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How to Get a Prenup: Everything You Need To Know About Prenuptial Agreements

No one wants to go into marriage discussing divorce, but unfortunately if it ever gets to that point, you’ll wish you had.

So, my fiancé and I decided to bite the bullet and talk about prenuptial agreements.

Over the last few years, as my fiancé worked hard in school, I worked my butt off growing my career. I now out earn him by four times, own a house, and am planning to buy an investment property this year.

That being said, I wanted to protect my assets going into the marriage, and define how we would handle any future assets.

Luckily, he agreed and we hashed out what we wanted our prenuptial agreement to look like.

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Here’s what a prenuptial agreement really is

A prenuptial agreement (“prenup”) is made between a couple who chooses to marry. It defines assets owned before marriage and what will happen to those assets in case of a divorce. What most people don’t realize, is it actually discusses liabilities too. So if your partner has student loan debt, medical debt, or other forms of debt, a prenuptial agreement will establish how that debt is tackled in the marriage and in case of a divorce.

Online prenups vs. local lawyer

There are numerous online prenuptial services, like HelloPrenup, that are much more accessible and affordable. HelloPrenup only costs $599 so we were tempted to use it but we ended up going with a local lawyer. Even though HelloPrenup uses state specific forms, after reading a few blogs I decided it was safer to get a local lawyer. Some bloggers wrote that an online prenup wouldn’t always hold up in court because you didn’t actually have a lawyer representing you.

While HelloPrenup does have an official notary platform notarizing the documents, we liked the formality of having a court reporter and a licensed lawyer present with us over Zoom.

When it comes to money and marriage, we didn’t want to mess around!

If you’d also like to work with a local lawyer, start by asking your friends and family for recommendations on divorce and family lawyers. If that doesn’t work, then google “Divorce and Family Lawyer” and read their reviews! Don’t let the name of their field scare you, they really should be called marriage lawyers!

When to get a prenup

I made the silly mistake of procrastinating and waiting until about one month before our wedding to call lawyers. We actually got turned down by some lawyers who were weary of creating a prenup so close to a marriage in fear of it being done “under duress”.

I would recommend setting a prenup appointment well in advance, but at the very least, 2 months before the wedding!

What kind of prenuptial agreement did we get?

We decided that the most fair agreement would be what the lawyer called a “standard, restrictive prenup”. Basically, anything that is in our individual names will stay in our names, whether we own it before or during the marriage. Anything we purchase in both of our names will be split equally in case of divorce.

This would keep things straightforward and wouldn’t leave any room for ambiguity.

The other question that needed to be addressed was alimony. There are many options for how alimony would work, but we again opted for the simplest route where no one would owe alimony in case of divorce.

Now, a prenup is not set in stone. If both parties decide to modify it in the future, they can. So if one of us ends up being a stay at home parent, we can modify our agreement to include alimony.

If you have student loan debt or other debt, that is something that you can also discuss with your lawyers. Luckily, we both are debt-free so we are just focusing on assets instead of liabilities in our discussions.

How the prenup is created

I used McKinney Law Group here in Tampa and they were wonderful to work with. They sent us two questionnaires to fill out about our financials and how we wanted our assets split up. The attorneys went over the different definitions and answered any questions we had.

They reviewed all of our documents within a few weeks and sent us the final prenup to peruse before scheduling a Zoom meeting with my partner, a court reporter, and the lawyer.

The Zoom meeting took about 30 minutes and we did it on Tyler’s lunch break with my friend as the witness. They ran through a list of questions with both of us, including whether or not we were coerced into this and how long we’ve known each other, etc. It felt like we were taking a pop quiz in school!

Overall everything was pretty seamless. The most tedious part was pulling all my different bank statements for the list of assets.

Final Cost

Drumroll…

The final cost for my prenup was $2,500. We ended up only using one attorney who technically represented just me, but if you were to get an attorney to review your partner’s paperwork and represent the other party, the costs would double.

I personally didn’t see much reason to have another attorney look over the paperwork. We read it together and understood what we were doing. There was no need to shell out an additional $2,500 for our situation.

Keep in mind my partner’s assets are pretty straightforward and the way we wanted to divide everything was simple. But, if you and your partner both have a complicated list of assets, the cost would most likely go up.

We didn’t have much time to shop around lawyers, but perhaps we could’ve found a better deal. The few we spoke to all seemed to cost about the same. Some charged hourly whereas others charged a flat fee like ours.

So, should you get a prenup?

If your financial status is pretty similar to your partners, you might opt out of getting a prenup. I would still urge you to discuss these questions with each other so you’re on the same page going into the marriage. Ask your partner about alimony, child support and how you would be splitting assets and liabilities in case of divorce.

If you are in a significantly different financial situation from your partner then I would encourage you to get a prenup. Like I said earlier, no one goes into marriage expecting a divorce, but it’s better to be prepared and discuss your finances with a lawyer before getting married.

If you have any questions, comment them below!