When Should You Get a Prenup in Washington State?

There is a moment in wedding planning when everything suddenly becomes very real. The venue is booked. The invitations may be ordered. Someone is discussing flowers, seating charts, or whether twelve people really need to be in the wedding party.

And then someone says: “Should we get a prenup?”

It is a perfectly reasonable question. Unfortunately, it is often asked much later than it should be.

A prenuptial agreement is not simply a document you sign before walking down the aisle. Done properly, it is a financial planning process. Both people need time to think about what they want, disclose their finances, obtain legal advice, negotiate any points of disagreement, and ultimately sign an agreement they both understand.

So, when should you get a prenup in Washington State?

The short answer is: well before you think you need to.

A Prenup Should Be Part of Planning for a Marriage—Not Just Planning for a Divorce

Prenuptial agreements have an unfortunate reputation as documents designed for people who expect their marriages to fail.

That misses much of their purpose.

Marriage itself changes your legal and financial relationship. In Washington, that is particularly important because Washington is a community property state. Once you marry, state law provides a set of default rules governing property acquired during your marriage.

A prenup gives a couple the opportunity to decide whether those default rules make sense for them.

You might decide that income earned during your marriage should be community property. Or you might decide to keep certain income or assets separate. You may want to protect a business that existed before the marriage, establish expectations surrounding debt, or preserve assets for children from an earlier relationship.

These are not necessarily conversations about divorce. They are conversations about what marriage will mean financially.

And, in many cases, having those conversations before the wedding can be a very healthy thing.

How Soon Before a Wedding Should You Get a Prenup in Washington?

There is no magic number of days under Washington law that automatically makes a prenup valid.

But waiting until the last minute is a bad idea.

Washington courts care about whether a prenuptial agreement was entered into freely and voluntarily and whether the parties had appropriate knowledge of their rights and finances. Timing can become important because an agreement presented immediately before a wedding can raise an obvious question: did the other person really have a meaningful choice?

Imagine being handed a prenup the night before your wedding.

The venue is paid for. Guests have flown into town. Your family is staying at a hotel. Your dress or suit is hanging in the closet.

Technically, you can refuse to sign. Practically, however, walking away at that point may mean cancelling a wedding in front of everyone you know.

That is precisely the kind of situation you want to avoid.

In In re Marriage of Matson, a significant Washington prenup case, the agreement was signed the night before the wedding, and the circumstances surrounding that last-minute execution contributed to the court's conclusion that the agreement was invalid.

That does not mean Washington has a rule that a prenup signed close to a wedding is automatically unenforceable. In another Washington case, Kellar v. Estate of Kellar, the court specifically explained that there is nothing inherently fatal about signing a prenup five days before a wedding.

But “not automatically invalid” is a very different standard from “good planning.”

Ideally, the goal should be to have the agreement negotiated and completed comfortably before the wedding—not to discover how close to the ceremony you can get away with signing it.

Why Does a Washington State Prenup Take Time?

A well-prepared prenup usually involves more than drafting a document and collecting two signatures.

First, the couple needs to decide what they actually want the agreement to accomplish.

Then comes financial disclosure. Each person should understand the other's assets, debts, income, and general financial circumstances.

There also needs to be time for legal advice. Ideally, each person has their own attorney. Your lawyer represents you; your future spouse's lawyer represents them.

And sometimes there is negotiation.

Perhaps one person wants all income earned during the marriage to remain separate, while the other expects marriage to involve building wealth together. Perhaps one person is willing to waive an interest in a business but wants different treatment for the marital home. Perhaps a couple agrees completely on what should happen if they divorce but has never considered how the prenup interacts with their estate plans if one of them dies.

Those conversations take time.

They are much easier to have when your wedding is several months away than when your caterer is asking for the final headcount.

When Should You Consider a Prenuptial Agreement in Washington?

You do not have to be extraordinarily wealthy to benefit from a prenuptial agreement.

Often, what matters more is whether your financial circumstances would benefit from clarity.

For example, imagine that you bought a house before meeting your future spouse. Or perhaps you spent ten years building a business. Maybe you have an investment account you have been contributing to since your twenties.

Those assets may begin as your separate property. But marriage can make the financial picture considerably more complicated over time, particularly when separate and community funds become mixed together or marital labor contributes to an asset's growth.

A prenup can establish expectations before those questions arise.

The same is true when one person enters the marriage with substantially more wealth than the other—or substantially more debt.

But one of the situations in which I think prenups can be especially valuable has relatively little to do with divorce.

Prenups, Second Marriages, and Children From Previous Relationships

Second marriages often come with financial histories that first marriages do not.

You may own a home. You may have retirement accounts. You may already have an estate plan. And, most importantly, you may have children whose financial future you want to protect.

Now you are creating a new family without wanting to erase the obligations and relationships that came before it.

A prenup can help define which assets will remain separate and can work alongside your will or trust to establish what you intend to leave to your children and what you intend to provide for your spouse.

Washington's Estate of Hansen illustrates this particularly well. Both spouses had children from previous marriages, and their prenuptial agreement helped preserve their separate property for their respective children.

This is one reason I often think of prenups and estate planning as complementary rather than completely separate areas of law.

A good prenup does not simply answer, “What happens if we divorce?”

It can also answer, “What are we building together, what are we keeping separate, and how do we protect the people we already love?”

Is It Too Late to Get a Prenup Before My Wedding?

If you are reading this with a wedding several months away, this is an excellent time to start the conversation.

If the wedding is much closer, that does not necessarily mean it is too late.

It does mean you should speak with a Washington prenup attorney promptly.

The closer you get to the wedding, the more important it becomes to consider whether there is realistically enough time for financial disclosure, independent legal advice, meaningful negotiation, and voluntary execution of the agreement.

Sometimes the better legal advice may be not to rush.

Couples who are already married can consider a postnuptial agreement, although postnuptial agreements present their own legal considerations and are scrutinized differently from agreements entered into before marriage.

What you do not want is to take an agreement intended to create certainty and introduce unnecessary uncertainty by forcing the process into an unrealistic timeline.

When Is the Best Time to Start a Prenup in Washington State?

There probably will never be a moment when discussing a prenuptial agreement feels quite as exciting as choosing the wedding venue.

That is okay.

Marriage is romantic. It is also one of the most consequential legal and financial relationships most people will ever enter.

Talking openly about money, property, expectations, children, careers, debt, and the future before getting married does not diminish the commitment you are making. In many ways, it recognizes how significant that commitment actually is.

So when should you get a prenup in Washington State?

Start the conversation early.

Give yourselves enough time to understand what you are agreeing to, enough space to disagree if necessary, and enough distance from the wedding that neither person feels that signing the agreement is simply another item that has to be checked off before walking down the aisle.

A thoughtfully negotiated prenup should create clarity before a marriage begins—not pressure in the final days before the wedding.