Does Every Marriage Need a Prenup?

0:02This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. A co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

0:12This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In olden times, meaning about a decade ago, asking your intended spouse to sign a financial agreement, a prenup, carried with it a whiff of scandal, I think. This was a plot line from Seinfeld. George Costanza asked his fiancée Susan to sign a prenup, hoping she'd get so mad that she'd be the one to call off their wedding. A prenup? Yeah.

0:44What's so funny? You don't have any money. I make more money than you do.

0:54Yeah, give me the papers. I'll sign them. But times have changed. Jennifer Wilson just reported a piece on prenups for The New Yorker. And during her reporting, she found that younger couples now embrace prenups wholeheartedly for a whole complicated mix of reasons. So, Jen, what got you interested in writing about prenups in the first place? You know, I just noticed that suddenly they were everywhere. They were all over TikTok. There's this really prominent financial influencer named Your Rich BFF. Her actual name is Vivian, too. And she did this video, you know, what's in my prenup and what's in my purse.

1:37So for a prenup, we went 50-50 on everything that we brought to the marriage, 50-50 on everything we'd earned during the marriage. And the only exception was a 100 % carve-out of the equity in my business. You know, I sort of thought all the comments would be kind of mocking her or, you know, calling her privileged. But everyone was very supportive. You know, everyone needs a prenup these days. Okay, wait a minute. When I was young, the only people that got prenups were, you know, Aristotle, Onassis, and Jackie Kennedy. Yeah. Or movie star X or, you know, some gazillionaire on Fifth Avenue. When did that change?

2:12When did that start to change? What really changed things was no-fault divorce. So, you know, by the 1980s, when millennials were being born, most states had adopted no-fault divorce. So 25 % of millennials grew up with parents who were divorced or separated. So, you know, one of the people I interviewed was this woman who calls herself the prenup coach. Her name is Kaylin Dillon. She's a financial advisor in Kansas. And she said, you know, this generation just doesn't believe in marriage in the same way. They don't trust it. They want, you know, they want everything in writing. I mean, and everything.

2:47I did not know all the things that could go into a prenup. One person who's really made divorce law glamorous, if you can say that, is Laura Wasser. She's a celebrity divorce attorney. She represented Kim Kardashian in her divorces. She's also an advisor for Hello Prenup. And she recommends that couples get a prenup or at least consider getting a prenup because the conversations about money and about, you know, what the laws, the existing laws already are can be really educational. And here's what she told me about that. What I say is everyone should have a conversation about a prenup because so many people say, oh God, you're getting a prenup?

3:28That's so unromantic. That's like pre-negotiating your divorce. Why do you want to enter into a contract that governs your marriage? What they're not thinking about is they already are entering into a contract that governs their marriage. And so even having those pre-prenup discussions where you go, okay, we're getting married. And from the day that we get married, November 18th forward, every dollar that I make is 50 cents yours. And they also don't know my retirement account that I'm going to contribute to during the marriage. You're going to get half of what I contributed during the marriage if we split up.

4:01They don't know that's the law. So they're getting married if they don't have a prenup conversation. They're getting married, entering into a contract that they may not like the terms of so much, even if they are young and just starting out. What are you seeing in those prenups? Like, you know, what does a millennial prenup look like to you? I think that they're probably better thought out. I think they're approached with less resentment. I think you have the millennials that I've done prenups for. It's kind of more of a level playing field rather than just one super rich old guy not getting his trophy wife to be able to take too much.

4:39I think we discuss in prenuptial agreements for millennials support issues a lot, spousal support or alimony, maintenance, you may know it as. I think that whereas before that was a hot ticket in terms of how much this person will actually need if we end up divorcing, this is much more let's take a look at what we're living on now, what our lifestyle is now and what that might look like if we split up.

5:09to the other one to keep that playing field level. That's Laura Wasser, a divorce attorney you spoke with. And Jen, in your reporting, you cited a Harris poll from 2023 that has 21 % of Americans saying they signed a prenup. That is up from 3%, just 3 % who said that in 2010. This is a huge change. So who's signing prenups now and who's not doing it? So, I mean, those numbers are really hard to verify because you only file a prenup in the event of divorce. So we don't exactly know how many prenups there are. Some lawyers I talked to told me they thought those figures were a bit high. But everyone agreed that they're doing more prenups, that prenups are way more common.

5:54And it's not just rich people. It's often people who are quite aspirational, people who want to be rich one day. You know, sometimes these are people with very little, and they don't have the money really to go to lawyers to get these prenups. They're actually using these new apps that have come out in the last three or four years. So they're prenup apps. What's the premier one? So Hello Prenup is one of the latest prenup apps where you answer a series of questions. Some of it's sort of basic financial stuff, like, do you have any student loan debt? Do you have a house that you bought before? You and your partner both answer these questions.

6:29You know, once you both are aligned in an agreement, it auto-generates a prenup for you for$5.99. $600, not nothing. And if you would like a lawyer to look over it, you know, it's a little bit more. Jen, in your hands you've got a little box, but I don't think it's a ring. It's not. But, you know, you could decide that you want to take the ring back after we play this game. That's the kind of thing. This is a game for couples who are contemplating, you know, whether or not to get a prenup, if they should get a prenup. It's sort of, it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be fun. It's called Fight Night.

7:07This is still in beta, the founder, Sol Lee of Neptune, warned me. Neptune is an app that helps couples make prenups. So they're very high tech. But this Fight Night is a new analog feature. Yeah, fight night, because the best relationships can handle the hard conversations. You'd be surprised. Go ahead. All right, the first card. Should we own more or less of crypto? How about no crypto? We're aligned. Okay. Oh, so you put it in this stack of aligned. Yeah, we're aligned. We're aligned. We're aligned here. Okay. If we could pick the gender of our children, would we? I would say no. No. We're aligned.

7:49Okay. These are a little bit trickier. All right. What I'm going to do is I'm going to. These darker cards are trickier. These darker cards. I see. These are called on three cards. Uh-huh. So I'm going to read the question. I'm going to read the question and then like three possible answers. Okay. And on the count of three, we're each going to put up a finger. So if you answer one, put up one. If it's two, et cetera. Okay. Money earned during the relationship is one, fully shared. Two, fully separate. Three, mixed. Okay, on the count of three. One, two, three, go. Okay, see, we're not aligned.

8:29Wait, I said fully shared. You said fully shared once. You were holding one finger up. Correct. And I have three fingers up. I think mixed. I played this game. What's the difference between shared and mixed? So the idea, if everything's fully shared, all our money is kind of in one pool, one pot. But mixed might mean, so in my mind, most of our money would be shared, but we might each have like a checking where we just kind of have, you know, discretionary funds. As somebody who's been married for decades, that way lies madness. But okay, no judgment to any listener. It's so funny. I was playing this game with the founder of Neptune.

9:08And she said like, you know, and I said three. and, you know, I said to her, I was like, I don't know why, but of all the things that I'm thinking of is that I don't want to have to pay for someone's super expensive gym membership. That's like a thing in New York. People are paying like$500 a month for these gym memberships. And I was like, I don't know, I just don't want that coming out of the marital pool. And she said, well, you know, some people would consider that, you know, a community benefit. And I said, wait, like, because what I... People talk like this. People talk like this. Because I get to, like, appreciate how this person looks after they've been at the gym.

9:43And I was making a joke. It keeps the BMI down. It keeps the BMI down. I was joking. And she was like, deadass. Wow. Yeah. Wow. All right. You want to do one more? Okay. Let's do one more. Okay. Fight night. Oh, this one is kind of fun. This is like a money values type question. At a group dinner where others get drinks, but you don't, you, one, ask to itemize the bill. Two, split evenly, but you're annoyed. Three, split evenly, it's fine. Okay, on the count of three. One, two, three, go. Three. Three. Okay, we're aligned. Yeah. Right, but you can see how the answer to this question, if it differs, you know, I mean, would you marry someone who says ask to itemize the bill?

10:28I don't think I would. No, it's too tedious. It's also just like you're going to sacrifice our friendships, our connections with this group of people over how much money you're going to save. Right. Who had the tuna fish salad? I'm not doing it. But I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's a thing if you have very modest means and you didn't drink and you're trying to save and fair enough. I mean, I think when you're doing this with your partner, you have a sense of that's the issue, if that's what's motivating it. But I think we also are, you know, I think in particular Gen Z, you know, they send a lot of Venmo requests.

11:03You know, you go on a group trip and, you know, there's a split-wise itemization. And so this does come up more often, you know, between couples. I'm speaking with staff writer Jennifer Wilson. More in a moment.

11:32That was a fun game, by the way. It was fun. I really like it. If you're now getting one of these things, other than your financial arrangements, what else is in there? So basically anything can be in a prenup except for anything related to child custody or to child support. But you can put anything in a prenup. They're not always going to be like some of the crazier clauses. You know, I talked to one lawyer who said that she's had clients who want, you know, in writing that they have to have sex twice a week or there's a financial penalty if they get divorced. Time out. Sex frequency is penciled in.

12:11Yeah. I mean, most judges will not enforce it. And is it calibrated over time? It's, I don't know what kind of accounting they're doing, but, you know. They're in for a big shock. You know, I heard one story of a couple who wanted it in writing. You know, if our BMI goes over 30, we have to pay a penalty of, you know,$50 ,000. BMI, their weight, as we gently say. I have a famous story about my client saying to me, you know, we've had all these discussions about how she's not going to work anymore after we have kids. And I'm OK with that. But I want something in there saying that she will lose the baby weight within a six month period of time.

12:51And I was like, bro, I'm not putting that in here because it is unenforceable. And yes, people can agree to anything. And if people both believe that they're going to stand by their word, you want to put that in there and it's motivational. Fine. If one person said, I didn't do it or I didn't lose the baby weight or I didn't, you know, stay with this maintenance of weight that I agreed I would and you took it to a judge, the judge would say, I can't enforce that. That's unconscionable. That's, again, public policy. No. So some of the other clauses that I've heard of, what's really popular right now is something called the social image clause.

13:25So millennials and Gen Z, you're talking about digital natives. They're very aware of social media and how social media could kind of ruin your reputation and career. So they have clauses saying, you know, if you post negative content about your ex, you have an old T, you know, and you can set the penalty. It can be anywhere from$5 to a million. And you don't actually have to have that much money. There's also something called an embryo clause. So, you know, my generation, we're having children later. More people are using IVF. So there are clauses, you know, about, you know, how are we going to divide the embryos if we get divorced?

13:59Who's going to pay for storage fees? But also what's come up is, you know, what about relationships with AI chatbots? You know, can you have an emotional affair with a chatbot? One of the divorce attorneys I interviewed for the piece said, you know, she's told her clients, listen, you can absolutely subpoena a chatbot. And, you know, she said, I tell all my clients, be careful what you start confiding, how much you start confiding. You start telling that chatbot more than you're telling your spouse. It can be considered micro cheating. It's almost like an extended project you've been carrying on these past months, which have been combined the financial and the personal and so much.

14:38Now, on this story, when you came to the end of the reporting and the thinking and the writing of it, do you think in your own life you'd get a prenup? So one of the things that divorce attorneys will tell you is that, listen, even if you don't have a prenup, you do have a prenup. because there are the laws that exist, you know, wherever you are, you know, that governing how, you know, assets are split in the event of a divorce. If you're in California, it's 50-50. If you're in New York, it's, you know, equitable distribution. There already is a kind of contract in place. I think that I'm okay with the laws that are already on the books.

15:16But I do think that this is a great thing to think about. Like, I did find it really educational. I didn't know that, for instance, if your partner takes out a car loan, like let's say your partner has like a midlife crisis and like buys some convertible. Without your consent. Without my consent, but only their name is on the car. If I benefit from that debt, like, for instance, if I, maybe I take it for a spin every now and again. Like, that means it's a marital debt. Is there any way to know who's benefited most from this trend? I mean, men or women or, I mean, what do we know about that? I mean, I think that, you know, these, we're talking about millennials and particularly Gen Z.

16:04These aren't people who've been married super long yet, so we don't exactly know what the effect is. But I think the intended effect is that it will benefit women more than existing laws. So, for instance, Hello Prenup has something called an equalization clause. So if you are a woman who's left the workforce to raise small children, you can assign, for instance, a dollar amount in the prenup that says, you know, for every year I stayed home with the children, I would be awarded this much money or a greater percentage of the assets. New York law is already supposed to consider those things. That's what equitable distribution means.

16:44And so I am sympathetic, even though I don't think I would get a prenup, I'm sympathetic to people who do because I do think it's an expression of anxiety. It's an expression of, you know, fear that the social contract is just frayed, that policy, that, you know, public policy but also corporate policies are just not where they need to be. And so they're kind of like a privatized solution to this problem. It's a symptom. I mean, however funny some of the details are at times, it's a symptom of, not to get too grand about it, but larger politics and larger forces at play, no? Of course. I mean, so millennials, you know, we tell these jokes about avocado toast, but, you know, we are, we came of age in the Great Recession.

17:29And, you know, there's a lot of anxiety about the future. So who wouldn't want to try to have some modicum of control over what's going to happen? Well, Jen Wilson, it's a funny piece, but it's also a really thought-provoking piece. And I'm delighted to talk to you today. Thank you for having me. You can read Jen Wilson's piece, Why Millennials Love Prenups, at newyorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. If you're one of our new listeners on Iowa Public Radio, welcome, and I hope you'll join us next time.

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