TL;DR: No, prenups don't cause divorce. The 2026 study behind that claim is correlational and can't show which came first, and its own author found no link among couples who communicate well. Meanwhile prenup adoption has climbed to 53% among engaged or married Americans under 45, even as the U.S. divorce rate has fallen about 40% since 2000. A prenup replaces your state's default rules with terms you set together, and at First, half are initiated by women and most anticipate a joint bank account.Arthur Brooks' recent thought piece on prenups is old-school, almost on purpose. He is right that shared money builds trust. He is wrong that a prenup works against it. The study he leans on cannot support the claim he builds on it, and his case leaves out the reason most couples sign one.
What Brooks gets wrong The four "basic arguments" Brooks claims those who advocate for prenups rely on come from a short list in a single finance blog . There are many more reasons that drive people to consider a prenup, and the list leaves out the biggest reason people actually want a prenup: a prenup is not only between you and your partner, but also you and your state. That's a real gap, and his case never accounts for it.
A prenup is between you and your state Your state has already written a set of rules for your money . Do you know what they are? Would you have chosen them? Brooks’ case against the prenup misses that a state's family law isn't necessarily what either party might choose for themselves. For example, Texas, among the most restrictive states for spousal maintenance, requires a spouse to lack sufficient property for their "minimum reasonable needs" and clear an additional bar in order to receive alimony: a 10+ year marriage, an incapacitating disability, or a family-violence conviction against the other spouse (Tex. Fam. Code § 8.051). Even then, awards cap at the lesser of $5,000/month or 20% of gross income. California, by contrast , lets courts preserve the marital standard of living. And these detailed differences are present for every state.
More prenups, fewer divorces, at the same time Brooks sees the current trend and reads it as a symptom. He cites the climb himself: about 3% of all Americans had a prenup in 2010, and by 2023, 47% of engaged or married millennials did. A Harris Poll conducted for Bloomberg in May 2026 puts it higher still: 53% of engaged or married Americans under 45 have signed a prenup.
And it's not just prenups. Divorce is falling. The U.S. divorce rate has dropped about 40% over the past two decades, from 4.0 divorces per 1,000 people in 2000 to 2.4 in 2023 (CDC ). Measured against married women rather than the population at large, the rate sits at 14.2 per 1,000, and the marriage-to-divorce ratio is the highest on record (NCFMR ).
More prenups, fewer divorces, happening at the same time. That's not proof one causes the other, and we're not claiming a prenup lowers your odds of divorce, because the causal data doesn't exist for that either. But it retires the idea that a prenup is a quiet countdown to a courtroom.
Why younger couples are signing This is a rising tide, and there's a reason for it. As Millennials and Gen Z marry, their circumstances increasingly call for a prenup. They're marrying later: from 2005 to 2025, the median age at first marriage rose by more than 3 years to 28.4 for women and 30.8 for men. That's more time for assets, debts, and life circumstances to get complicated. And the culture around prenups has shifted with it: a prenup is no longer taboo , but a protective tool for the marriage itself, one that pushes couples to have the hard conversations before they walk down the aisle.
Brooks claims to speak for "the average Boomer or Gen Xer mind," but I'd push back on that. Plenty of Boomers and Gen Xers are on a second or third marriage, and they're determined to get it right when they re-marry. A 2012 study in Family Relations , tracking 4,574 couples over time and surveying both spouses, found that financial disagreements predicted divorce more strongly than any other common marital disagreement, including fights about household tasks or time spent together (Dew, Britt & Huston). People who have lived through divorce once are motivated not to repeat it. They're getting prenups precisely to have the tough conversations up front. Some decide not to get married after those conversations… and that's okay. Others do marry, and their marriages are stronger for the work they’ve put in up front.
What the 2026 study actually found Brooks cites a 2026 brief report in Family Relations to claim that prenups correlate with less happiness in marriage. It comes from the same researcher, Jeffrey Dew, but not the same kind of study. This one surveyed 2,000 married people at a single moment and never surveyed their spouses. It can't tell us which way the arrow points. Couples who are already less aligned may simply be more likely to get a prenup in the first place, and nothing in the data rules that out. Brooks doesn't raise the possibility. He does note, correctly, that Dew found no association among couples most satisfied with their spouse's commitment and communication. What moves the needle is how a couple talks.
Brooks writes that his argument "is not that prenups and separate bank accounts will necessarily kill a marriage," and that "the research does not say this." He is right. That makes it strange to read, earlier in the same column, that the odds of love fading "might rise precisely because of these financial insurance policies," and that this is "exactly what the research tells us," and that prenups "degraded" relationship satisfaction. Degraded, because of, the odds rise: that is causal language. The study underneath it only shows that prenups and lower satisfaction sometimes appear together.
What we see at First This is where we have something the studies don't: our own customers. Here is what the data shows.
At First , about half of our prenups are initiated by women . Our prenups are co-created, not one party handing the other a draft weeks before the wedding and forcing them to lawyer up just to get married. It flips the old script, and the way pop culture has depicted prenups for decades.
The average profile of a person getting a prenup with First is someone who is 36 and earns more than $100,000 per year. About a third carry student debt . Some are protecting an inheritance or a home. Others are working through more modern questions like keeping private details off social media after a split, or deciding what happens to frozen embryos down the road.
At First, we believe in talking about the hard things. Brooks writes that "haggling over equitable finances, chores, or anything else is, well, boring." Maybe it feels like haggling if you'd rather not be the one carrying the conversation. Undiscussed cognitive and unpaid labor falls disproportionately on women, and it is associated with emotional exhaustion and stalled career advancement. At First, we believe in putting all of it on the table, regardless of who ends up handling what.prenups created on First's platform anticipate a joint bank account.
Whatever plan a couple lands on, more conversation and more clarity about expectations is a stronger premise for a marriage than preparing to fail.
A prenup is a non-mystical exercise, co-created by two smitten "co-founders" who are all in, and ready to talk, lovingly, about money. Very often, they didn't know everything they needed to know about their partner's finances until they had that conversation.
And that is a large part of the point.
Frequently asked questions Do prenups cause divorce? No. There is no research showing that prenups cause or increase divorce. The 2026 study most often cited on this question is correlational and drawn from a single moment in time, so it cannot show whether a prenup affects a marriage or whether couples who are already less aligned are simply more likely to sign one. Prenup adoption has risen over the same decades that the U.S. divorce rate has fallen about 40%.
Does having a prenup make you more likely to get divorced? No study has demonstrated that. The strongest available data is correlational, which cannot establish cause in either direction. The researcher behind the 2026 study found no association between prenups and marital satisfaction among couples who reported high satisfaction with their communication and their partner's commitment.
What does the research actually say about prenups and marriage? The 2026 brief report in Family Relations surveyed 2,000 married individuals at one point in time and did not survey their spouses. It found lower satisfaction associated with prenups for some couples, but no association for couples who communicate well, and it cannot show which came first. A separate 2012 study of 4,574 couples found that financial disagreements predict divorce more strongly than any other common marital disagreement, which is an argument for having the money conversation a prenup requires.
Are prenups becoming more common? Yes. A May 2026 Harris Poll conducted for Bloomberg found that 53% of engaged or married Americans under 45 have signed a prenup, up from a low-single-digit share in the 1990s. Younger couples marry later and with more complex finances, and increasingly treat a prenup as ordinary planning.
Is a prenup just planning for divorce? No. Without a prenup, your state's default laws already decide how your money is divided if the marriage ends. A prenup replaces those default rules with terms you and your partner set together. Most couples on First's platform also anticipate a joint bank account, so a prenup does not require keeping finances separate.
Do prenups reduce conflict in a marriage? The prenup process requires full financial disclosure and an early, direct conversation about money. Because financial disagreements are among the strongest predictors of divorce, having that conversation before the wedding can strengthen a marriage rather than weaken it.
By Liz Federowicz, Esq. Federowicz works with the First team and is employed by one of First's investors.
First is not a law firm. The information and tools provided by First on this site are not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.
Sources Saijel Kishan and Simone Foxman, "More Americans Are Getting Prenups, Even If They Aren't Rich," Bloomberg Anja Krstić, Winny Shen, Christianne T. Varty, Janice Y. Lam & Ivona Hideg, "Taking on the Invisible Third Shift: The Unequal Division of Cognitive Labor and Women's Work Outcomes," Psychology of Women Quarterly Tex. Fam. Code §§ 8.051 (eligibility), 8.055 (maintenance cap)Jordan Watson, "Spousal Maintenance: What Is It and Do I Qualify?," Accessible Law U.S. Census Bureau , "Estimated Median Age at First Marriage, by Sex: 1890 to Present" (Table MS-2), 2025: supports the median age at first marriage of 28.4 for women and 30.8 for men, and the increase of more than three years since 2005.National Center for Family and Marriage Research, Bowling Green State University : the refined divorce rate of 14.2 per 1,000 married women and the 2024 marriage-to-divorce ratio. First, The Prenup Report CDC, National Center for Health Statistics , National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends, 2000 to 2023: the U.S. divorce rate fell from 4.0 per 1,000 people in 2000 to 2.4 in 2023. Jeffrey Dew, "For love or money: Prenuptial agreements and marital quality—a brief report," Family Relations Jeffrey Dew, Sonya Britt & Sandra Huston, "Examining the Relationship Between Financial Issues and Divorce," Family Relations Arthur Brooks, "Arthur Brooks: Taylor and Travis, a Prenup Won't Protect Your Marriage," The Free Press 
