonment of the other spouse; d. Malicious turning out-of-doors of the other spouse; e. Cruel or barbarous treatment endangering the life of the other spouse; f. Indignities rendering the condition of the other spouse intolerable and life burdensome; g. Reckless spending of the income of either party, or the destruction, waste, diversion, or concealment of assets; h. Excessive use of alcohol or drugs so as to render the condition of the other spouse intolerable and life burdensome; i. Willful failure to provide necessary subsistence according to one's means and condition so as to render the condition of the other spouse intolerable and life burdensome.
What factors might a court consider in these circumstances? Is it true that anyone can just walk up and file a document in any case, with no requirement to identify themselves? If nobody admits to filing a document, it is likely that the court would grant a motion to strike the document and disregard it (revising a past ruling if the issue was raised within the six months allowed for reconsidering rulings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) or the state equivalent). A court document must, on its face, indicate a filing person and be signed to be accepted by the clerk of the court pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 or the state equivalent. But, if the document appears on its face to be legitimate, the person filing it will not generally be required to prove their identity. This happens even less often now than it used to (in the past, fake filings were often made by members of "sovereign citizens" movements to harass governmental officials), because in both the state courts were I practice and in federal court, documents must usually be filed with the court by lawyers via e-filing using a password protected e-filing account. Usually, only parties without lawyers and out of state lawyers who are still in the process of setting up their e-filing account file court documents in person. When documents are filed in person, they are also often delivered via courier rather than by the person who actually signed the documents. And, as a matter of practical reality, third-parties almost never file fake documents in court (in part, because there is usually someone present who is in a position to call attention to the fraud to the court). Still, this can happen, although it is very rare. I've only seen a situation like this come up once in twenty years of practice. (My account below oversimplifies some of the technical details of what happened to get to the gist of the points relevant to this question.) In that case, a lawyer was representing an ex-husband in a post-decree alimony modification case that had been appealed filed a bill of costs that she sought to recover on behalf of her client for the appeal, but she filed it in the wrong court (she filed it in the appellate court where she had represented her client, rather than, as required, in the trial court where another attorney had represented the ex-husband). When an order awarding him costs was not entered by any court, the ex-husband filed an (untimely) bill of costs in the trial court under his appellate lawyer's name using the appellate filing as a model, without her consent, by forging her name on the document. The lawyer didn't discover this (because she was retained only in the appeal and had never entered an appearance in the trial court and thus didn't have access to the trial court file, and because the court doesn't automatically send you a copy of your own filings) until I responded on behalf of the ex-wife to the forged bill of costs alleging that it was untimely which I served a copy of upon the ex-husband's lawyer as required by the rules. At that point, the ex-husband's lawyer immediately called me and the court to explain that she did not file this document and that it was forged (otherwise should could have been sanctioned for knowingly filing the bill of costs knowing that it was out of time and was frivolous at that point and could have been deemed to be responsible for further trial court proceedings of the ex-husband in the case, like keeping him appraised of deadlines, court rulings and filings by other lawyers in the case, since it appeared that she'd participated in the trial court case). Ultimately, the court declined to award the costs because they were filed in an untimely manner and because they were not really filed by the lawyer as claimed. So, the the court disregarded the bill of costs and denied this relief to the ex-husband. (If I was the judge, I would have hauled the ex-husband into court and held him in contempt of court sua sponte, but in this very busy court where hearings in divorcees are often scheduled two or more years out from the scheduling date, the judge didn't have the time to devote to issues like that.)
In general, no, if you make a will then you can revoke that will while ever you are still legally competent. Also, in general, this is a good thing. For your first example, you are ruling out all possibility of redemption - people change: a person who is a selfish a*$%^#@e in their 20s may be a kind, caring, dutiful and loving person in their 40s. For your second example, what if XXX gets demolished? Or you move cities? If you are truly serious, you can transfer all your assets to a trust, put your instructions in the trust deed and then nominate someone you really, really, really trust to be the trustee. This would prevent you modifying the instructions but you are then relying on the trustee interpreting them.