Yay, you’re getting married! You and your boo are making big plans to say super cute things to each other in front of all your friends and family. You’ve already said yes to your partner in crime. Now it’s time to say yes to the benefits of a prenup.
But wait…aren’t prenups the kiss of death for a relationship? If you are planning for the end of the relationship, doesn’t that mean that you don’t believe in the relationship? Doesn’t it mean that you secretly, deep down, don’t actually love and trust your partner?
No. No effing way, in fact. Prenups are a form of protection for your relationship, helping ensure that you and your partner are taken care of no matter what happens.
Wait, Why Would Anyone Get a Prenup?
Prenups have a bad reputation, mostly because we live in a world that thinks of marriage as a fairy tale, where your eyes lock across the room and you skip off into the sunset where there are never any problems.
But anyone who knows someone that is already married knows that marriage, especially marriage over DECADES, takes work, compromise, and patience. You will fight with your partner! You will sometimes get the cold shoulder from them! And sometimes your partner will be the most annoying person you know! And maybe, your marriage might not last forever. About 40% of marriages end.
The benefit of a prenup is that it allows you to make a plan for the bad times while you’re in the good times.
It’s a road map that your happy, totally in love selves make for the possibility that there might one day be a version of your relationship that sucks.
It’s not a curse to get a prenup. It’s a gift from your current selves to your future selves. Much like saving for retirement is your current self setting up your future self for a rich life, a prenup allows current you to make plans for IF your relationship ends.
What are the Pros and Cons of a Prenup?
The benefits of a prenup are many! I wouldn’t say there are any negatives, but there are details to be aware of before anyone signs any papers.
You can use HelloPrenup to build your own personalized prenup with your partner. You can each have your needs and wants put into the prenup so that you BOTH have legal protection.
7 Benefits of a Prenup for Women
Makes distributing assets much more transparent and fair
Women are still underpaid by a LOT in the US. One of the benefits of a prenup is that you can take any kind of pay or wealth disparity into consideration. If one person in the relationship takes time off work to care for children, or is in a lower paying career, you can write into the prenup how assets should be distributed. Meaning, if you take time off work and thus away from your earning potential, in a prenup you can write out how your partner will compensate you for those years in the event of a divorce.
Encourages honest and open communication before marriage
Money is the number two reason for divorce in the US. It’s something most couples fight about, and fight about consistently. Creating a prenup comes with the gift of financial transparency. You can put all your cards on the table so that you know what your partner is working with, and they know what you’re working with. This allows you to enter the marriage in a place of financial transparency, and as a team.
Ensures protection from debt
Say your partner went to law school and has $110,000 in debt. If you get divorced and you don’t have a prenup, you could be legally responsible for paying that debt back. No thank you! You can write into a prenup who is responsible for what debt. Joint debt like a mortgage for a house you both bought together can be split equally in half, or you can write in details about how one partner can buy the other out.
Distinguishes the difference between pre-marital and marital assets
I’m an aggressive saver and investor. That means when I get married, I’ll have more in investments than my partner will. And I can use a prenup to distinguish between the money I saved, earned, and accumulated BEFORE we got married from the money that I earned, saved, or accumulated AFTER we got married.
Say I save $100,000 in my IRA before I get married. I can write into the prenup that this money AND IT’S FUTURE EARNINGS, is always and forever totally mine. That’s right; I can put into the prenup that the interest earned while we were married is still just mine.
Provides protection for children
Since we’re thinking about the future anyway, let’s think about kids! You can write into a prenup inheritance rights for future kids. If you’d like to leave your house to your two kids and not to your partner, you can put that into a prenup.
Protects any small business assets
Maybe you built a business while married. Without a prenup, your partner can claim ownership of that business. A prenup can lay out clearly who the business -and it’s profits- belong to.
Makes for a smoother divorce process, or in the instance of a spouse’s death
Ultimately, the benefit of a prenup is that you can make a plan to protect yourself with your partner when you are in a good place with each other. For couples with complicated family structures (such as a second marriage, or adult children who might want to inherit) prenups can also help smooth things out if your spouse passes. With a clearly defined prenup, you know what assets are yours, which can make it easier to grieve.
If you’re feeling ready to get you and your boo a prenup, you can use HelloPrenup to build your own personalized prenup. It’s a supremely easy process, and much less expensive than the traditional way of getting a prenup.
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