ary·marriageThe new power move: why smart women are demanding prenupsBy Libby LefflerBy Libby Leffler Libby Leffler is founder & CEO of First®, an online prenuptial agreement platform.
Before founding First, Leffler was an executive at SoFi, Facebook, and Google. Leffler holds an MBA with high distinction from Harvard School.
She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.Prenups: the new power move.Getty ImagesSummer weddings are in full swing and the peak fall season is apaching, with September and October accounting for one-third of all marriages annually, according to The Knot.
While trends in the ideal months to marry rarely change, women marrying in 2025 have fundamentally different financial files than previous generations.
Today’s brides are CEOs, startup founders, creators and brand builders, engineers, physicians, real estate investors, scientists, and small owners.
They have negotiated complex equity packages, are growing es and brands, and have acquired significant assets, with women outpacing men in attaining advanced post-graduate degrees and purchasing single family s.
They will reap the benefits of an estimated $80 trillion “Great Wealth Transfer” of inherited assets from Baby Boomer parents, a wave that will significantly reshape our economy and financial landscape.
But when it comes to the institution of marriage, many of us are still operating by the rules of an outdated playbook that treats transparent conversations financial planning as unromantic.
It is time for that narrative to change. In fact, the first legal experience that every couple should have isn’t a will – it’s a prenup.
The modern marriage paradox Here’s the uncomfortable truth: while women now out-earn or make the same as their partners in nearly half of marriages, with this having apximately tripled over the past 50 years, many are entering marriage with less financial tection than they’d accept in a partnership.
We would never launch a startup without equity agreements or join a company without understanding our compensation package. Why are any of us willing to say “I do” without a financial framework?
The modern marriage paradox has conditioned us to view prenuptial agreements as an instrument of mistrust that represents planning for failure, rather than success.
This framing is not just fundamentally flawed, it’s financially dangerous.
This means es After divorce, women experience nearly two times the income drop (41%) compared to men (23%), creating long-term financial exposure.
For owners and equity-holders, the stakes are even more significant: divorce can mean losing control of a company built from the ground up.
Among the customers of our online prenup platform, First, roughly 50% of our prenup initiators are women.
They come with an understanding that having the most important financial conversations before marriage strengthens the foundation of their relationships, rather than weakening them.
Dialogue values, goals, expectations, and personal finances serves couples throughout their union. These couples understand that the prenup is a joining point, not a point.
Modern women have discovered that prenups offer something more valuable than asset tection. They vide a strategic advantage and thoughtful framework for financial partnership.
Think of the prenup as a plan for the financial future of a marriage.
Meet today’s modern bride Today’s modern couples are using prenups to address student loan debt, tect family es, clarify expectations inheritance, and establish financial boundaries around spending and saving.
A teacher marrying an AI engineer might use a prenup to tect one’s pension while clarifying how they’ll handle the other’s stock options.
A freelance designer might want to ensure their creative remains separate perty while building d wealth with their marketing executive partner.
I recently spoke with Rachel, a creative entrepreneur and nology executive who signed a prenup before her April 2025 wedding. Her prenup wasn’t keeping assets from her partner.
It was creating expectations for how they’d build wealth together while tecting what each brought to the relationship, including social media channels and ideas they dream up together or separately.
“I love that we in a time where prenups are being reclaimed by wealth-building, entrepreneurial women,” Rachel told us. “Prenups aren’t just who gets the house or the car.
As women, it’s time we remove the stigma around prenups, not just for us and our assets, but for our partners and [their assets], too.” Equally important is Melanie, who told me, “I didn’t want individual financial mistakes to become our financial mistakes.” A Mindset Shift For Millennial and Gen Z Couples Millennial and Gen Z women are apaching marriage with a fundamentally different mindset.
They’ve witnessed their parents navigate difficult divorces without adequate tection. They’ve seen friends lose es or inheritance in messy separations.
Importantly, they understand that love and financial planning aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re complementary. This shift is particularly nounced among high earners.
47% of newlyweds and engaged couples between the ages of 18 and 34 are now considering prenups, recognizing that their financial success requires tection, just any other valuable asset.
Normalizing prenups The path forward requires us to shift our mindset to consider the prenuptial agreement as a standard tool in money management and as essential to career planning as negotiating one’s salary or equity in a job offer.
This shift has already started to take place because of successful, modern women who are demonstrating that financial planning and romantic love can coexist harmoniously.
Women rewriting the financial playbook for marriage are not pessimists planning for divorce.
They are modern, savvy optimists that believe their relationships can handle honest and transparent conversations money.
These modern couples are more ly to weather financial storms because they have started out by planning for sunny skies and rainy days a.
In a world where financial independence is more within reach than ever before, tecting that independence is not selfish. It is smart.
And smart people deserve marriages built on clarity, equity, and mutual respect. The question is not whether you’re planning for the worst.
It is whether you trust yourself enough to plan for the future you deserve.
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