What Does a Prenup Cover? More than you think.

Assets and property — yours, mine, ours

The core of every prenup: declaring which assets stay separate property and how anything acquired during the marriage will be divided.

Without an agreement, your state's default regime decides — equitable distribution in most states, community property in nine. A prenup replaces that default with your own rules: the brokerage account you built stays yours, the savings you build together get split the way you both chose, and there's no ambiguity about which is which.

The distinction matters most for appreciation. Separate property can quietly become partly marital as it grows during the marriage — the classic trap for business owners and anyone holding equity. A prenup fixes the classification up front. How your state treats growth by default is exactly the community property vs. equitable distribution question.

Debts and liabilities

A prenup keeps each partner's debts — student loans, credit cards, business liabilities — from becoming the other's problem.

Debt protection is the least romantic and most practical clause in the document. Loans that predate the marriage can be locked to the person who signed them, and you can decide in advance how debt taken on during the marriage is allocated — including a rule that debt in one name stays with that name.

This is also the clause that protects a spouse from a partner's business creditors, which is why the debts section of the questionnaire sits right beside the business one.

Every married couple already has a prenup. If you didn't write one, your state wrote it for you — and nobody reads that one until it's too late.

— James Sexton, Esq.

Income, accounts, and how you'll run the finances

A prenup can classify future income and earnings, and set the financial ground rules — joint accounts, contributions, and who pays for what.

Beyond dividing what exists, a prenup can decide how money earned during the marriage is treated: fully shared, fully separate, or a hybrid — many couples route salaries to a joint account while keeping equity compensation and side-business income separate.

These are the 'financial considerations' questions in the questionnaire, and they double as the most useful money conversation most couples have ever had. The document at the end is almost a bonus.

Spousal support (alimony)

Most states let a prenup set, limit, or fully waive spousal support — with fairness limits that vary by state.

Support terms are among the most state-sensitive clauses in any prenup. Most states enforce a knowing, voluntary waiver; some require the waiving spouse to have had independent counsel; a few won't enforce waivers that would leave a spouse in hardship — and courts everywhere retain a fairness backstop.

Because the rules genuinely differ, the questionnaire adapts to the state you pick, and your state's specific waiver rules are spelled out in its own guide in the state-by-state prenup laws index.

Business interests

A prenup can declare a business separate property — including its future growth — and keep a divorce from forcing a valuation fight or a sale.

If either of you owns equity in anything — an LLC, a practice, a startup, a share of the family company — this is likely the single most valuable section of the agreement. The danger isn't losing the business itself; it's that the appreciation during the marriage becomes divisible, forcing a buyout at the worst possible moment.

It's a big enough topic that it has its own guide for business owners, covering appreciation, commingling, and why this segment should almost always add attorney review.

Inheritances and family gifts

A prenup can keep expected inheritances and family gifts separate — and protect what your family passes down from ever entering the marital pot.

Inheritances are usually separate property by default, but the protection is fragile: deposit inherited money into a joint account or use it on a shared home, and it can convert into marital property through commingling. A prenup makes the classification explicit and survivable.

This clause is often as much for the parents as the couple — family businesses and generational property commonly arrive with a polite-but-firm request that a prenup exist. It's one of the most common reasons couples come to us.

Real estate — the home question

A prenup decides what happens to property each of you brings in, and how a home you buy together is owned, paid for, and divided.

The house generates more divorce litigation than any other asset, because it mixes separate money (a down payment from one partner) with marital money (the mortgage you both pay). A prenup can pre-answer the whole chain: who keeps a premarital home, how a joint purchase is titled, and how each partner's contributions are credited if you part ways.

If one of you owns property going in, the questionnaire's real-estate section is where that gets locked down.

Pets

In most states pets are property — a prenup can decide who keeps the dog, and even set visitation and vet-cost terms.

Courts in most states will not run a custody analysis for a golden retriever; whoever 'owns' the animal keeps it. If that answer feels wrong, put your own answer in writing: primary custody, a visitation schedule, and how veterinary costs get shared.

We care about this one enough to have built PetNup — a standalone pet-custody agreement whose proceeds are split with a rescue shelter.

What a prenup can't cover

No prenup can decide child custody or child support, and courts strike terms that are illegal, unconscionable, or that incentivize divorce.

Child custody and support belong to the court at the time they're decided, under the child's-best-interests standard — any prenup clause pre-deciding them is void everywhere. Also unenforceable: personal-behavior clauses (chores, weight, frequency of visits from in-laws), penalties that reward divorce, and anything a court finds unconscionable at enforcement time.

The line between 'creative' and 'void' varies by state, which is one more reason the agreement should match your state's law — start with whether online prenups hold up at all, then check your state's specific rules.

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