By Charles Passy
As the earning power of women keeps growing, more are seeking financial protection before they get married. ‘It’s a massive generational shift,’ says one legal expert.
Travis Kelce, left, and Taylor Swift are engaged – and a prenup is pretty much a given. It’s becoming the norm for more Americans when they get married, particularly millennial women.
Should Taylor Swift seek a prenuptial agreement, she’ll have plenty of company among American women.
The pop megastar announced her engagement earlier this week to pro football player Travis Kelce, leading to rampant speculation that she might want such an arrangement to safeguard her estimated $1.6 billion net worth. But legal experts say it really doesn’t matter whether you have billions of dollars or pennies to your name – you should consider a prenup in any case to ensure some financial protection should your marriage go awry.
And they say many women, especially of the millennial generation, are indeed heeding that message, given their growing economic power. It’s the flipping of a decades-old playbook in which men typically had more money – or greater earning potential – and were the ones who insisted upon the prenup.
“It’s a massive generational shift,” said Libby Leffler, founder and chief executive of First, an online legal platform that helps people prepare prenups.
Leffler notes that women constitute 50% of First’s clients for prenups in opposite-sex marriages. Similarly, HelloPrenup, another online platform, says 52% of its clients are women.
That “tells us that women are no longer waiting for their partners to bring up the topic – they’re taking the lead,” said Julia Rodgers, HelloPrenup’s founder and CEO.
But a different set of numbers tells us what’s behind the trend, experts note – ones that speak to women’s increasing financial might. Consider that 45% of American women are now considered the household breadwinners, be they single working mothers or married mothers earning at least half of their family’s total income, according to a recent analysis from the Center for American Progress. By contrast, in 1967, that figure was 14%.
Another study, from the Pew Research Center, noted that over the past half-century, the share of women who earn as much as or significantly more than their husband has about tripled.
Added to all this is simply the fact that prenups are becoming more common, regardless of whether they’re initiated by men or women. A 2022 Harris Poll found that 15% of those who have been married or are presently engaged have signed a prenup. In 2020, that figure was merely 3%.
Monica Mazzei, an attorney who chairs the family-law group for Buchalter, a national law firm, says prenups used to have a stigma attached to them – as if they signaled that one person in the marriage didn’t truly love the other. But that’s no longer the case with the younger generation, which has become accustomed to hearing about celebrity prenups, she adds.
“I call it the Kardashian effect,” said Mazzei – referring to Kim Kardashian, the social-media icon who’s not been shy in addressing the importance of a prenup.
Leah Weinberg, a New York City resident, is among those who saw the value in a prenup. She signed one before she got married to her husband in 2012. She says it’s not about how much you love someone, but rather how practical you want to be, given the reality that some marriages naturally end in divorce.
“I think people are smart just to plan for the future,” she said.
As for Swift and Kelce, there’s no word as to what they will do. But Michele Locke, a family-law attorney based in Austin, Texas, says that despite Swift’s riches, the singer may not need to pursue a prenup. That’s because Swift has likely worked with a team of lawyers over the years to secure her assets.
“Women in Taylor’s position have a ton of financial mechanisms in place,” Locke said.
-Charles Passy
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
08-28-25 0700ET
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.