When my dad died his life insurance policy was supposed to name my sister and me as the beneficiaries according to his divorce agreement with my mom. It turned out he had changed the beneficiary to his new wife. I was a teenager, and this was my first time learning that there’s no authority out there making sure people stick to their legal agreements. It seemed bizarre to me that the only mechanism to enforce an agreement is to go through the legal system after an agreement is broken. Surely lots of people don’t even mean to break their agreements, right? When my husband and I got married we first signed a prenuptial agreement. By that point I’d already learned that it was up to us to make sure we upheld the terms of our own agreement. We didn’t have an authority figure reminding us how to title our accounts and property, paying attention to where we deposited paychecks, or making sure we maintain life insurance, as we’d agreed to do.