The prenup is no longer a signal that a marriage is doomed. For a growing share of couples, it is a calm, practical conversation held while everyone is still on good terms, which is the best time to have it.
The prenuptial agreement has shed most of its old reputation. For years it read as a rich person’s insurance policy, something signed by celebrities, heirs, and people on their third marriage. The numbers now tell a different story. In a 2022 Harris Poll, 15 percent of Americans who are married or engaged said they had signed a prenup, up from roughly 3 percent in 2010. Support runs broader still: about 42 percent of adults back the idea, and a third of unmarried people say they would likely sign one. The contract has moved from the margins to the wedding-planning checklist.
Who is signing now
The shift tracks how people get married today. Couples marry later, often with a decade of earnings, a retirement account, or a home already in their name. Many carry student debt or a small business they would rather keep whole. Second marriages bring children from a prior relationship and a wish to protect their inheritance. None of that describes a billionaire. It describes a thirty-four-year-old with a 401(k) and a side company, which is exactly the profile driving the rise.
The conversation has changed too. A generation ago, raising the topic could read as a sign of doubt. More couples now treat it the way they treat a will or a life-insurance policy, as a piece of planning that happens to involve marriage. Talking through who owns what, and what would happen to it, tends to surface money habits early, which is useful information for two people about to combine their finances.
Consider a common version of the story. One partner owns a two-person landscaping company built before the relationship, and the other is entering a second marriage with a child and a modest retirement account. Neither is wealthy. Both have something specific they want to keep clear, the business on one side and the child’s inheritance on the other. A short agreement that names those assets does more for that couple than any amount of hoping the subject never comes up.
What a prenup can and cannot settle
A prenup can sort out property division, assign responsibility for debts, set or waive spousal support, protect a business, and keep a premarital asset or a family inheritance separate. Done well, it turns the messiest part of a future dispute, which is figuring out what belongs to whom, into a question the couple already answered.
Debt is the part people overlook. An agreement can state that a student loan or a business line of credit stays with the spouse who took it on, which keeps one person’s earlier borrowing from turning into a shared problem. Spousal support can be set, capped, or waived within limits, though a court will still ask whether that arrangement was fair when it was signed and whether enforcing it would leave one spouse without support they genuinely need.
There are hard limits. A prenup cannot waive child support, and it cannot lock in custody or parenting time. Those decisions belong to the child’s best interest, and a court decides them at the time of the divorce based on the family in front of it. Any clause that tries to bargain away a child’s right to support is unenforceable, no matter how clearly it is written.
How Michigan decides whether a prenup holds up
Michigan handles these agreements differently from most of the country. A majority of states have adopted a uniform premarital agreement statute that spells out the rules. Michigan has not. Enforceability rests on case law and a handful of statutes, which the State Bar of Michigan has mapped in detail. A 1981 statute confirmed that a property contract made in contemplation of marriage stays in force after the wedding. A decade later, in Rinvelt v. Rinvelt, the Michigan Court of Appeals confirmed that agreements written in contemplation of divorce are enforceable as well.
Rinvelt also set out the questions a Michigan judge asks before enforcing one. Was the agreement obtained through fraud, duress, mistake, or the failure to disclose a material fact? Was it unconscionable when it was signed? Have the facts and circumstances changed so much since signing that enforcing it now would be unfair and unreasonable? Michigan courts treat these contracts as a special category, because the two people signing are about to marry rather than dealing at arm’s length. That comes with a duty of full financial disclosure that an ordinary business contract does not carry.
The Michigan wrinkle most couples miss
A valid prenup still cannot tie a divorce judge’s hands completely. In Allard v. Allard, a Michigan appeals court held that a trial court keeps its statutory authority to reach one spouse’s separate property when the rest is not enough for that spouse’s suitable support, or when the other spouse helped build it. Couples cannot contract that authority away. A Michigan agreement can settle most of what a divorce would otherwise fight over, and it still operates inside the court’s duty to reach an equitable result. People who treat the document as an ironclad wall are sometimes surprised by how much room a judge retains.
What if the wedding already happened
Couples who miss the window before the wedding sometimes ask about a postnuptial agreement, signed after the marriage. Michigan’s treatment here is narrower and less settled. Courts have upheld certain postnuptial agreements, particularly where the purpose was to keep a marriage together rather than to script the terms of leaving it. The same equitable limits apply, and the same rule about a court’s authority over separate property still holds. The cleaner path remains a prenup signed with time to spare.
What makes one survive
The same themes run through every enforceability test, so the steps to a durable agreement are practical rather than mysterious. Start months before the wedding rather than days before, since a contract signed under last-minute pressure invites a duress argument. Put real numbers on the table, because full disclosure is the requirement courts scrutinize most. Give each person their own lawyer, so neither can later claim they did not understand what they signed. Keep the terms within reason, rather than stripping one side of everything.
Couples who want the agreement to hold up in Michigan usually work with a prenuptial agreement attorney who can handle the disclosures, the timing, and the wording that Michigan courts look for. That is the difference between a document that quietly does its job years later and one that falls apart at the moment it is needed.
The prenup is no longer a signal that a marriage is doomed. For a growing share of couples, it is a calm, practical conversation held while everyone is still on good terms, which is the best time to have it.
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