'Don't wait until you want revenge' - why prenups are on the rise

Celine Tsoi and Charles Mock met two years ago in Goleta, California when she was just 23 and he was 27. Eight months later they were engaged.

Friends immediately asked: "Oh, are you getting a prenup?"

"A lot of things could happen in a marriage and you want to discuss them when you still love each other rather than when things go bad and you want to take revenge," says Celine.

These days its not just the rich and famous; more of us are deciding it makes sense to have a legal agreement that sets out what happens to the money if the marriage ends, with younger couples particularly likely to sign one, even when there aren't great wealth differences to consider.

Charles, a nurse, earns more than Celine does as a PhD student, but she had a bit more saved, so the disparities weren't big, but they wanted to face up to important financial questions from the start.

She was particularly touched that Charles wanted the prenup to say if they split up, she should have the house.

Just having the conversation "can show you what the person you're going to marry is like", she says.

There are no official figures, but in the US, where divorce courts have always tended to uphold prenups, nearly half of married millennials and more than one in three Gen Z report that they have a prenup. Overall in the US around one in five married couples has a prenup.

In the UK research suggests around one in ten couples now has a prenup, following a legal shift in England towards greater recognition.

Here too it is younger couples leading the way, with around one in three married under-35-year-olds having signed one, according to surveys.

London lawyer Mark Gilmartin at JMW Solicitors says in the past 18 months he has seen a big increase in demand for prenups, with the billionaire-and-barmaid stereotype fast giving way to demand from "start-up professionals" including entrepreneurs and influencers.

"It's the attempts to protect the fruits of what's going to be, rather than what is," he says.

But beyond the would-be TikTok stars, he sees a significant trend towards "every-day you and I" couples wanting them, often in order to protect inherited wealth.

Among them is Becca Gibson from West Sussex. In a few days time when she walks down the aisle to marry Dave Howells, they'll be focused on their future not whether the marriage might fail. But they do have a plan just in case.

From his job in finance, Dave more than three times what Becca earns from her business offering eyelash extensions.

"I was very open to the idea [of a prenup]," says 33-year-old Becca, especially after her first marriage "didn't end very well".

She knows a court-determined settlement might produce a better outcome for her, as she has three children from her first marriage, and Dave has only one from his.

"It's not an advantage for me... but it's a fair situation," she says.

Becca expects to inherit a significant amount of property from her parents, which she wants to protect, so in the event of a split, each will walk away with what they started with.

"It's nice knowing that if anything were to happen, I would just go back to how life was before," she says.

Dave, 45, admits it's unromantic but says, given the statistics around divorce, he wants to be pragmatic.

"A court of law could potentially say, hang on, this guy's earning a lot more than her, he needs to pay her.

"I built a home for myself. I've built a future for myself, including pensions.

"Park the emotional side of me loving both her and the kids, I'm no different now to when I met her, and yet she was independent. Why on earth would I have to pay something towards her life in the event of us splitting up?"

Lawyers say a desire to avoid repeating the pain of a previous separation, or the messy splits that they saw their parents go through, is a prime motivation for many couples.

But prenups have also become much more accessible with the rise of online platforms that make it faster and cheaper.

Dave started down the traditional route using a local law firm, expecting to pay around £5,000. But later switched to Wenup, a semi-automated service which charged him a fixed fee of £1,600 instead.

Couples are also getting married later, points out Julia Rodgers, cofounder of US prenup platform HelloPrenup.

"You may have some [university] debt, maybe started a business or purchased a home. So you have a lot to protect and to lose by the age of 34," she says.

What's become known as "the Great Wealth Transfer" means some members of the younger generation are receiving huge assets to manage. It is often their parents who are the driving force behind ring-fencing those inheritances.

And while in the past prenups have been criticised for limiting women's rights, Rodgers argues they have evolved and now benefit women like her by giving them the chance to clarify their rights from the start.

"We want to make sure we have the honest, open, transparent conversations about life goals, about finances, about roles and responsibilities in the home, so that we can have a long, happy marriage and not end up in that position that we saw our parents in," she says.

Celine says most of her friends think prenups are a good idea.

It only cost her a few hundred dollars online, but even if she had had to pay lawyers it would have been a worthwhile "investment" in the marriage she says, and less expensive, but probably more important than the wedding itself.

Best of all she and Charles have got the "hard conversations" out of the way.

"We haven't had a single argument about finances," she says.