I recently saw an article that suggested most people today are signing prenups before getting married. What are people’s experiences? Are your kids who are getting married doing this?
Mine did not but I imagine the older you are and the more you own at time of marriage certainly makes a difference.
When I got married everything we owned fit in a small u-haul pulled by a used car and we were both just starting careers. Not exactly pre-nup material.
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D was 24 and SIL was 25 when they married ( HS sweethearts). They were both working modestly paying jobs and didn’t really own anything, so no.
For people marrying later with assets such as real estate, inheritance, etc. I would definitely recommend.
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If either of my S’ signed one, they haven’t shared it with me. It’s really none of my business. I haven’t heard them mention friends doing it either, though I could definitely see some of older S’ friends doing it. Some of them come from extremely wealthy backgrounds.
In my kids’ cases, both got/are getting married in their mid 20s. None of them have significant assets, though I’m pretty sure my kids have more at this point. However, DIL1’s family I’m all but certain have far more wealth than us. If their family wanted S to sign one, I would have been fine with it too. To each their own.
We didn’t sign one when we got married. I was 21. H was 25. I had $500 to my name, which was $500 more than H had.
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I didn’t. But I got married at 26 and neither of us had much in assets and we both earned about the same.
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I know it was discussed but decided against. One of mine works for a Family law firm and felt in our state it wasn’t as valuable as it might be in another. In our state anything you bring into the marriage is yours, anything earned or acquired doing marriage is community property. Gifts or income earned on investments that are sole and separate property shouldn’t be commingled. That’s a simplistic description but it’s how my kids view it. I don’t see any of mine moving to another state.
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We mentioned it to S but no idea whether he chose to do it or not. They married at mid-30s & S had significant assets but they had been together 8+ years by the time they were married. She had owned a house in DC (which she sold), so she is also a saver/investor. Neither had or has any debt.
They seem pretty aligned on finances and are pretty happy together. We figure it’s their business, not ours so after mentioning it briefly to S we never brought it up again.
S is likely to inherit from us. H inherited from his sister. I inherited from my folks. We commingled our inheritances.
H & I never had one. He had real estate but negative cash flow. I was earning more than him when we married & more savings. It didn’t matter for us. All my sibs are married to original partner. Only one of S’s cousins is separated, all the rest still married to original partner.
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My D did not. She was 28, he was 31.
My two kids and my nephew are all the same age, and all got married within 8 months of each other.
Nephew and now wife had bought a house together about 3 years before they got married. They did have a contract between them for that because her father gave them $100k as a down payment and wanted that protected. The agreement included a buy out clause. I think that dissolved upon marriage. I don’t think they have a new pre-nup. They make about the same amount (both engineers) and now have a baby. They are both quite frugal. She is from a wealthy family and he’s not exactly a pauper either.
D1 is poor as a church mouse. They do not have a pre-nup. Her husband pays for almost everything. I don’t care how they spend their (or his) money, but I wish she knew more of what they are spending, saving, will need. He makes a lot more and also is in the Nat’l Guard so has that pay too.
D2 was about equal in pay with her husband but he leaped ahead. They own a house (and have for a while) but otherwise keep big item spending (cars, skis, some trips) separate and their savings separate, but both are big savers. I think they split household expenses and joint trips equally.
My daughter’s good friend from college (all the same age too) was engaged, daughter was MOH, did the whole bachelorette party, showers, bought dresses, etc. Boyfriend (or BF’s mother) insisted on a pre-nup sort of last minute (if you ask me). Bride was willing to sign, but not with the terms BF(or mother) insisted on. He is an engineer and she works in hotel marketing, so he made more but I think they were splitting living expenses, each had a dog, etc. The pre-nup had things like she had to pay half the expenses of any child, return to work after pregnancy, that his 401k was his, etc. etc. Although some of the stuff wasn’t even legal like the 401k funds post marriage or her having to pay half the child’s expenses if they divorced (Umm, you can’t waive the rights of the unborn children), we all knew that she wanted to have children and stay home with them (so shouldn’t he have known?). Well, they postponed the wedding and then cancelled it and broke up, her taking her dog and he bought her out of the house.
He has 2 brothers and one fiancee signed the pre-nup and the second walked away, so Mamma is 1 for 3. Mamma was very controlling through the whole dating relationship so I wasn’t sad to see her (or the BF) go. The kids all went to college together and the bride definitely got all the friends in the breakup. He gets to keep all his money and his mother.
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To be fair, another way of looking at this is that everybody who gets married does have a prenup - if they didn’t write one for themselves, they are using the one their state wrote for them in the event of their divorce.
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But that could be a fluid set of rules, especially if they move to a different state.
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Unless one brought more into the marriage, why would you need one ?
It’s up to my kids whether they have one or not, but what is coming from is protected in a trust.
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per Google: About 53% of engaged or married Americans under the age of 45 have signed a prenuptial agreement. This is a big jump from past years, rising from roughly 34% to 41% for younger adults in earlier polls.
In general, I think inheirited money is protected… IF not co-mingled. So for example, if used toward buying a house… funds could become part of marital property.
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You’ve never been involved in a nasty divorce!
In non-community property states, you can agree to split assets in different ways, to split debt. You could agree, for example, to contribute 50% of disposable income into a family account but keep the rest as separate property and investments. If you keep really good records, a divorce court could find that reasonable. If one person in the marriage blew through their 50% but the other one saved or invested theirs, a court could find that reasonable and not split it all 50/50
One could also bring more debt into the marriage and a judge could find that marital income should not be used for that. In reality, most everything gets merged at some point. My brother brought a lot more into his second marriage and she brought a lot of debt. After they moved twice, all that house equity he had was co-mingled and she got half of it. If they had had a pre-nup he might have been able to prove their agreement was for his equity to remain his.
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I have never heard of a single younger couple doing this and I live in a relatively well off part of the world. I don’t move in the right circles I guess. I think you are talking about older people, or a class of people who hire $100,000 private college advisors and are perhaps not here on CC 
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The couple that called off the wedding over the (lack of) pre-nup was 2 years ago, so I think they were about 28? and had been working about 5-6 years. He is an engineer so I’d guess making about $150k? If he inherited money from his not that wealthy parents it would have been his alone.
Maybe someone in his family had been screwed in a divorce or they knew someone who was so insisted on a pre-nup? I think bride made a lucky escape although she was crushed at the time. I think it did help her to know the other brother’s fiancee also refused to sign and walked away.
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Our son (26) owned a house when he married, had significant savings, and will come into an inheritance from both us and another source. She (25) was still in school and working at Publix. No school debt between them. No prenup.
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This is the statistic I also read which made me wonder what people on CC are seeing with people they know getting married. Obviously, many people who sign prenups do not tell others (including family) about them.
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A couple of childless 25 year olds with no assets and similar incomes? Sure, skip a prenup. Many other situations? I wouldn’t make a decision so quickly
Though there is no current candidate, I could see my son doing it. He just bought his first home. He’ll likely own at least one more property before he gets married. He won’t have a huge income, and his plans for his future would be severely damaged if he was forced to surrender realty assets or hard-earned sacrifices-made-for savings in a divorce.
When I was in my 20s I worked (and saved) when I wanted, took year(s)-long work sabbaticals when I wanted. I dated a woman whose income far outpaced mine. She discussed marriage and I brought up a prenup as a way to protect her, not me. We ended up not marrying, but we stayed in touch and when she got married, I made sure she had a prenup.
IMO, prenups are more important for “regular” income people than for the wealthy. Someone with a trust fund, multiple investments, and multiple homes will continue just fine without a piece of their pie. Someone with one home, an $80K/yr income, and a modest 401K could be left in a very precarious position if they had to sell the home they bought prior to the marriage and surrender half their savings+retirement in a divorce. Imagine going from a pre-marriage 15yr-old mortgage of a 3BR house of $1500/month to post-divorce having to pay $2600 rent for a 2BR apartment. And losing half your retirement account at age 47. Honestly, for someone with an income at the USA median ($45K-$75K) and no significant inheritance on the way, there’s no way to regain that.
Prenups are all the more important for single parents. Prenups just make sense
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