SerpApi.Org
From her perch in Midtown Manhattan, divorce attorney Lisa Zeiderman has seen every imaginable marital horror story. Near the top of the list: Divorces where the spouse who stays home with the children is left with very little after decades of marriage.
But over the last couple of years, Zeiderman said, she is increasingly being asked to craft prenuptial agreements that include a “leaving the workforce” trigger. It activates if one spouse decides to stay at home and give up a career. Right now, she said, she is working on prenups with these clauses for three different couples.
These trigger clauses are increasingly popular, divorce lawyers say, and are part of a shift in how prenups are viewed and used. Prenups have historically been a taboo subject, perceived as a contract that protects family wealth from newcomers. But in recent years they have become not just a tool to protect assets but a way to establish equity for both partners in a marriage.
Anna Morgenstern, 40 years old, and Zach Spiess, 45, didn’t originally plan to get a prenup before their June wedding last year. The New York City-couple both own businesses. Morgenstern is a matchmaker and dating expert, and Spiess is a real-estate agent and owns an art gallery. The two had already discussed having children, but Morgenstern said it came as a surprise to her when Spiess asked what would happen if one of them stopped working to raise them.
Spiess said he was willing to be the one to step back if Morgenstern’s business took off. The two used HelloPrenup, an online platform that allows people to create their own agreements. The trigger they agreed on ensured the working spouse—whoever it would be—would provide additional financial support if one of them left the workforce, except in the case of infidelity.
“It was a good opportunity to get a view into how he thinks about our future,” Morgenstern said. The process became a kind of financial planning exercise.
Prenups, in general, are appealing to a much broader swath of newlyweds, lawyers say. Millennials are getting married later in life, after they have had time to build careers or businesses, and are holding more debt like student loans. While gender roles are changing and more fathers are deciding to stay home, women are still more likely to give up their careers. In 2025, 68% of mothers with children under six years old participated in the workforce compared with 95% of men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When a marriage does break up, state laws and judges can be surprisingly unforgiving to the stay-at-home spouse.
“Without a prenup, the person in the workforce will have earning power that the other will never be able to achieve,” the divorce lawyer Zeiderman said. “It’s frankly disappointing that there is not a lot of recognition for the stay-at-home parent in a divorce.”
While state laws typically allow for spouses to have an equitable split of assets such as the family home, in many places that doesn’t make up for the lost earning power of a spouse who left the workforce.
“Judges don’t always factor that in,” said Daryl Weinman, a divorce lawyer in Austin, Texas. “You are the one out of work and not building up savings and retirement.”
Some state laws allow for lifestyle alimony, meaning the court could grant a nonworking spouse support that maintains the quality of life they are accustomed to. Almost all states, however, encourage a spouse to get back into the workforce, so that support has a time limit.
There isn’t one way to craft a “leaving the workforce” trigger clause. Lawyers take into account a range of factors, including the career seniority one spouse might have had, had they continued working, as well as lost income and lack of retirement savings.
One way to structure the provision is to have the working spouse set aside money that would reflect the stay-at-home parent’s previous salary, as well as 3% to 5% annual raises. Or the working spouse could contribute regularly to an investment account that goes solely to the other parent in a divorce. If one spouse is a business owner, the partner might be guaranteed a percentage stake in the business.
Lawyers sometimes get creative in measuring the sacrifices of the nonworking spouse. They may be entitled to a greater share of major assets, such as the family home or vacation properties, to account for lost income. The working parent might provide a dollar amount for every year of marriage after a child is born. Some prenups provide for a re-entry payment for continuing education to give the nonworking spouse a boost after a career hiatus.
The contracts themselves are increasingly marketed by lawyers on social media as a routine inoculation for working professionals. A proliferation of new apps and online services have sprung up to offer them. Influencers give advice on social media under #PrenupTalk, touting quippy tag lines like “Protect your Peace, Protect your Bag”(a reference to money and earnings), and “Romanticizing Financial Transparency.”
Lilli Donahue left her job in finance last year to launch a podcast dedicated to prenups, and regularly throws New York City events with divorce lawyers and financial planners. Attendees—mostly women—sip matcha lattes or wine, or take a complimentary Pilates class, while hearing from family lawyers and consultants about the benefits of the legal agreement.
Donahue said millennial and Gen Z couples are attuned to the messiness of divorce after witnessing what their parents’ generation endured. Her own parents’ divorce took six years, and both filed for bankruptcy by the end of it, she said. It has inspired her to make a mission of promoting prenups.
“I always tell people, ‘Why are you letting the state decide what fair is?’” Donahue said.
