Prenups Don’t Mean Lack of Trust in Spouse
Does having a prenup mean you don’t trust your spouse?
So as the founder of Prenups.com and someone who has his own prenup, you can probably guess how I’m going to answer this question. First, if you are someone who believes that having a prenup means you don’t trust your spouse — I get it. I really do. Prenups have a bad reputation because of how they were normally used 30 and 40 years ago, and how a certain percentage of people use them today. The idea is this: You’re rich. You’re in love and you want to get married. You think your fiance is only marrying you for your money, so you have him or her sign a contract that says “If we get divorced, you keep all your money, and your spouse gets nothing.” If that’s what you believe a prenup is, then it makes sense that you think that people only get them because they don’t trust their spouse. And in fact, if you get a prenup that says your spouse gets nothing and you get everything if you get divorced, then maybe it’s true that YOU don’t trust your spouse, but that’s not what most prenups say.
Here’s the truth — a prenup is a contract just like any other contract. There are good prenups and bad prenups just like any other contract. For example, an apartment lease is a contract. You’d never say that all apartment leases are evil, right? It depends on what’s in the contract, right? If your apartment lease says if you’re a day late with the rent your landlord can kick you out that same day and keep all of your furniture, that would probably be a bad contract. Luckily that’s not what most apartment leases say.
It’s the same concept as a prenup. It depends on what you put into it. You can draft a prenup that says no matter what happens, we’re both going to keep what we came into the marriage with plus any inheritance either of us get, and split everything we accumulate together 50/50. Or we keep our own retirement accounts but split the equity in our house. Unfortunately, those aren’t the prenups that get reported on in the news or by Hollywood tabloids — so even today many people think that prenups are only for the super-rich folks that don’t trust their gold-digger fiancés.
Ok, so we’ve established that prenups are just contracts, and whether they’re fair or not depends on what’s in the contract. Let’s go one step further — you know what else is a contract? Getting married. Getting married is a contract. That’s right getting married is a contract, and it might be the most important contract you’ve ever entered into. Unfortunately, you’re not required to read this contract or sign it — you don’t even get a copy of the agreement you’ve entered into.
Today, many people get married without a prenup — so under the default marital contract — and both spouses work. And so today you can have a situation where the husband and wife both earn 100K a year, and the wife saves half of her paycheck in retirement and savings accounts every month while the husband spends his money on liquor and gambling and doesn’t save a dime. Under the default marital contract, the wife often has to split her savings and retirement with the husband at the end of the marriage. What that means is, more often than not, the default marital contract will be unfair in your particular situation. I mean — what are the chances that a contract written in 1880 is going to be a perfect fit for your relationship today?
Getting married is a financial contract whether you choose to put it in writing or not. Getting a prenup just means you’re choosing to customize your financial contract with your spouse to something that makes sense for you — for how you choose to combine your finances, for your particular situation, taking into account what you both bring into the relationship, whether you both plan on working or just one of you, or whether you plan to have kids, whether you’re older, whether you’re a spender or a saver, and a thousand other different things that make us all unique. And you can avoid some of the unintended consequences that come with signing a one-size-fits-all contract that was written 150 years ago.
So no, having a prenup doesn’t mean you don’t trust your spouse — it means you and your spouse trust each other to come up with a plan for your marital finances more than you trust your state’s government from the 1800s.
