Prenuptial Agreements

Part of: Nuptial Agreements

A prenuptial agreement is a contract a couple sign before they marry. It records what each of you owns now. It also sets out what should happen to those assets if the marriage ends. Most people shorten the name to a prenup.

Couples who plan a civil partnership can sign the same kind of document. Lawyers call that one a pre-civil partnership agreement. Otherwise it works in exactly the same way.

People call this document several different things. A prenup, a pre-marriage agreement, a premarital agreement and a prenuptial agreement all mean the same thing in England and Wales. So the name on the front page changes nothing.

Prenups are no longer only for the very wealthy. Two questions come up more than any other. Does one cost much, and will a judge actually follow it? This page answers both.

Our family law specialists know this is not the romantic part of planning a wedding. Nobody enjoys the conversation. Still, an hour spent on it now can save you a year of argument later.

A prenuptial agreement gives you both a clear picture of where you stand. You know what you keep, and you know what you share. That certainty is the whole point of the document.

We draft prenuptial agreements, and we also review one your partner’s adviser has drafted. If you would rather see how a court divides finances after a divorce, read that guide first and come back.

Prenuptial agreement meaning in plain English

A prenuptial agreement is a signed record of what you each own before you marry. It also states how you want those assets split if you later separate.

In England and Wales the formal name is a nuptial agreement. That term covers three versions. Sign before the wedding and it is a prenup. Sign after it and it is a postnuptial agreement, or post-nup. Civil partners sign a pre-partnership or post-partnership agreement instead.

One point matters more than the rest. A prenuptial agreement is not automatically binding here. The court keeps its own power to divide your finances, under section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. So a prenup is not a contract that ties a judge’s hands. Instead it is strong evidence of what you both wanted, and a well-made one usually decides the outcome.

Prenup or post-nup: what the difference actually is

The difference between a prenup and a post-nup is only the date. A judge reads both at the point the marriage breaks down, not at the point you signed. Timing still changes the risk, though. A prenup signed days before the ceremony is the easiest kind to attack.

Living abroad, or marrying someone who does, changes the picture. Our guide to expat prenuptial and postnuptial agreements covers the position when two legal systems apply. If Germany is one of them, read our page on prenuptial and postnuptial agreements in Germany.

Do I need a prenup?

If you own a number of assets or intend to in the future and wish to secure comfort over the division of those assets being ringfenced from a divorce claim or simply want to have financial security in the event of a breakup then you may want to consider a prenuptial agreement.

Although when getting married or entering into a relationship couples would not want to think about separation it may be worthwhile to create and sign an agreement prior to your marriage in order to assist in the unfortunate event of a separation.

Such agreements assist you in the worst scenario and if signed can ensure you do not lose out following a breakdown and have control over what happens to your assets, finances and children in the event of a separation. Prenuptial agreements also allow you to protect what is yours and assists in this not being taken away from you.

Considerations

Prenuptial agreements are common in scenarios where one party has substantial assets or savings, or is expecting inheritance which you don’t want to risk in losing or splitting and can provide you with certainty as to how such assets are secured or distributed in the event of a separation.

Prenuptial agreements maybe considered where you wish to:

• Set out which assets will be divided or surrendered, rather than allowing all of your assets to be split or distributed. For example, you may want to agree that in the event of a separation, you and partner agree to give-up ownership of the matrimonial home which will be transferred to the children equally or held in trust until they reach the age of 18 or alternatively you may wish to protect your business and employment assets.
• Protect your inheritance: You may want to protect your parent’s wealth which you stand to inherit rather than having this distributed.

It is not uncommon for parents that have built a significant wealth to want to ensure their wealth which stands to be inherited by their children is unaffected by a separation. At Kabir Family Law we have consulted with large-scale family businesses where the intention has been to ring fence that asset within a Pre-nuptial agreement.

• Provision financial arrangements for child of previous relationships or intended children of the marriage or civil partnership.
• Ring-fence all or specific assets from being shared in the event of a separation
• Protect your self from a debt of the partner. We can assist with a debt clause in the event that you partner has a debt for which you do not want to be liable for should the marriage breakdown.
• You may wish to consider Pre-nuptial agreements to ensure you distribute assets to children from a previous marriage and secure their future should this apply.

What to include in a prenup or premarital agreement

When it comes to writing your prenuptial agreement, you will need to consider everything that you’d like to keep once the separation or divorce has been processed. This includes factors such as:

• Details of what will happen with joint bank accounts
• Who will manage expenses and/or other household bills and mortgages
• Details of how savings contributions will be managed
• Details of how finances relating to your children will be shared

You may want to also consider including:

• Personal and business assets
• Property and investments
• Inherited assets
• Overseas interests
• Protection from previous debts

You should especially consider creating a prenup agreement with your partner if you have a substantial amount of savings or are expecting a large inheritance that you don’t want to risk losing or splitting.

Things you can’t include

Leave child arrangements out of a prenuptial agreement. A court decides where children live and how often they see each parent, and it makes that decision on its own.

So a clause about child arrangements carries no weight. Worse, it can make the rest of the document look overreaching.

Financial provision for children is different. You can record what you intend, but it does not bind the court, and it cannot override the Child Maintenance Service. A judge can still revisit the terms if the outcome would leave a child of the family short.

Can you act for us both or do we need different specialists to draw up a prenuptial agreement?

Unfortunately, our prenuptial agreement specialists are unable to provide advice to both parties to avoid a conflict of interest, In order for the prenuptial agreement to be recognised by the Court and binding each party needs to separately obtain their own independent legal advice from a different adviser. 

How much does a prenup cost in the UK?

A straightforward prenuptial agreement is normally priced as a fixed fee. Firms publishing fixed fees for a straightforward prenup were, when we checked in September 2026, typically in the range of £1,000 to £3,000 plus VAT for the partner who instructs the drafting. That is what published prices looked like on that date rather than a quote, so ask whoever you approach for their own current figure. Budget separately for the other partner’s independent advice, because that is a second fee, usually smaller, paid to a different adviser.

Three things move that number:

• How complicated your finances are. Two salaries and one house is quick. A business, a trust, a pension already in payment, inherited land or anything held overseas takes longer to describe properly, and a badly described asset is the first thing attacked years later.
• How much you have already agreed. A prenup you have talked through between yourselves is a drafting job. One where the terms are still being argued over is a negotiation, and negotiations are billed by the time they take.
• How close you are to the wedding. Work squeezed into the last few weeks costs more to do and is worth less when it matters, for the reasons set out above.

The second adviser’s fee is the part people try to cut, and it is the part to keep. An agreement where only one of you took advice is the easiest kind for a court to set aside, so the money saved buys a document that may not do the single job you bought it for. Two advisers is not an upsell. It is most of what makes a prenup hold up.

It is worth naming the alternative. With no agreement, a contested financial settlement is decided by a judge applying a broad discretion over your capital, property, pensions and income, and arguing that out costs considerably more than the agreement you did not have.

We will give you the fee for your agreement before any work starts. Ask for it in writing, from us or from anyone else you approach, and check what it covers and what it does not.

Common questions about prenups

• When should I create a prenuptial agreement? Finish it and get both signatures on it a clear 28 days ahead of the ceremony. Leave it later and you hand your future ex the argument that one of you was pushed into signing.
• Do prenups need to be signed? Yes. Both of you sign it, and each of you should have taken independent legal advice from a different adviser before you do.
• Is a pre-marriage contract the same as a prenup? Yes. The name on the front makes no difference to how a court treats it. What matters is the disclosure, the advice and the timing behind it.
• What does a prenup cost? Usually a fixed fee. Published fixed fees for a straightforward agreement sat between £1,000 and £3,000 plus VAT when we checked in September 2026, with your partner’s independent advice paid for separately. The section above sets out what pushes it higher.
• Can we change it afterwards? Yes. You can replace a prenup with a postnuptial agreement at any point after the wedding.

When should I enter into a premarital agreement?

Have it signed and dated no fewer than 28 days ahead of the ceremony, or ahead of the registration of your civil partnership. Raise it earlier than that, ideally once you have fixed a date but before deposits and guest lists take over the diary, because the drafting is the quick part and the talking is not.

Where does 28 days come from? Not from any statute. It is the gap the Law Commission attached to the binding ‘qualifying nuptial agreement’ it proposed in 2014, and it has stuck as a sensible yardstick because it goes to the one thing a judge will probe years later: whether anybody was rushed.

No rule makes a later agreement void. The risk is different, and it is worse. The closer the signing gets to the wedding day, the easier it becomes for your husband or wife to argue years later that you rushed them into it, and the less weight the agreement carries when you need it. A prenup signed the week before the ceremony is the one most likely to be set aside.

Are prenups binding, or can a court override one?

No, not automatically. A prenup does not tie a court’s hands in England and Wales the way an ordinary contract would. What it does is carry weight, and where the agreement has been done properly that weight is usually decisive.

The rules are not the same everywhere. Scotland treats these agreements differently, and other countries have their own law again, so if either of you holds assets abroad or expects to live abroad, the agreement needs advice on both systems rather than one.

Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42 is the case that settled the English position. The Supreme Court held that a court should give effect to an agreement a couple entered freely. Each of them must have had a full appreciation of what it meant. The one exception is unfairness, judged by the circumstances at the divorce rather than at the signing.

So the question is never whether prenuptial agreements are legal, because they are. The real question is whether yours is strong enough for a judge to follow it. That turns on the safeguards below.

What are the key components to a valid prenuptial agreement?

• The agreement must provide full and frank disclosure of all material information and assets by both parties involved who are forming the relationship.
• Both parties must confirm they have a clear knowledge and understanding of the intentions of the agreement and the implications the agreement may have. The agreement must then be signed by both parties.
• The agreement must not be entered into under any duress or threat and must be done so freely. Leaving a clear 28 days between signature and ceremony helps show that nobody was rushed.
• The agreement cannot prejudice the position of any children of the family unreasonably.
• Pre-nuptial agreements that ring-fence non-matrimonial assets are more likely to be seen as ‘fair’.
• Unless there is a valid reason the Court should not override any terms agreed between the parties.
• Pre-nuptial agreements that deal with unknown or future contingencies are not likely to be considered fair and the agreement must have an element of fairness.

Those points track the Law Commission’s 2014 report Matrimonial Property, Needs and Agreements, which proposed a new class of binding ‘qualifying nuptial agreement’. Read one thing into that: the proposals were never enacted. There is no statutory prenup scheme in England and Wales, and the Commission’s own page on the project still records that it awaits a final response from government. A prenup takes its force from the case law, not from an Act.

The subject is live again. On 18 December 2024 the Law Commission published a scoping report on how divorce finances are decided, which concluded that the law on dividing finances on divorce needs reform and set out four possible models, one of which would legislate on discrete issues including pre-nuptial agreements. It stopped short of recommending a particular reform, and it is now for government to decide whether any of it proceeds. Until it does, the safeguards on this page are what determine whether your agreement holds.

A properly prepared agreement can be highly persuasive to the financial outcome of a case although not legally binding. Here at Kabir Family Law our specialists can assist you in providing advice in relation to an agreement which could benefit you in the event of a divorce or separation.

Factors undermining the weight of a prenuptial agreement

When you’re creating a prenuptial agreement, there are a handful of issues that have the potential to undermine the weight of the contract in court.

These include:

• If there was a lack of disclosure from either party when the agreement was being written and not all assets were disclosed.
• If one party was found to have given a misleading picture of their finances.
• If a spouse had any pressure applied to them when writing and/or signing by the other party or a family member.
• If there is an obvious display of exploiting a dominant position to secure an unfair advantage for one party.
• Someone pushed the agreement through so late that the wedding itself became the pressure.
• Circumstances have changed so much that the terms would now leave one of you unable to meet basic needs.

Is it too late if I am married –  Post-nuptial agreements

Not at all, you can opt for a post-nuptial agreement (‘post-nup’) which is similar to a prenup agreement yet as the name suggests, is created after the marriage has taken place.

Post-nuptial agreements are drafted with a view to assist a couple in financially planning their futures if there is a marriage breakdown. Similarly, a post-partnership agreement applied to civil partners.

All three are read at the point the marriage or partnership breaks down, not at the point they were signed, which is why a prenup written around one set of circumstances can need revisiting. If you are weighing up which of the three fits you, our guide to nuptial agreements sets the pre-, post- and partnership versions side by side.

Our prenuptial agreement specialists at Kabir Family Law are able to assist you in creating a prenuptial agreement which you can rely on and which complies with the court requirements and criteria. We can also review and analyse any premarital agreement to ensure you are protected prior to you signing the same. You can contact our team to ensure that any agreement has the best possible chance of being considered and upheld when you are undergoing a divorce or settlement.

Arrange a consultation with our Family Law Specialists today

The first conversation is free. Bring what each of you owns, what either of you expects to inherit, and the wedding date, and we will tell you whether a prenup is worth doing in your case, what it would need to say to stand up, and what it will cost, before you commit to anything.

For more extensive advice, we welcome you to contact us on 0330 094 5880 to discuss your options or let us call you back. Did you know we have not only have family lawyers in Newcastle but nationally across the country so you can sure that wherever are we are here to assist you.

We offer the opportunity to communicate regularly through our offices, by telephone, or by video call on Zoom or WhatsApp; this is ideal for individuals who are leading a busy lifestyle and are unable to visit our offices. Our team of specialists will ensure that you are kept up to date when dealing with your prenuptial agreement.