Summer time weddings are in full swing and the height fall season is approaching, with September and October accounting for one-third of all marriages yearly, in line with The Knot. Whereas traits within the superb months to marry hardly ever change, ladies marrying in 2025 have basically totally different monetary profiles than earlier generations.
Right this moment’s brides are CEOs, startup founders, creators and model builders, engineers, physicians, actual property buyers, scientists, and small enterprise house owners. They’ve negotiated advanced fairness packages, are rising companies and types, and have acquired vital property, with ladies outpacing males achieve superior post-graduate levels and buying single household properties. They may reap the advantages of an estimated $80 trillion “Nice Wealth Switch” of inherited property from Child Boomer mother and father, a wave that can considerably reshape our financial system and monetary panorama.
However on the subject of the establishment of marriage, many people are nonetheless working by the principles of an outdated playbook that treats clear conversations about monetary planning as unromantic. It’s time for that narrative to alter. The truth is, the primary authorized expertise that each couple ought to have isn’t a will – it’s a prenup.
The trendy marriage paradox
Right here’s the uncomfortable fact: whereas ladies now out-earn or make the identical as their companions in practically half of marriages, with this share having roughly tripled over the previous 50 years, many are coming into marriage with much less monetary safety than they’d settle for in a enterprise partnership. We might by no means launch a startup with out fairness agreements or be a part of an organization with out understanding our compensation package deal. Why are any of us prepared to say “I do” with out a clear monetary framework?
The trendy marriage paradox has conditioned us to view prenuptial agreements as an instrument of distrust that represents planning for failure, moderately than success. This framing isn’t just basically flawed, it’s financially harmful.
This implies companies
After divorce, ladies expertise practically two instances the earnings drop (41%) in comparison with males (23%), creating long-term monetary publicity. For enterprise house owners and equity-holders, the stakes are much more vital: divorce can imply dropping management of an organization constructed from the bottom up.
Among the many prospects of our on-line prenup platform, First, roughly 50% of our prenup initiators are ladies. They arrive with an understanding that having an important monetary conversations earlier than marriage strengthens the inspiration of their relationships, moderately than weakening them. Dialogue about values, objectives, expectations, and private funds serves {couples} all through their union. These {couples} perceive that the prenup is a becoming a member of level, not a breaking level.
Trendy ladies have found that prenups provide one thing extra priceless than asset safety. They supply a strategic benefit and considerate framework for monetary partnership. Consider the prenup as a marketing strategy for the monetary way forward for a wedding.
Meet at the moment’s trendy bride
Right this moment’s trendy {couples} are utilizing prenups to handle scholar mortgage debt, defend household companies, make clear expectations about inheritance, and set up monetary boundaries round spending and saving. A instructor marrying an AI engineer may use a prenup to guard one’s pension whereas clarifying how they’ll deal with the opposite’s inventory choices. A contract designer may wish to guarantee their artistic enterprise stays separate property whereas constructing shared wealth with their advertising and marketing government companion.
I not too long ago spoke with Rachel, a artistic entrepreneur and expertise government who signed a prenup earlier than her April 2025 marriage ceremony. Her prenup wasn’t about maintaining property from her companion. It was about creating clear expectations for the way they’d construct wealth collectively whereas defending what every dropped at the connection, together with social media channels and enterprise concepts they dream up collectively or individually.
“I really like that we reside in a time the place prenups are being reclaimed by wealth-building, entrepreneurial ladies,” Rachel advised us. “Prenups aren’t nearly who will get the home or the automotive. As ladies, it’s time we take away the stigma round prenups, not only for us and our property, however for our companions and [their assets], too.”
Equally vital is Melanie, who advised me, “I didn’t need particular person monetary errors to change into our monetary errors.”
A Mindset Shift For Millennial and Gen Z {Couples}
Millennial and Gen Z ladies are approaching marriage with a basically totally different mindset. They’ve witnessed their mother and father navigate tough divorces with out ample safety. They’ve seen buddies lose companies or inheritance in messy separations. Importantly, they perceive that love and monetary planning aren’t mutually unique. They’re complementary.
This shift is especially pronounced amongst excessive earners. About 47% of newlyweds and engaged {couples} between the ages of 18 and 34 are actually contemplating prenups, recognizing that their monetary success requires safety, similar to some other priceless asset.
Normalizing prenups
The trail ahead requires us to shift our mindset to contemplate the prenuptial settlement as a normal software in cash administration and as important to profession planning as negotiating one’s wage or fairness in a job provide. This shift has already began to happen due to profitable, trendy ladies who’re demonstrating that monetary planning and romantic love can coexist harmoniously.
Ladies rewriting the monetary playbook for marriage will not be pessimists planning for divorce. They’re trendy, savvy optimists that imagine their relationships can deal with trustworthy and clear conversations about cash. These trendy {couples} usually tend to climate monetary storms as a result of they’ve began out by planning for sunny skies and wet days alike.
In a world the place monetary independence is extra inside attain than ever earlier than, defending that independence shouldn’t be egocentric. It’s sensible. And sensible folks deserve marriages constructed on readability, fairness, and mutual respect.
The query shouldn’t be about whether or not you’re planning for the worst. It’s about whether or not you belief your self sufficient to plan for the long run you deserve.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary items are solely the views of their authors and don’t essentially mirror the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
