Title: Millennials and Their Prenups

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Tiffany Hanssen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Brian today. We're going to wrap up the show by looking at an emerging trend for millennials as they enter the age when some people start to get married, the rise in prenups. According to a 2023 Harris Poll, 21% of Americans say they have signed a prenup. That's about one in five young people. That number is up from only 3%. That's quite a big jump from 2010.

It used to be that prenups or prenuptial agreements were something that really the only wealthy did to protect their wealth from their future spouses, but today prenups include many young people who don't have much personal wealth to divvy up. Joining us to talk about her latest reporting on how prenuptial agreements are being embraced by millennials and Gen Z-ers is Jennifer Wilson, staff writer at The New Yorker, who covers books and culture. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer Wilson: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right. Let's go way back in the way-back machine to 1990, a very public divorce between Donald Trump and Ivana Trump. They had a prenup, they've had several postnups.

Jennifer Wilson: Three postnups.

Tiffany Hanssen: Three? [laughs] This is what most people think about when they think about prenups, they think about billionaires. You're writing in this piece that we're not talking about billionaires now, we're talking about "average people," the regular middle class people. Just let us into a little bit about what you found about their motivation for this.

Jennifer Wilson: I think that young people, in particular, just are less trustful of marriage. The person who actually told me that was a woman named Kaylin Dillon, she's a financial advisor in Kansas, and she calls herself "The Prenup Coach." She helps young couples figure out what they want in a prenup. She said that you have to remember that millennials are, in many ways, the heirs of no-fault divorce.

I'm a millennial. 25% of us grew up in homes where our parents were either divorced or separated, so there's just a bit more realism about marriage and its likelihood to succeed or fail. Also, young people are dealing with student loan debt and are very anxious about, "What happens with all my student loan debt if I get married and I get divorced?" There's a lot of anxiety about marriage, but there's also a lot of new economic anxiety around the institution as well.

Tiffany Hanssen: Listeners, we would love to have you in this conversation. Are you a millennial, a Gen Z-er, and you've considered or maybe you've done a prenup, you might not have a lot of personal wealth to protect, but you still went ahead and did it anyway? Also, if we have any lawyers listening, are you noticing an uptick, I'm sure we do, have you noticed an uptick in young couples requesting prenups? Or if you're part of an older generation who had to use a prenup during a divorce, what did you learn? You can call us, you can text us, 212-433-9692.

You point to this history with divorced parents as being one of the reasons why there's been this uptick. Could it also be that there's just more availability? Are there apps now?

Jennifer Wilson: Yes, yes. I'm glad you asked. There are many apps. There are apps like HelloPrenup, Wenup. There's one called Neptune, where you actually you interface with an AI chatbot, and you talk about your relationship and what your assets are, what your concerns are.

Tiffany Hanssen: Ruh-roh.

Jennifer Wilson: Yes, yes. [laughs] Some of those apps have all sorts of cutting edge clauses, like embryo clauses. A lot of millennials are getting married later, and they have to think about IVF, and-

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, I didn't think about that.

Jennifer Wilson: -who gets the embryos in the event of a divorce. Social media disparagement clauses, financial penalties if you trash your ex on TikTok. It's not just that millennials and Gen Z are getting more prenups, they're also remaking the prenup in their own image.

Tiffany Hanssen: These prenups come with hefty legal ramifications to them. In other words, you and I break up, I go post pictures of you online that aren't great, it's in our prenup, and there are actual legal consequences for these, even the ones that have been done on the apps?

Jennifer Wilson: Yes. You can set a financial penalty. You can say $10,000, $20,000. The same thing for infidelity clauses. Now those lifestyle clauses are less likely to be enforced by a judge. However, they can make litigation more complicated, so they have some weight, maybe not legally, but in terms of process.

Tiffany Hanssen: You wrote that, "Today's younger generations tend to favor easy exit."

Jennifer Wilson: Yes.

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Jennifer Wilson: Yes. I was reading this article that Gen Z doesn't like to open up a tab, they just pay for each drink individually, and I just thought, oh, it's so funny--

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, because then you can leave.

Jennifer Wilson: Then you can leave. The same thing with divorce, they want to be able to leave a marriage as quickly as they leave the bar.

Tiffany Hanssen: Essentially, what they're setting up for themselves, I don't know, projecting, here, is just like, "We're done. By the way, it's all spelled out that we're done." Did you hear from anyone that, I don't know, there was always kind of in my mind, at least, this notion around prenups that like, "Oh, you don't trust me," or like, "We're saying this is going to end," and like, "We're forever."

Jennifer Wilson: Yes. Certainly there was some of that, but people tend to get over it. I wonder, though, you're planning your wedding, you don't want to fight. Also, there's actually a researcher who found out something called optimism bias that prenup signers suffer from. They don't believe that they're ever actually going to use it. They might agree to a prenup thinking, "Oh, we're never really going to use this," and they might even agree to terms that aren't very good for them.

People, they agree to a lot. They agree to prenups, they agree to prenups that aren't great for them, thinking-- they're romantics, they're thinking that's not really going to come into effect.

Tiffany Hanssen: I mentioned at the open here that we used to think of this as something for billionaires only. Those people are still doing this.

Jennifer Wilson: Yes, absolutely.

Tiffany Hanssen: This is really an addition to the numbers of people that are already, or were already predisposed to having a prenup, if you have $1 billion dollars you want to protect, for example.

Jennifer Wilson: Everyone wants to be a billionaire nowadays. A huge percentage of millennials and Gen Z identify as entrepreneurs. They think of themselves, it used to be, "Oh, Americans think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Now it's billionaires, and so a lot of their prenups are actually accounting not for assets that they have, but assets they imagine that they will have.

Tiffany Hanssen: Got it. Let's bring Julia in White Plains into the conversation. Hi, Julia.

Julia: Hi.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes.

Julia: Good morning.

Tiffany Hanssen: Hi.

Jennifer Wilson: Hi.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, it is still morning for a few more minutes.

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Tiffany Hanssen: You got a prenup, you didn't get a prenup?

Julia: I did not. I am a millennial who has been married for six years now, so in my 30s. I got married what is "I think seen as young these days," and it just wasn't a thought in my mind. My husband and I met each other very young. I think our lives were intertwined from a really young age, and so it just never occurred to us. We're different in that I come from a family where my parents were divorced and he doesn't. He has parents who were with a very strong marriage.

We're definitely different in how we see marriage. I am more of a realist, as you said earlier, but also, in a way, have a very strong hope for our marriage because I want something different for our family. I think even if I were, now, as a 30-something year old, to consider marrying someone who maybe I had met in the last few years, I'm not sure I would immediately go to a prenup. I think I'd want to stay hopeful.

Tiffany Hanssen: Julia, thanks for the perspective. We appreciate it. We also have a text here. "I'm a 44-year-old female. I do not equate love with financial success. I do not believe trust requires financial merging. I believe those are separate decisions. I have no interest in blurring them. A prenup is not about expecting a relationship to fail, it's about clarity, boundaries, protecting the life I've built. I will never give financial access to my partner." There's a clear boundary.

Jennifer Wilson: I hear that sometimes, and I just think, "Then why get married?" There's a very easy way to keep your finances separate, it's called not getting married. It's an option that's available to you. [laughs] It's fascinating that the persistent popularity of marriage without the merger.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. All right. Dante, in Brooklyn. Hi, Dante.

Dante: Hey, how are you guys doing?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good.

Dante: I am a millennial, and we got married last year and got a prenup. The reason my wife wanted a prenup is that she was feeling a lot of anxiety about the alt-right voices in our society saying things like, "Women should submit to their husbands." We're the exact same age as the late Charlie Kirk. I think she really wanted to, if worst case scenario happened, to reserve her financial autonomy.

Tiffany Hanssen: Dante, appreciate the conversation. I think what's interesting here for me, Jennifer, is that it's not just about the money. My preconception around prenups was like, "It's all about the money," but what we're hearing here is it's like a real social decision that's being made.

Jennifer Wilson: Everyone has a prenup already, it's the law, whatever the laws are in your state. People are politically anxious right now, and they're worried that something like what we have in New York, equitable distribution, could get rolled back, and that some of the gains that were made by women's organizations in the '70s and '80s that do take into consideration, staying home with children, they're afraid that those could get rolled back. That someone might come along and say, "That's what you as a woman are supposed to do, so I don't really see why you should be financially compensated for that sacrifice."

Tiffany Hanssen: Do you anticipate these numbers to rise even more? Do you think the accessibility is part of it?

Jennifer Wilson: I do. I do. I think, for sure, you're going to have more couples looking into it, maybe going to some of these apps and maybe playing around with the software, maybe reading articles on HelloPrenup. I definitely think you're going to start to see maybe a lot more financial literacy around what happens in the event of a divorce because we really don't know. We're much more informed about the law when we get our driver's license than when we get a marriage one.

Tiffany Hanssen: We've been talking with Jennifer Wilson, who's a staff writer at The New Yorker, she covers books and culture, and at this point, talking about prenuptial agreements and how they are being embraced by millennials and Gen Z-ers. Jennifer, thank you for the time today. I appreciate it.

Jennifer Wilson: Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're going to have to leave it there today. The Brian Lehrer Show's producers are Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Sasha Linden Cohen is our interim producer. Meg Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Julia Fonda and Shayna Sengstock are at the studio controls. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Brian Lehrer. Brian will be back on Monday. For right now, you can stay tuned for All Of It. Have a good weekend.

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