What is a prenup? Cost, timing and where it fits

Somebody raises a prenup late, usually after the venue is booked. By then the calendar is full, and the one document that needs months has the fewest left. What a prenup is, what two lawyers charge to write one and where signing has to land are scheduling questions before they are legal ones, and scheduling is the part you already control.

What is a prenup?

A prenup, or prenuptial agreement, is a written contract two people sign before they marry that sets out how property, debt and spousal support get handled if the marriage ends. It is not a wedding document. It is a contract about money that happens to use a wedding as its trigger, and under state premarital agreement statutes it becomes effective on marriage and does nothing at all before that.

That trigger matters for planning. Sign in March, marry in September, and the agreement sits dormant for six months. Call the wedding off and it never takes effect, because the marriage is the only thing that switches it on.

This is general information about a planning task, not legal advice. A prenup is governed by the law of one state, that law varies, and the two of you need your own lawyers, one each, licensed where you live. Nothing below tells you what your agreement should contain.

What a prenup can and cannot decide

State statutes list the subject matter fairly tightly, and the list is shorter than most couples expect. Property, debt, support and the paperwork around them are in. Children are out.

Nevada's premarital agreement chapter is a fair sample of how these statutes read. It says plainly that the right of a child to support may not be adversely affected by a premarital agreement. The same sentence appears word for word in Florida's statute, because both descend from the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, a model law written for states to adopt.

The catch-all in those statutes covers any other matter that does not violate public policy or a law imposing a criminal penalty, which is where clauses about weight, infidelity and household chores tend to fail. A judge is not obliged to enforce a term about behavior.

Who actually needs one

Without an agreement, your state's default rules apply, and every state has them. Some states treat what a couple acquires during a marriage as community property; the rest divide it on an equitable distribution standard. A prenup is a decision to write your own rules instead of taking the ones already on the books.

Six situations account for most of the agreements that actually get drafted, and all six are about the shape of the money.

• One of you owns a business or a share of one. Valuing it during a divorce is the expensive part, and an agreement can set the method years in advance.
• Either of you brings significant debt. Student loans and a prior mortgage do not change hands at the ceremony, but what happens to them later can be written down.
• One of you has children from a previous relationship and wants specific property to reach them.
• There is an inheritance coming, or one already received. Keeping it separate is easier to demonstrate when it was documented first.
• The two incomes are far apart and one of you plans to stop working. Spousal support is one of the few forward-looking things a prenup can address.
• One of you owns real property in a state neither of you lives in.

None of that describes a couple with two salaries, a shared checking account and a car loan. For that couple the default rules are usually a reasonable answer, and the honest advice is that the money buys more somewhere else in the wedding.

What makes an agreement hold up

The statutes are brief about form and specific about failure. An agreement has to be in writing and signed by both people. It needs no consideration beyond the marriage itself, which is why nobody has to pay anybody a dollar to make it binding.

The grounds for setting one aside are the part worth reading. Florida's premarital agreement statute makes an agreement unenforceable if the challenging party shows it was not executed voluntarily, or was the product of fraud, duress, coercion or overreaching, or that it was unconscionable when executed and that person never received fair and reasonable disclosure of the other side's property and debts.

Translated into planning terms, five things have to be true, and four of them take time rather than money.

• In writing and signed by both of you. Notarization is standard practice, and some states want witnesses as well.
• Signed voluntarily. This is the element timing affects, and the reason a signature taken in the week of the wedding is worth avoiding.
• Fair and reasonable disclosure of what each of you owns and owes, exchanged before signing rather than after.
• Not unconscionable at the moment it was signed. Courts decide that question as a matter of law, years later, on the facts as they were.
• Independent counsel on both sides, or a written waiver where the state allows one.

Disclosure is the step that sets the schedule. It means account statements, loan balances, retirement account values, business records and appraisals wherever property has to be valued. Assembling that for two people takes weeks rather than evenings, and neither attorney can draft anything until it exists.

Where signing lands in the wedding timeline

A prenup is the longest-lead legal task in an engagement, and it competes for the same months as the venue search and the first vendor deposits. It is also the only one where finishing late damages the thing you paid for.

Those months are already spoken for. They overlap almost exactly with the venue deposit, the catering tasting and the invitation mail date on a standard twelve month wedding planning schedule, which is how the legal task gets pushed back and then gets rushed.

The size of the ceremony changes none of the arithmetic. A ten minute civil ceremony at the county clerk's office carries a date in exactly the way a 200 guest reception does, and the agreement has to be signed and finished well clear of that date either way.

Thirty days is not a statutory deadline in most places. It is a margin. It gives each of you room to read a final draft, take it back to your own attorney and refuse something, which is the record a court looks for when somebody later argues the signature was not voluntary.

The statutes do not set a date. They set a standard, and a judge applies it years later to whatever the calendar shows you did.

If the wedding comes sooner than the paperwork

A short engagement compresses the signing window rather than removing it. A couple who elopes on eight weeks of notice has room for one draft and almost none for negotiation, and pushing a document across the table in that state is the pattern a challenge is built from.

The alternative after the ceremony is a postnuptial agreement, signed during the marriage rather than before it. States treat postnups differently and some review them more closely, because the marriage is no longer what the agreement is being exchanged for. It is a real option, and a question for your lawyers.

The third option is to skip it. An agreement signed under time pressure by somebody who did not read it costs money now and fails at the only moment it was bought for.

What it costs, and why the quote is two numbers

A prenup is not one engagement. Each of you hires a separate attorney, each signs a separate engagement letter, and both bills are real. Couples price the first one and get surprised by the second.

Attorneys bill this work hourly against a retainer, or as a flat fee for a defined scope. The flat fee is worth asking for, because it converts the open-ended part of the process, two lawyers negotiating with each other, into a number you can put in a budget.

For what an hour is worth: the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for lawyers at $151,160 a year, or $72.67 an hour, across 864,800 jobs. A billed rate sits well above a wage, because the rate carries the firm as well as the person, so treat that figure as a floor and not as a quote.

Four things move the number: how many drafts go back and forth, whether a business or real property has to be valued, whether spousal support is negotiated rather than left alone, and how far apart the two sides start.

It is also a line that does not appear in the categories a wedding budget is usually split into, which is how it ends up coming out of the contingency, or out of the flowers, in the same month the catering deposit lands. Price it in the first quarter of the engagement and it stops competing with anything.

Ask each attorney at the consult for the fee, the scope it covers, and what happens if the other side returns a heavy redline. Get all three in the engagement letter before you pay a retainer.

The rest of the paperwork has dates on it too

The signed agreement joins a small stack of documents with dates. A marriage license is issued for a limited window and expires if the ceremony slips. The signed original needs a home, and both attorneys keep their own copies.

Most of that stack sits after the ceremony rather than before it, including changing a name after the wedding, which has its own order of operations and its own queue at the Social Security office and the DMV. The prenup is the one item that has to be finished first, because it is the only one the wedding itself makes binding.

Scan the signed agreement, keep the original somewhere other than the drawer holding the marriage license, and tell one person outside the marriage where it is.

Key takeaways

• A prenup decides property, debt and spousal support. It cannot touch a child's right to support, and custody is decided by a court later.
• Two people, two lawyers, two bills. Price both engagements before you commit to either one.
• Start 9 to 12 months out. Disclosure is the slow step, and nothing gets drafted until it is finished.
• Aim to sign at least 30 days before the ceremony. The margin is what makes voluntariness easy to demonstrate.
• Disclosure has to be fair and reasonable. A hidden account is the cheapest way to lose the whole agreement.
• If the engagement is too short, move the date, ask about a postnup, or skip it. A rushed agreement fails at the moment it is needed.

Frequently asked questions

What is a prenup in simple terms?

A prenup is a written contract two people sign before they marry that decides what happens to their property, debt and spousal support if the marriage ends. It takes effect when the wedding happens and does nothing before that. If the wedding is called off, it never switches on at all.

How much does a prenup cost?

There is no single price, because a prenup is two engagements rather than one: each of you hires and pays a separate attorney. Firms bill it hourly against a retainer or as a flat fee for a defined scope, and the flat fee is worth asking for. The number moves with how many drafts go back and forth, whether a business has to be valued, and whether spousal support is negotiated.

How long before the wedding should a prenup be signed?

Aim for at least 30 days before the ceremony date, and treat that as a margin rather than a legal deadline. Voluntariness is one of the grounds a court uses to set an agreement aside, and a signature taken in the week of the wedding is the easiest version of that argument to make. Some states add their own minimum review period on top of it.

How long does it take to get a prenup?

Plan on several months from the first conversation to a signed document. Retaining two attorneys takes a few weeks, financial disclosure takes several more, and drafting plus negotiation takes as long as the two sides need. Starting 9 to 12 months before the wedding leaves room for all three without a scramble at the end.

Do both people need their own lawyer for a prenup?

Separate counsel on each side is the standard, and some states require it before certain terms are enforceable. One attorney cannot represent both of you, because your interests in the document are opposed by definition. Where a state permits waiving independent counsel, the waiver has to be in writing, and it becomes one more thing that can be argued about later.

Can you write your own prenup without a lawyer?

Templates exist, and a written agreement signed by both people meets the basic form requirement in state premarital agreement statutes. The risk is not the form. It is the disclosure, the state-specific terms and the enforcement standard, which is where a document gets tested years after anybody remembers writing it. Surviving that test is what the two attorneys are being paid for.

What can a prenup not include?

A prenup cannot adversely affect a child's right to support, and state statutes say so in those words. Custody and parenting time are decided by a court on the child's best interests whatever the document says. Terms that violate public policy or a criminal statute are out, and clauses about personal behavior are not what these statutes were built to enforce.

Do you need a prenup if you don't own much?

Often not. Without an agreement your state's default rules apply, and for a couple with two salaries, a shared account and a car loan those rules are usually a reasonable answer. Prenups earn their fee where there is a business, an inheritance, a large debt, children from a previous relationship, or a plan for one person to stop working.

Does a prenup still work if you move to another state?

Usually, though the answer depends on both states, which is why agreements commonly name which state's law governs them. That choice of law term is one of the things state premarital agreement statutes expressly allow. If a move is likely, raise it with your attorney while the document is being drafted rather than after it is signed.

Is it too late to get a prenup after the wedding?

No. The equivalent after the ceremony is a postnuptial agreement, which covers similar ground but is signed during the marriage. States treat postnups differently and some review them more closely, because the marriage is no longer what the agreement is being exchanged for. It is a real option rather than a consolation prize, and a question for your own lawyers.