Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This 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. What's so funny? You don't have any money. I make more money than you do. Yeah, give me the papers. I'll sign them.
But times have changed. Jennifer Wilson just reported a piece on prenups for The New Yorker.
Chapter 2: Why have prenups become more popular among millennials?
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.
So 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 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 Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy. Or movie star X or, you know, some gazillionaire on Fifth Avenue. When did that change? When 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 percent 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. I 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. That'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.
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Chapter 3: What factors led to the rise of prenups in modern relationships?
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. I 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 and who's the breadwinner or who's making more in a dual income family and who might have to kick a little bit over to 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. And it's not just rich people.
It's often people who are quite aspirational, people who want to be rich one day. 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 HelloPrenup 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. Once you both are aligned in an agreement, it auto-generates a prenup for you for $599. $600, not nothing.
And if you would like a lawyer to look over it, it's a little bit more expensive.
Jen, in your hands you've got a little box, but I don't think it's a ring.
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Chapter 4: How do millennials view marriage differently than previous generations?
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.
Wait, I said fully shared.
You said fully shared once. You were holding one finger up. 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 pot. 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.
I was, it's so funny, I was playing this game with the founder of Neptune and 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 what 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. 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.
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Chapter 5: What unique clauses are now included in modern prenups?
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?
I 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 are you going to save?
Who had the tuna fish salad? I'm not doing that. 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.
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Chapter 6: How can prenups help couples navigate financial discussions?
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. You 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.
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That was a fun game, by the way. It was fun. I really liked 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. Mm-hmm. 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, it 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. Yeah, I mean, most judges will not enforce it.
And is it calibrated over time?
I don't know what kind of accounting they're doing, but, you know.
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