With a combined net worth of $550 million, it’s understandable why there’s been so much interest in Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s prenup and if they signed one to protect their multi-million-dollar fortune.
J-Lo and Ben met in 2001 on the set of their movie, Gigli, in which they played love interests. They started dating in 2002, around the time Ben also starred as the love interest in the music video for J-Lo’s song, “Jenny From the Block.” In November 2002, Ben proposed to J-Lo with a 6.1-carat pink diamond ring from Harry Winston, and the two got engaged. Two days before they were scheduled to tie the knot in September 2003, J-Lo and Ben announced that they had postponed their wedding.
In January 2004, J-Lo and Ben announced that they had ended their engagement after two years together. “I am confirming the report that Jennifer Lopez has ended her engagement to Ben Affleck,” J-Lo’s rep said in a statement at the time. “At this difficult time, we ask that you respect her privacy.” Fast forward to April 2021, and news breaks that J-Lo and Ben had reunited weeks after her split from her then-fiance, Alex Rodriguez. A source told Page Six at the time that J-Lo and Ben broke up in 2004 because they were in different places in their life, but were committed to making their relationship work a second time around.
“As hot and heavy as their relationship was, they were on very different paths at the end of it,” the insider said. “Jennifer was ready to settle down and have kids, but Ben wasn’t keen on giving up his bachelor lifestyle just yet. In the end, she got tired of waiting for him to come around — even though it broke her heart to end things.” The source continued, “Jennifer always saw Ben as the one that got away. She was crushed after they broke up, though she felt at the time that she had no other choice but to call off their engagement.”
J-Lo and Ben got engaged for a second time in April 2022 and married in July 2022 at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. “We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” J-Lo wrote in her newsletter, On the JLo, at the time. She continued, “They were right when they said, “all you need is love”. We are so grateful to have that in abundance, a new wonderful family of five amazing children and a life that we have never had more reasons to look forward to. Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at twelve thirty in the morning in the tunnel of love drive through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with. Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things-and worth waiting for.”
J-Lo and Ben had a second wedding at Ben’s estate in Savannah, Georgia, in August 2022. The wedding was attended by J-Lo’s twins, Emme and Maximilian, and Ben’s children, Violet, Seraphina and Samuel, as well as celebrities like Matt Damon.
So…do Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have a prenup? Read on for what we know about Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s prenup and what their divorce settlements were like in their past marriages.
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What is Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s prenup?
What is Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s prenup? J-Lo and Ben did not sign a prenup, according to a report by OK! magazine in July 2022. The magazine reported at the time that J-Lo and Ben decided not to sign a prenup to protect their combined $550 million net worth—J-Lo is worth $400 million, while Ben is worth $150 million—because they love is so “unconditional.” According to the magazine, Ben has had a “grounding” effect on J-Lo. “He doesn’t have that same need to show off or do things on such a big scale anymore and that’s helped to balance Jennifer out in that regard,” the insider said. “She gets a lot more pleasure out of the simple, smaller things than she used to.” The source continued, “Jennifer loves Ben for exactly who he is. Ben’s grown up an awful lot in the 18 years since they first split.”
While J-Lo and Ben didn’t sign a prenup before their 2022 wedding, The Daily Mail reported in 2003 that the couple did plan a prenup before their wedding that year, which was scheduled for September 2003 but was canceled due to “excessive media attention.” “When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate ‘decoy brides’ at three different locations, we realized that something was awry,” J-Lo and Ben said in a joint statement at the time.
A source told The Daily Mail in 2003 that J-Lo requested a “no-cheating” clause in her prenup with Ben after reports at the time that he spent the night with strippers. According to The Daily Mail, the clause stated that J-Lo would be entitled to half of Ben’s money if he was unfaithful to her. “The prenuptial agreement is to protect both their assets and says that if they do split they keep their own money, except if Ben cheats,” the source said at the time. “Then the prenuptial becomes void. That means that the divorce will be done the normal Californian way—with Jennifer being entitled to up to half of Ben’s earnings.”
The insider continued, “She is not after Ben’s money, she has plenty of her own. But what she does want is for Ben to give her some guarantee that he will never cheat again. By doing it this way she can save face by taking matters into her own hands and laying down the law. It’s a smart way for her to take control and not look like the woman scorned.”
The Daily Mail also reported that Ben agreed to J-Lo’s clause because he was “scared” it would be “over” between them. “Ben got scared when he thought it was over,” the source said. “He’s told her he will never set foot in a strip club and will never again attend parties that might turn wild without her. Jen had two choices – either swallow her pride and try to patch things up with the man she loves, or call off the wedding and lose Ben for ever. In the end she decided that spending the rest of her life with Ben was the most important thing to her.”
The report about J-Lo and Ben’s 2003 prenup came around the time stripper Tammy Morris told The Daily Mail that she and other dancers met Ben when he came into Brandi’s Exotic Nightclub in Vancouver, Canada, where he was filming a movie at the time. Morris told The Daily Mail that Ben came in with a group of friends, which included Christian Slater, his wife, Ryan, and Tara Reid. “It’s a night I’ll never forget and I’m sure one he’ll want to forget,” Morris said at the time. “He had this little boy look on his face.” Morris told The Daily Mail that Ben tipped the strippers and told them, “Keep this just between us.” Morris also claimed that Ben went into a private booth with her and four other dancers, where he kissed her while “his hands were moving all over my body.” Morris also claimed that Ben did the same with another dancer named Felicia, according to footage seen on a monitor by security staff. The night came a week before Ben threw J-Lo a surprise 33rd birthday party.
The Daily Mail reported that there were a series of “heated calls” between Ben and J-Lo—who was also working in Canada at the time in Winnipeg—after the incident. A source told the publication that J-Lo told a friend at the time, “It’s over. He’s made me a laughing stock.” The source continued, “I spoke with Jennifer and she was crying throughout the conversation. This must be killing her but she’ll get past it. There’ll be a wedding.” J-lo’s second husband, Cris Judd, also reacted to the news at the time. “Jen is getting back what she gave. It’s bad karma coming back at her. She’s getting a taste of her own medicine,” he told The Daily Mail. “I hate to see her hurt, but I was devastated when I found out about her and Ben, and now she knows how it feels. It’s payback time for Jennifer and I guess, in a way, she is getting what she deserves.”
Ben is J-Lo’s fourth husband. She was married to her first husband, Ojani Noa, from 1997 to 1998. Noa told The Daily Mail in 2022 that he received $50,000 and was able to keep his wedding ring in his divorce settlement with J-Lo. J-Lo was married to her second husband, Cris Judd, from 2001 to 2003. According to The Daily Mail, Judd received $11 million in his divorce settlement with J-Lo. “Jennifer doesn’t want her bedroom secrets splashed across the press, so she’s hedging her batch,” a source told the publication at the time. J-Lo was married to her third husband, Marc Anthony, from 2004 to 2014. J-Lo and Marc also share twins, Emme and Maximilian. According to Extra, J-Lo and Marc also didn’t sign a prenup. While the financial details of their divorce aren’t known, The Hollywood Reporter reported at the time that a judge awarded J-Lo and Marc joint custody of their two children, with J-Lo having the majority custody of Max and Emme and Marc taking care of them seven days a month. J-Lo and Marc also agreed that no child or spousal support was necessary and that they would both protect their children from paparazzi and reports. The judgment stated that both J-Lo and Marc recognized “that exposing the children to public spectacle and failing to shield the children from aggressive news organizations, photographers, etc. is not the children’s best interest.”
Ben, for his part, was married to his first wife, Jennifer Garner, from 2005 to 2018. Jen Garner and Ben share three children: Samuel, Seraphina and Violet. TMZ reported in 2018 that Ben and Jen Garner agreed to joint custody of their kids. The site also reported that Jen Garner and Ben didn’t sign a prenup before their weddings and shared their earnings throughout their 12-year marriage, which made the financial side of their divorce complicated.
Image: Courtesy of Celebra.
For more about J-Lo’s life, check out True Love by Jennifer Lopez. The 2014 memoir covers the “Jenny on the Block” singer’s career and personal life, from her start as a dancer to when she became a mom of two twins with her now-ex-husband Marc Anthony. In the book, which includes more than 200 personal photographs from J-Lo’s never-before-seen collection, the Selena actress writes about how “she confronted her greatest challenges, identified her biggest fears, and ultimately emerged a stronger person than she’s ever been ” to become the pop icon we know today.
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