Ten Years Later: Lingering Concerns about the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act
![handle is hein.journals/jleg19 and id is 133 raw text is: TEN YEARS LATER: LINGERING CONCERNS
ABOUT THE UNIFORM PREMARITAL
AGREEMENT ACT
by Barbara Ann Atwood*
[Tihe Uniform Premarital Agreement Act is a valuable tool with which
responsible adults can establish a distribution scheme each party deems fair. It's
like disability insurance, explains a Chicago lawyer. You hope you never have
to use it, but it's nice to know it's there. It should be the law everywhere.'
The U.P.A.A. makes no radical departure from the developing common
law; indeed, it incorporates the best principles of existing state laws on premarital
agreements .... It is time that responsible partners to a marriage be treated by
the law as adults, not as inexperienced and vulnerable children.2
In response to the unabashed sales pitch of the National Conference of
Commissioners on Uniform State Law3 (N.C.C.U.S.L.), more than one-third of
the states in the United States have adopted the Uniform Premarital Agreement
Act (U.P.A.A.) since its promulgation in 1983, and support for the Act may be
building.4 Because the U.P.A.A. is a uniform act, its pre-packaged format
* Professor of Law, University of Arizona College of Law. I thank Jamie Ratner for his
helpful disagreement with many of the ideas expressed in this essay, and for the comments offered
by colleagues at the University of Arizona Law College Faculty Seminar. I also appreciate the skillful
research assistance of Matt Erickson and Dave Caylor.
I. UNIFORM LAW COMMISSIONERS, Enforceable Premarital Agreements-An Idea Whose Time
Has Come, in THE UNIFORM PREMARITAL AGREEMENT ACT - INFORMATION PACKET (1990) (on file
with author).
2. UNIFORM LAW COMMISSIONERS, Why All States Need The Uniform Premarital Agreement
Act, in THE UNIFORM PREMARITAL AGREEMENT ACT - INFORMATION PACKET (1990) (on file with
author).
3. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Law (N.C.C.U.S.L.), during
its century of operation, has produced an impressive list of model acts and has literally dominated
the legal landscape in a few select areas. See generally NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF COMMISSIONERS ON
UNIFORM STATE LAW, 1990-91 REFERENCE BOOK 2 (1990). The UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE, UNIFORM
CHILD CUSTODY JURISDICTION ACT, and UNIFORM PROBATE CODE are notable examples of the
Commissioners' success in the state legislatures. At the same time, more than half of the uniform
laws produced by the N.C.C.U.S.L. have achieved no significant adoption. James J. White, Ex
Proprio Vigore, 89 MICH L. REV. 2096, 2103 (1991). The Commissioners lack of success with regard
to many of its acts is not due to lack of trying. According to an insider, [tihe Conference has two
sides - production and sales. It produces uniform acts and then tries to sell them to state legislatures.
Lawrence W. Waggoner, Tributes to William J. Pierce, 89 MICH. L. REV. 2079 (1991). As an elite
(unelected) legislature, the Commissioners generally lobby the lawmakers in their home states to enact
the uniform laws unchanged. See White, supra.
4. In a notably slow start, the U.P.A.A. was adopted by only three states in the first three
years following its promulgation, but it has now been adopted in some version in 18 states. See
U.P.A.A., 9B U.L.A. 31 (Supp. 1992) (Table of Jurisdictions Wherein Act Has Been Adopted).
Adopting states include Arizona [ARIZ. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 25-201 to 25-205 (1991)]; Arkansas
[ARK. CODE ANN. §§ 9-11-410 to 9-11-413 (Michie 1987)]; California (CAL. Clv. CODE §§ 5300 to
5317 (West Supp. 1992)]; Hawaii [HAW. REV. STAT. §§ 572D-1 to 572D-11 (Supp. 1991)]; Illinois
[ILL. ANN. STAT. ch. 750, para. 10-1 to 10-11 (Smith-Hurd Supp. 1993)]; Iowa [IOWA CODE ANN.
§H 596.1 to 596.12 (West Supp. 1992)]; Kansas [KAN. STAT. ANN. §§ 23-801 to 23-811 (1991)]; Maine](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jleg19&div=12&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Ten Years Later: Lingering Concerns about the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act
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