A growing number of Canadians say they want a prenup, but few people sign them | Canada Voices

Sarah Baker thought getting a prenup would be relatively simple when her fiancé brought it up. Instead, it has become one of the most complicated, expensive and emotionally draining parts of planning their future.

What started as a conversation about protecting assets has stretched into two years of negotiations over clauses like how his rental properties would be treated and whether to include custody of their two dogs.

The Toronto-based tech worker and her partner, both 35, have spent nine years building a life together. They’ve lived together for seven years, own a home and have pets. “We grew in the time that we’ve been together. It’s such a mess to untangle everything that we’ve done,” she said.

So far, Ms. Baker has spent around $16,000 in legal fees, while her partner has paid roughly $6,000 to $8,000. She’d originally budgeted less than $4,000.

The lengthy process, marked by repeated rewrites and clashing and slow-moving lawyers, has started to reshape how Ms. Baker sees her relationship. Instead of finding common ground, it’s been “adversarial,” she said. It feels “more like a divorce than a prenup.”

Prenuptial agreements, more commonly known as prenups or marriage contracts, have been part of the legal landscape in Canada for decades. They are meant to bring clarity and certainty in the event a marriage breaks down, yet most Canadians still avoid them, often because of the very cost and emotional toll that Ms. Baker encountered.

Prenups loom large in pop culture – from reality TV shows like Love Is Blind and The Real Housewives to headlines around who would get what in a hypothetical breakdown of the much-hyped Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce marriage.

The reality is far less glamorous. A 2026 Nanos Research survey commissioned by The Globe and Mail found that of married respondents across Canada, only 4 per cent have a prenup.

Even among professionals who regularly advise clients on money, prenups remain surprisingly absent from the conversation. In his 15 years as a certified financial planner, Toronto-based Dave Giles, who works with Stonewater Financial Group under Sun Life, says not a single client has ever raised the topic with him.

He believes the gap between people wanting – and actually getting – a prenup stems from a strong “icky” stigma that surrounds them. They feel unromantic and pessimistic, especially when you’re in the “everything’s going to be perfect” phase of a relationship.

The results of the Globe’s Nanos survey back that up, with the top drawbacks to getting a prenup cited by respondents being the emotional strain it could place on a relationship and the distrust it might introduce.

Even for couples who understand the financial logic, Mr. Giles said that kind of backlash is often enough to kill the idea before it gets to a lawyer’s office.

Prenups remain rare despite the prevalence of divorce in Canada. Statistics Canada data shows around 37 per cent of marriages end in divorce.

Toronto family and estate lawyer Julia Fogarty says the financial consequences of separation can be huge, with disputes over property, debt and support leading to lengthy legal battles costing couples “thousands and thousands of dollars” in fees.

A prenup, is “a clear-cut way to divide up your interests” in case of separation, she says.

The legal contract is signed most often before marriage and outlines how property division, inheritances, existing assets, debts and spousal support would be handled if a couple separates. They are intended to be legally binding, but can still be contested in court depending on certain circumstances, she said.

For some couples, however, the biggest obstacle isn’t the doubt or discomfort – it’s cost.

In the Globe’s Nanos survey, which collected data from over a thousand adult Canadians, 11 per cent of respondents identified the high legal costs of getting a prenup as the biggest drawback. Among Canadians aged 18 to 34, that figure rose to 16 per cent.

The cost and complexity of a prenup often depend on what a couple is trying to protect and how much negotiation is required between the two parties.

In the simplest situation, where a couple wants to ensure that a home, inheritance or investment account they brought into the relationship remains separate if the marriage ends, Ms. Fogarty says it could cost anywhere from $2,500 to $4,000. If parties are unresponsive or have more complicated assets, the costs escalate.

The hope, of course, is that the upfront cost of a prenup will help avoid a far more expensive legal fight later.

While a straightforward, uncontested divorce can cost around $1,800, legal fees rise quickly once couples begin fighting over assets. A single court appearance in a contested case can cost $5,000 to $8,000, she said, while a family law trial typically starts at around $20,000 and can exceed $70,000, depending on the complexity of the dispute. When a prenup is in place, often those contested parts have been worked out ahead of time, so the divorces tend to be more straightforward and less costly.

“The upfront investment can add up, but when you compare it to the cost of [a divorce] litigation, it’s a drop in the bucket,” she said.

Many of Ms. Fogarty’s prenup clients are those entering their second marriage or marrying later in life than previous generations, bringing more assets into the relationship than their parents did. By their 30s, many Canadians already have property, investment portfolios, pensions or expect to receive an inheritance.

But more younger Canadians are showing interest in prenups, particularly as housing becomes harder to afford and family money plays a bigger role in home ownership.

B.C.-based lawyer Aimee Schalles says the traditional image of prenups as something only older or wealthier couples need is starting to shift.

A recent study by TD Bank showed that 31 per cent of Canadians say they want their partner to sign a prenup or cohabitation agreement. Interest was especially high among younger generations, with 52 per cent of Gen Z respondents saying they wanted one.

Yet the gap between interest and action remains stark. Only four per cent of those polled in the TD Bank study said they had signed one – in line with the findings of the Nanos survey.

One reason that may begin to change is the growing role parents are playing in helping younger Canadians buy homes. As down payments increasingly come from family, more parents want legal assurances that those gifts or loans will be protected if a relationship ends, says Aimee Schalles.

Ms. Schalles is a co-founder of Jointly, an online platform that helps Canadians create prenups and cohabitation agreements. The service includes an educational course followed by a self-guided agreement builder and typically costs $429 plus tax.

Couples who want independent legal advice must still hire their own lawyers (and some provinces require a lawyer’s involvement), but because the agreement has already been drafted, Ms. Schalles says those legal fees are typically lower than starting from scratch. In her experience, independent legal advice generally costs between $400 and $800 per person, bringing the total cost for a couple to roughly $1,600 – about half the average cost of having lawyers draft a prenup entirely on their own.

But Ms. Fogarty, who specializes in complex, high-conflict situations, cautions that presenting a drafted agreement to a lawyer does not necessarily reduce a lawyer’s fees. In her experience, much of the work involved in preparing a legally binding prenup is not in drafting the document itself, but in reviewing financial disclosure and tailoring the agreement to a couple’s specific circumstances.

One common scenario Ms. Schalles sees where people are turning to prenups involves couples buying their first home together, often with financial help from their parents.

“Buying a home in Canada is really a million-dollar-plus decision these days,” she said. “We’ve definitely had parents reach out to us directly and buy a gift certificate for their kids or pay for the subscription for their children to go and do the agreement because that’s a condition of them providing funds for a down payment for a home.”

That was the case for 33-year-old Zahra Alam. The Mississauga, Ont.-based respiratory therapist signed a prenup with her husband, Shahzeb Jafri, 35, before their 2021 marriage. But the idea didn’t come from the couple – it came from her father.

A few years earlier, Ms. Alam had purchased a condo with help from her family. Her father, who covered 20 per cent of the purchase price, wanted to ensure that contribution would be protected if the marriage ever ended.

At first, Mr. Jafri was hesitant, Ms. Alam recalled, saying when somebody hears prenup, they think you don’t trust them.

But after a few conversations, Mr. Jafri agreed. The couple worked with lawyers, reviewed drafts together and signed the agreement before their nikkah, a traditional Islamic marriage ceremony. The process took about a month and cost roughly $500 each.

Unlike the couples facing four-to-five-figure legal bills, Ms. Alam’s agreement was relatively straightforward and the lawyer she used was a family friend. Her father paid for her legal fees.

Ms. Schalles says domestic agreements may matter even more for “ordinary people” than the ultra-rich.

For younger Canadians who spend years saving for a down payment, she said, clarity around who owns what and avoiding tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees later can make “a real difference.”

She added that growing interest in prenups is also driven by experience. Many people have watched friends or family go through painful separations and want to avoid the same outcome.

For all the attention paid to the cost and discomfort, Ms. Schalles argues that a prenup can offer a crucial benefit: It forces couples to have discussions they might otherwise avoid.

She said those conversations can reveal early on whether partners share similar values around financial transparency, conflict resolution and long-term planning – all of which can help couples assess whether they are truly aligned for marriage.

In the Nanos survey, 16 per cent of Canadians ranked discussing finances before committing as the top benefit of a prenup, putting it nearly on par with protecting real estate and family inheritances.

For people nervous about raising the topic, Ms. Schalles suggests approaching the conversation gently and framing it around financial transparency rather than mistrust.

Instead of treating a prenup as planning for failure, she recommends presenting it as part of building a strong foundation together – one that’s rooted in openness about money and shared expectations to avoid surprises down the road.

That was one of the reasons Harman Dosanjh, 31, and her husband Jhanan Uthayakumaran, 31, decided to sign a prenup before their June wedding.

The couple, who live in Markham, Ont., first discussed the idea several years before getting engaged and neither viewed it as a sign of distrust.

“A prenup allows us to dictate our separation within our own terms as opposed to having the government or the courts decide how things should be split,” Mr. Uthayakumaran said. “We took control of whatever is a choice for maybe in the future.”

By the time the couple began planning their wedding, both had already accumulated assets of their own. Ms. Dosanjh owns part of a townhouse with her parents, while Mr. Uthayakumaran and his mother own the home the couple will live in after the wedding. Both also have retirement savings, investment accounts and workplace benefits.

“It’s not our parents’ generation anymore,” Ms. Dosanjh said. “They didn’t have any individual assets. Everything they built was together.”

For the couple, one of the biggest advantages of creating a prenup was that it pushed them to sit down and take stock of all the assets they were bringing into the marriage. “It forced us to have practical conversations about finances,” she said.

Like Ms. Alam, Ms. Dosanjh and Mr. Uthayakumaran wanted certainty around the assets that predated the relationship. For Ms. Dosanjh, that included something else: her dog, Link. “I’ve had Link longer than we’ve been together,” she said. “It was very important to me that I maintain a hundred per cent custody.”

Unlike Ms. Baker’s two-year ordeal, their process was relatively quick and inexpensive. The couple used Jointly, the online platform co-founded by Ms. Schalles, and paid less than $500. They chose not to have separate lawyers review the agreement afterwards. They did, however, build in a provision to revisit the agreement every few years and seek legal advice as their finances became more complex.

As a legal counsellor herself, Ms. Dosanjh understands that it’s a step colleagues recommend, but the costs of getting a lawyer did not feel justified for their fairly uncomplicated assets.

For Ms. Fogarty, a prenup is only as valuable as its ability to hold up if it is ever challenged in court, where agreements can be set aside if they are improperly drafted, signed under duress, or created without full financial disclosure from both parties. That’s why Ms. Schalles still recommends that each partner obtain independent legal advice even when using her online platform.

Similarly, couples might be tempted to write their own agreement and get it notarized. But Ms. Fogarty says notarization – which most family lawyers don’t charge their own clients for or charge only a nominal fee – is not what makes a prenup enforceable. Requirements vary by province, but courts generally look at whether both parties fully disclosed their finances and received independent legal advice. Skipping those steps can end up costing significantly more later if couples first have to litigate whether the agreement itself is valid.

While prenups are a way to shield existing assets, Ms. Fogarty says the most difficult negotiations usually centre on future wealth, like how a future home, business growth or parental gifts will be divided if things fall apart.

This can be especially complicated for Ontario couples. Under the province’s equalization system, property is not automatically split 50-50 for married spouses. Instead, the law compares how much each person’s net worth grew during the marriage, and the spouse with the greater increase may owe the other a lump-sum payment so both leave with an equal increase in wealth, Ms. Fogarty said.

Those are exactly the considerations at the heart of Ms. Baker’s ongoing negotiations. While she and her partner entered the relationship with similar financial means, the couple spent years building their wealth together. They share a home, hold common-law status, which impacts their taxes and eligibility for loan and medication cost relief, and work together to help each other with investments.

“It’s been kind of a mess to undo this ball of yarn. You’re pulling at the different areas to try to separate everything when you’ve already been together for so long that everything naturally is connected,” she said.

“It’s almost like you need a prenup before going into living together rather than pulling it up after,” said Ms. Baker.

That’s exactly the purpose of a cohabitation agreement. It covers the same types of things as a prenup, but for unmarried couples, said Ms. Schalles.

According to Statistics Canada, the number of couples living in common-law relationships has grown significantly over the past few decades, creating situations where couples may spend years accumulating assets together before ever discussing a prenup or cohabitation agreement. From 1981 to 2021, the number of common-law couples increased by 447 per cent, a much faster growth than that of married couples over the same period (up 26 per cent).

That said, as of 2021, marriage remained the most common type of union, with more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of couples married, and the remaining 23 per cent living common law.

In Ms. Schalles’ experience, many Canadians are surprised to learn how dramatically family law differs not only between provinces, but also between married and common-law couples.

In B.C., for example, after two years of living together, the law treats you nearly the same as if you’re married, she said.

Ontario operates differently. Common law partners do not automatically have the same property rights as married spouses, though they can still make claims in certain circumstances.

Ms. Fogarty says the value of a prenup – or a co-habitation agreement, for common-law couples – is often impossible to appreciate until a relationship ends.

For Ms. Baker, whose prenup negotiations remain unresolved, that logic is part of what keeps her moving forward.

But after thousands of dollars and two years of discussion, she feels too far into the process to simply walk away. “It sucks, but it is what it is at this point.”

But for Rachel McIntyre, getting an agreement has been well worth it.

More than a decade ago, before her then-partner moved into the Cambridge, Ont. home she owned, Ms. McIntyre signed a cohabitation agreement. The contract, which cost roughly $3,000 and was paid for by her mother, stated that the home would remain hers if the relationship ended and that there would never be any spousal support. Her partner did not hire a lawyer to review the document before signing it, something she now regrets not pushing for.

A few years later, the couple married and the cohabitation agreement effectively started functioning as a prenup. When the relationship ended last year, the 44-year-old said it became one of the most important legal documents she had ever signed.

During the separation, Ms. McIntyre said her former partner challenged the contract, leading to a six-month legal back-and-forth that cost Ms. McIntyre $30,000.

Nonetheless, the document still proved critical. “Had I not had the agreement,” she said, “I would have had to give him half the value of my house.”

Ms. Schalles confirmed that the absence of separate legal counsel does not automatically invalidate an agreement in all provinces. But she was adamant that both parties “speak to someone independently so there’s no allegation that someone’s been pressured or that another partner’s lawyer pushed them into agreeing.”

For Ms. McIntyre, the agreement offered valuable “peace of mind.” Knowing that she had one “made the prospect of separating and divorcing something feasible.”

Now, her advice to people considering marriage and prenups is to think beyond who your partner is today.

“People change,” she said. “You will not be the same person you are today in 15, 20 years, and the person you marry will not be the same person they are today.”

“You have to protect your future self,” she said.

The Decibel: Why more young people are signing prenups

Disentangling a marriage can carry a big financial burden if the division of property, pets and assets are in the mix. Once derided as unromantic, the prenuptial agreement is now gaining popularity among young Canadians planning to get married.

Mariya Postelnyak, consumer affairs reporter for The Globe, joins the show to talk about how prenups legally work in Canada, what’s included and what isn’t in agreements, and why more couples are navigating the tricky conversation before marriage.