If you make significantly more than your partner & have a prenup, would you mind sharing the basics of your agreement / if you keep separate bank accounts? I know a proposal is coming soon & am starting to think about what makes sense / is fair. I will hire a lawyer as this is not my practice area, but would also be nice to know what other folks do. I make about 2.5x his salary now, & the gap is only going to increase. I also have a lot more saved up already. We don’t want kids. TIA!

Divorced here, the prenup held and he actually owes me money because I have full custody of our daughter.

Everything we brought into the marriage stayed separate. Anything we put into both names was split 50/50. Any money put into our own accounts remained separate property. When we split we had a couple of joint credit cards and a joint account we paid for household expenses with. We used the joint account to pay off the joint credit cards and split what was left in the joint (which ended up being like $500).

Get a family law lawyer in your state and make sure he has a lawyer too.

My lawyer advised me to keep separate accounts and 1 joint account. My paycheck goes to my personal account. Per the prenup, that money and anything I spend that money on is mine. Once we put our money in the joint account, it is shared marital property. We only use our joint to pay the mortgage and daycare.

Also, I was open to paying a larger percentage of the mortgage, but that meant I had a larger share of the ownership of the home. If I pay 75%, then I get 75% if we divorce and sell the home. My husband didn’t like that, so we settled on a 50/50 mortgage split.

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I don’t have a prenup, but a big consideration is whether you live in a community property state. At least in TX - Your income is considered community property, so throughout your marriage, you only own 1/2 interest in your income, unless you change the default rules.

When my husband and I got married, I made over double his salary (~250k vs 100k). We did get a prenup, and we live in an equitable distribution state. Our agreement in the prenup was that we would each contribute 65% of our income (post anything taken directly out of our paychecks by our employers) to a joint bank account, and we would use that money to pay for all joint expenses. We also have a joint savings account that we move money into whenever we can. The remaining 35% stays in our separate accounts and was ours to do whatever with. We also agreed that my bonuses would be subject to the same divide as income. This was what the attorney who did our prenup recommended as the more equitable option (flagging that as I became more senior, I might have more control over what portion of my money would be considered income vs a bonus).

Got married in 2021. He is a teacher. Our prenup simply states that everything titled jointly will be split 50/50, everything titled individually will remain with the individual. We have jointly titled the house (and the mortgage), and a couple of investment accounts. Otherwise, everything is pretty much separate. He helps out monthly with an amount that he jokingly calls "rent," but pretty much all bills and expenses are paid by me or on my credit card for which he is an authorized user. It has been fine. Our prenup also addresses alimony, which only kicks in after 10 years of marriage and only last for five years following a divorce.

On this note - does anyone know about debt responsibility? I know there are some states where everything they do and have affects you but wondering if prenup can protect against that?