But when it comes to the institution of marriage, many of us are still operating by the rules of an outdated playbook that treats transparent conversations about financial planning as unromantic. It is time for that narrative to change. In fact, the first legal experience that every couple should have isn’t a will – it’s a prenup.
The modern marriage paradox has conditioned us to view prenuptial agreements as an instrument of mistrust that represents planning for failure, rather than success. This framing is not just fundamentally flawed, it’s financially dangerous.
Modern women have discovered that prenups offer something more valuable than asset protection. They provide a strategic advantage and thoughtful framework for financial partnership. Think of the prenup as a business plan for the financial future of a marriage.
Today’s modern couples are using prenups to address student loan debt, protect family businesses, clarify expectations about inheritance, and establish financial boundaries around spending and saving. A teacher marrying an AI engineer might use a prenup to protect one’s pension while clarifying how they’ll handle the other’s stock options. A freelance designer might want to ensure their creative business remains separate property while building shared wealth with their marketing executive partner.
I recently spoke with Rachel, a creative entrepreneur and technology executive who signed a prenup before her April 2025 wedding. Her prenup wasn’t about keeping assets from her partner. It was about creating clear expectations for how they’d build wealth together while protecting what each brought to the relationship, including social media channels and business ideas they dream up together or separately.
“I love that we live in a time where prenups are being reclaimed by wealth-building, entrepreneurial women,” Rachel told us. “Prenups aren’t just about who gets the house or the car. As women, it’s time we remove the stigma around prenups, not just for us and our assets, but for our partners and [their assets], too.”
Equally important is Melanie, who told me, “I didn’t want individual financial mistakes to become our financial mistakes.”
A Mindset Shift For Millennial and Gen Z Couples
Millennial and Gen Z women are approaching marriage with a fundamentally different mindset. They’ve witnessed their parents navigate difficult divorces without adequate protection. They’ve seen friends lose businesses or inheritance in messy separations. Importantly, they understand that love and financial planning aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re complementary.
The path forward requires us to shift our mindset to consider the prenuptial agreement as a standard tool in money management and as essential to career planning as negotiating one’s salary or equity in a job offer. This shift has already started to take place because of successful, modern women who are demonstrating that financial planning and romantic love can coexist harmoniously.
Women rewriting the financial playbook for marriage are not pessimists planning for divorce. They are modern, savvy optimists that believe their relationships can handle honest and transparent conversations about money. These modern couples are more likely to weather financial storms because they have started out by planning for sunny skies and rainy days alike.
In a world where financial independence is more within reach than ever before, protecting that independence is not selfish. It is smart. And smart people deserve marriages built on clarity, equity, and mutual respect.
The question is not about whether you’re planning for the worst. It is about whether you trust yourself enough to plan for the future you deserve.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
