Millennials Embrace Prenups for More Than Just Money
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Here's your Money Briefing for Tuesday, February 16th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. In the past, prenuptial agreements were most common among young adults from wealthy families or couples entering second or third marriages. But attitudes toward money and marriage have changed, and many millennials, people born between 1980 and the early 2000s, are embracing the prenup.
Some of these millennials got used to their parents' divorce. They grew up in divorced homes, and they know how it can turn out, and they don't want to have to deal with that.
Coming up, we'll go through the personal finance issues and a few surprising other issues that are increasingly covered by prenups with our contributor Cheryl Winokur-Monk.
Why are more millennials signing prenuptial agreements?
That's after the break.
When it comes to tradition, millennials have shown a propensity to be, well, untraditional. And that applies to prenups, which many married couples sign to head off potential money disputes later on. Wall Street Journal contributor Cheryl Winokur-Munk has been looking into the financial and non-financial issues that millennials include when they dot their I's and cross their T's. And she's here to talk about it. Cheryl, thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me.
So most people probably think of a prenup as something that only wealthy people would consider. Is that still the case?
No, it's not. My research actually found that a lot of younger people, millennials in particular, are doing this even if they don't have a lot of money. And the idea is that maybe one day they will. And they're thinking of themselves more as financial roommates than they are as a couple making a life together financially.
Interesting. Financial roommates. So what's the reason for this change in thinking?
There's a couple reasons for it. Number one, some of these millennials got used to their parents' divorce.
How has growing up with divorced parents influenced millennials' views on prenups?
They grew up in divorced homes and they know how it can turn out and they don't want to have to deal with that. There are also a lot of societal realities that just weren't present years ago. People are getting married later. They may have a career and they may just be concerned about the high divorce rates and not really just wanting to share it in the event there is a divorce.
That's a big change in social attitudes. You know, prenups used to be almost taboo.
It's true. They're just not anymore. But divorce itself used to be taboo, right? And it's just not. It's a changing societal reality, good or bad. And in this case, it really does protect people. And one of the attorneys I was speaking to is saying that it's kind of like you're crafting your divorce before it happens. But to some extent, that's a protection, right? It's not saying you are going to get divorced, but if something does happen, this is the way we want it to be.
You know, a lot of other aspects of our lives have changed as well over the years. How are these societal shifts showing up in prenups themselves?
So one of the ways that we're seeing prenups change is the idea that couples are getting married later in life. And they may decide to have children later. So even if they're getting married earlier, they're having children later. Sometimes there's fertility issues or potential fertility issues that they're concerned about. So they're including in their prenuptial agreements provisions for directions for dealing with genetic material in the event of divorce. Another issue that when you're getting married later, maybe you have pets. And in the event of a divorce, you want to make sure that those pets are taken care of. And I'm a pet owner myself, so I kind of understand there's a lot of issues involved.
And it's a his and hers. You become really attached to the pets. And you want to make sure that pets, just like children, there's provisions for them in the event of a divorce.
And of course, the big issues covered by prenups tend to have to do with money. But younger generations often don't have significant assets or holdings to protect when they get married.
Well, it's tricky sometimes with younger people because it's hard to know what you're going to be making in 30, 40 years down the road.
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