Should You Sign a Prenup? Here’s an Honest Answer

Love writes vows. Life writes surprises. A prenup protects both. 

PIN IT

Getting hitched and you’re starting to think, “Should I get a prenup?” This post is for you.

Somewhere along the way, asking for a prenuptial agreement became synonymous with not trusting your partner. It’s time to retire that idea entirely.

Picture this: two people deeply in love, planning a wedding, excited about their future together. Then one of them brings up a prenup — and suddenly the room gets cold. Feelings get hurt. Someone wonders, out loud or silently, “Do they even believe in us?”

This scene plays out constantly, and it represents one of the most frustrating misunderstandings in modern relationships. Because a prenuptial agreement has nothing to do with how much you love your partner right now. It has everything to do with the simple, uncomfortable truth that life is unpredictable — and that the person standing in front of you today, the one you trust completely and would do anything for, is not necessarily the same person you will be married to in ten, fifteen, or twenty years.

People change. That’s not cynicism. That’s just being human.

What Actually Is a Prenup?

A prenuptial agreement — commonly called a prenup — is a legally binding contract entered into by two people before they get married. It outlines how assets, debts, property, and finances will be handled in the event that the marriage ends, whether through divorce, separation, or death.

In plain terms: it decides in advance, while both people are rational, calm, and genuinely in love, what a fair outcome looks like if things don’t work out. As opposed to deciding all of that in a courtroom, years later, when things are painful and attorneys are involved and both people are operating from hurt and anger rather than goodwill.

A prenup can cover a wide range of things — who keeps what property, how debts are divided, whether spousal support applies and for how long, how jointly acquired assets during the marriage are split, and protections for children from previous relationships, among other things. What it cannot do, in most jurisdictions, is determine child custody or child support arrangements — those are decided by courts based on the child’s best interest at the time of separation.

PIN IT

Why It Matters More Than Most People Think

Here’s something worth sitting with: marriage is already, legally, a financial contract. The moment two people sign a marriage certificate, the law has opinions about their money, their property, and their obligations to each other. In the absence of a prenup, those opinions — established by state or national law, written by legislators who know nothing about a specific couple’s situation — become the default rulebook.

A prenup doesn’t introduce financial considerations into marriage. Those considerations were always there. A prenup simply allows both people to write their own rulebook instead of inheriting someone else’s.

And yet the stigma persists. Bringing up a prenup is still, in many circles, treated as an act of aggression — a signal of distrust, a hedge against commitment, a way of keeping one foot out the door before the wedding even happens.

That needs to change.

“Asking for a prenup isn’t saying you’re planning to leave. It’s saying you’re mature enough to acknowledge that you can’t predict the future — and loving enough to want both of you protected if it surprises you.”

The “I Trust You Completely” Argument Doesn’t Hold Up

The most common reason people resist prenups is trust.

“I trust my partner completely. Why would I need a legal document protecting me from them?”

And here’s the honest response to that: trusting someone completely, right now, in this moment, is a beautiful thing. Hold onto it. But blind trust in a future version of a person you haven’t met yet is something different. That’s not love — that’s a gamble.

The person you’re marrying today is real and known to you. The person you might be married to in twenty years has been shaped by two decades of experiences you can’t yet anticipate — career changes, financial stress, loss, growth, disappointment, transformation. People evolve. Values shift. Circumstances that seemed impossible become real. The divorce statistics aren’t full of people who didn’t love each other enough on their wedding day. They’re full of people who loved each other deeply and then, somewhere down the road, became incompatible strangers.

Trusting your partner doesn’t mean pretending that can’t happen. It means being honest enough to prepare for it anyway.

One perspective that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime: signing a prenup can actually be an act of commitment. It says clearly — I am not marrying you for your money, your assets, or what I might walk away with if this ends. I am marrying you for you. And I am so committed to this that I’ll put it in writing. Far from being a lack of faith in the relationship, a prenup signed in that spirit is one of the most honest declarations two people can make to each other.

What About People Who Didn’t Sign One?

Here’s a nuance worth acknowledging: not having a prenup isn’t a mistake in every situation, and it doesn’t mean a couple was naïve or reckless.

Many couples marry young, with very little to their names — renting a small apartment, driving old cars, working entry-level jobs, building everything from scratch together. At that stage, a prenup may genuinely not have much to protect. The financial picture is simple, the assets are minimal, and the energy is better spent building than preparing for loss.

But circumstances change. That same couple, fifteen years later, may have a house, retirement accounts, a business, significant savings — and a much more complicated financial picture than the one they started with.

At that point, the conversation about financial protection becomes far more consequential, even if it’s happening later than ideal. It’s never too late to have honest conversations about money and what each person’s financial reality looks like.

The couples who get into trouble aren’t the ones who skipped a prenup at twenty-two with nothing to their names. They’re the ones who accumulated significant assets, never talked about any of it, and then found themselves navigating a separation with no roadmap and a great deal of resentment.

The Wrap-Up: Should You Sign a Prenuptial Agreement?

Not everyone needs a prenup. But far more people than currently consider one probably should — or at least should have a genuine, unhurried conversation about whether it makes sense for their specific situation.

If there are significant assets on either side, previous marriages, children from earlier relationships, a business, an inheritance, or a meaningful difference in financial standing between partners — a prenup is worth serious consideration. Not because the relationship is fragile, but because the financial stakes are real and both people deserve clarity.

The goal was never to hope for a divorce. The goal is to go into a marriage as two whole, clear-eyed, honest adults — who love each other enough to have the hard conversations before they’re forced to.

That’s not unromantic. That might actually be the most romantic thing of all.