When getting married or entering a civil partnership, you may decide to put plans in place for how your assets would be divided if the relationship later ended in divorce. This is done through a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement. A prenup is signed before the marriage or civil partnership, while a postnup is signed afterwards, but they are broadly used for the same purpose.
When writing a prenup in the UK, there is no strict legal rule on what you can include. You can agree how to deal with a wide range of assets, as long as both of you consent. To help you get started, here are some of the things that commonly appear in prenups.
- Property
- Savings and debts
- Stocks and shares
- Business interests
- Inheritance
- Belongings
- Childcare considerations
- Spousal maintenance
Property
Many married couples own property, particularly the family home. If the relationship breaks down, you will need to decide who keeps the property or whether it should be sold. A prenup can help set out in advance how ownership of shared property should be handled if you divorce.
It is important to remember that even if a property is in one person’s name, the court may still take it into account during divorce proceedings. A prenup can help you record how you would ideally like property to be divided and provide greater clarity from the outset.
Savings and debts
Most people have some form of savings. As a married couple, you may have joint bank accounts and shared savings, alongside money held in your own individual accounts from before or during the marriage. In the event of a divorce, the court may decide to consider all of these funds, regardless of whose name they are in.
A prenup can help you agree in advance whether you each keep your individual savings and how any shared savings should be divided.
The same principle can apply to debts. Whether the debt was built up individually, such as credit card borrowing, or jointly, such as a mortgage or loan, it is sensible to agree in advance how you would want those liabilities to be dealt with.
Stocks and shares
You or your partner may have investments in stocks or shares, either individually or jointly. A prenup can help clarify whether those investments would be divided equally in the event of divorce or whether they should remain with the person who originally paid for or built them up.
Business interests
Business interests can be an important part of a prenuptial agreement. If you own a business, you may have invested years of effort into building it. Naturally, you may want to protect that business if the marriage later ends.
Without an agreement in place, a court may decide that some value or shares in the business should be divided between you and your spouse. A prenup allows you to take each person’s involvement into account and set out what you believe would be a fair arrangement.
If you started the business before the marriage, or even before the relationship began, you may feel it should largely remain yours. If you built it together, a more equal split may seem fairer. Equally, one of you may play a bigger role in the day-to-day running of the business and feel that should be reflected.
Setting this out in writing while relations are good can help prevent disputes later on.
Inheritance
Inheritance can be a particularly sensitive issue when discussing how assets might be divided after marriage. Money, possessions, or family heirlooms left to one of you by a relative or friend can carry deep personal meaning.
A prenup gives you the chance to decide in advance how any inheritance should be treated if you later divorce. For example, you may want to agree that inherited assets stay with the person who received them, or you may decide that certain inherited assets should be shared depending on the circumstances.
Belongings
Financial assets are important, but physical possessions matter too. There may be items you bought together, items owned before marriage, or possessions that cannot realistically be divided.
This could include things like a family car, artwork, antiques, or sentimental items. If certain possessions are especially important to either of you, a prenup or postnup can help ring-fence them and make clear who should keep them.
Spousal maintenance
After a divorce, one person may be required to pay spousal maintenance to the other. This is usually a regular payment for a set period, intended to help a former partner manage financially after the relationship ends.
It may be worth thinking ahead about whether one of you would be more likely to need financial support after a separation. For example, one partner may have a lower income or may have been financially dependent on the other. Including spousal maintenance in a prenup can help you both understand what support might be appropriate in future.
Childcare considerations
If you have children, or plan to in the future, their wellbeing should be a central consideration. While children are not assets, it is still sensible to think about whether your financial arrangements would allow either parent to care for them properly after a separation.
It is important to remember that a prenup or postnup is not legally binding in England and Wales, although it is binding in Scotland. If a court believes the agreement does not provide enough financial support for children, it may choose not to follow it.
You also cannot use a prenup to decide who would have custody of a child, because that decision must be based on the child’s best interests at the time. For the same reason, child maintenance arrangements cannot be conclusively settled in a prenup.
There are many things to consider when writing a prenup. You do not need to include every possible issue, but it is important to review the assets you have and decide which ones matter most to you individually and as a couple, even if you hope the agreement is never needed.
