Marriage is one of the most consequential financial events in a client’s life, yet prenuptial agreement financial planning remains a conversation that most advisers leave to family lawyers. New research suggests that gap represents a material risk, and a missed opportunity to serve clients properly.
Research conducted for Handelsbanken Wealth & Asset Management estimates that almost nine in 10 UK couples who are married or in a civil partnership have no prenuptial agreement in place, representing roughly 22.7 million people. The same study found that only 26.68% of those who said they knew what a prenuptial agreement was could accurately describe how one works.
Attitudes Are Shifting, Particularly Among Younger Clients
Dismissing prenups as a concern only for the very wealthy would be a mistake. Younger professionals, in particular, are approaching the subject differently. According to Mills & Reeve, 49% of 25–34-year-olds would be in favour of compulsory prenuptial agreements, compared with just 26% of those aged over 55. That generational gap suggests that advisers working with younger accumulation-phase clients will encounter this question with increasing frequency.
US data reinforces the trend. A 2023 Harris Poll, cited by First Learn, found that 41% of Gen Z and 47% of millennials who are engaged or have been married said they entered a prenup, up from roughly 8% in the 1990s. The direction of travel is clear, even if UK adoption lags behind.
Brett Frankle, partner at Mills & Reeve, said the firm had seen a sharp rise in demand for prenups between April and July over the past five years, coinciding with the summer wedding season. He attributed the growth to the increasing recognition of marriage as both a legal and financial partnership. UK searches for “prenup” reached their highest level in five years in February 2026, according to Google Trends data cited by the firm.
Prenuptial Agreement Financial Planning as Part of the Wider Review
The case for raising the subject is not about anticipating divorce; it is about comprehensive financial planning. Advisers already treat retirement, inheritance, the birth of a child and divorce itself as triggers for a full financial review. Marriage deserves the same treatment. A client may be entering a relationship with an existing property, a family business, a professional practice or a forthcoming inheritance. Their new partner may have a very different financial position, or existing liabilities that could affect the household balance sheet.
Frankle said prenups were increasingly common among people marrying with assets accumulated before the relationship. “As more people marry later in life, with the average age now in the mid-30s, many enter marriage with their own homes, higher earnings and existing assets,” he said. “As a result, prenups are increasingly seen as a straightforward way to protect what individuals have built.”
Research commissioned by JMW Solicitors found that 44.9% of UK adults believe asking for a prenup is unromantic, and 45.4% believe prenups create a power imbalance. Yet among couples who already have one, 31% said they took out the agreement for peace of mind around financial matters. Others cited protection of individual assets, avoiding legal disputes and shielding one partner from the other’s debts.
Ruben Sinha, family partner and head of JMW Signature at JMW, noted that wealthy families with assets across multiple jurisdictions faced an especially complex picture. “What matters is that the process is handled openly, sensitively and that both parties obtain specialist independent legal advice,” he said.
Frankle added that while there is no strict legal deadline, 28 days before a wedding has become a commonly cited guideline, allowing adequate time for financial disclosure, reflection and independent advice on both sides.
The adviser’s role here is not to recommend whether a client should sign a prenup; that is properly the domain of a family solicitor. It is, rather, to ask whether marriage changes anything material about the client’s existing financial plan. Handelsbanken‘s research suggests that for the majority of married clients, nobody has yet asked that question.
