Prenup attorney in San Francisco

Where a San Francisco couple gets the marriage licence

San Francisco County Clerk, City Hall, Room 160, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, San Francisco.

This is the office for the county, and a licence is a county document rather than a city one.

Both of you go in person, with identification, and the licence is issued the same day. It is valid for ninety days, so there is no advantage in getting it early, and no relationship between the licence and the agreement: neither depends on the other and they are handled by different people at different times.

Where a San Francisco case would be heard

Civic Center Courthouse, 400 McAllister Street, San Francisco. It serves the Unified Family Court.

In the city, on McAllister Street. San Francisco is a combined city and county, so the clerk and the court are both its own and neither is somewhere else.

A premarital agreement is not filed with any court

Naming a courthouse on this page invites an obvious question, so here is the answer: nothing is filed. A premarital agreement is a private document between two people. It is not lodged with Civic Center Courthouse, not recorded anywhere, and no judge sees it when it is made.

The courthouse matters for one reason only. If the agreement is ever disputed, that dispute happens in a dissolution, and the dissolution is heard there. Knowing which building that is tells you whose procedures would apply and where the papers would go, years from now, in a situation nobody is planning for.

The practical consequence is that there is no filing fee, no queue and no waiting on a court for anything. What takes the time is the periods before signing, not any court.

A premarital agreement must be in writing and signed by both parties. It does not require consideration. Fam. Code, § 1611

What you would actually do

Nothing in a San Francisco matter requires you to come to an office. The whole matter runs through your own portal: you answer the questions about what you own and what you owe, the schedules are prepared and served, the agreement is drafted and served, the periods run, and the signing opens when they have.

This office is in Burbank. Clients across California are acted for the same way, and where you live changes the licence office and the courthouse named above and nothing else about how a matter is run.

The two things worth knowing before you start are that the fee is flat and quoted before anything begins, and that nothing is charged until the fee agreement has been read and signed.

This office quotes a flat fee before any work begins, and the written fee agreement states what it covers, when each part is earned, and your right to a refund of anything not earned.

The requirements do not change from city to city

Nothing about what has to happen before signing varies by city. It is the same in Los Angeles as in Bakersfield, and it is set out in full on the pages linked below rather than repeated here.

Two are worth naming because they decide the timetable more than anything else. There is a period before signing, counted in calendar days, and there is a second one attached to the written advice to seek independent counsel. Where they start on different days, the later of them governs.

On an agreement signed on or after 1 January 2020, at least seven calendar days must pass between the day a party is first given the final agreement and the day that party signs it, whether or not that party has a lawyer. Fam. Code, § 1615, subd. (c)(2)(B)

A premarital agreement is not treated as signed voluntarily unless the party against whom it is later asserted was represented by their own independent lawyer when they signed, or was advised to seek one and expressly waived that right in a separate signed writing. Fam. Code, § 1615, subd. (c)(1)