Personal Finance Advice From Kanye West: “If you aint no punk holla ‘We Want Prenup!’”

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Kanye West. Producer, rapper, financial advisor? That’s right. In addition to busting out phat beats, Mr. West also dispenses financial advice to all those sucka MCs. In 2005’s smash hit “Gold Digger” Kanye lays down the following:

If you aint no punk holla We Want Prenup

WE WANT PRENUP!, Yeaah

It’s something that you need to have

Cause when she leave yo ass she gone leave with half

Should young married couples get a prenup?

This a touchy issue, but here’s my take on it. If you’re young and are planning to get married, a prenup is probably unnecessary. You and your prospective spouse will have to fork over up a couple thousand dollars each to hire a lawyer to write up the document. Because you’re young, you probably don’t have much in assets. Why spend thousands of dollars to protect what little you came into the marriage with? You could try to guess what you’ll have in the future and base divisions on that, but that seems like a pretty futile exercise.

If it’s a second marriage, you should probably consider a prenup. Usually, people marry a second time a bit later in life. By then you probably have colletect considerable assets and a few children. If you want to ensure your children are taken care of financially after you’re gone the investment in a prenup will be worth it.

Personally, I don’t think prenups are necessary at all. Call me naïve or old fashion, but I feel if people really care about each other and have a solid relationship, a prenup can be killjoy on a marriage. I would have hated the idea of starting off my marriage discussing with Kate what will happen when we decide to go our separate ways. To me it’s like you’re already conceding that a marriage is doomed to fail.

What are your thoughts about prenuptial agreements? Should young married couples have them? Are you married without a prenuptial agreement? Tell us your experience.

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9 Comments

1. Wanda on 04.07.2007 at 10:11 (Reply)

   I go back and forth on this topic, but I’m pretty sure I want to have a prenup.

   1. I like that my future husband and I get to decide how we (not the state) want to split our assets if we divorce or dies. That’s basically what a prenup is… it displaces the prenup that everyone ALREADY HAS (in terms of state law).

   2. It’s like an insurance policy to mitigate the financial fallout of a divorce or death. I have a disability insurance - doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and try to break my leg deliberately. I am going to have a Durable Power of Attorney - doesn’t mean I expect to be hit by a car and fall into a coma.

   3. A division of assets (even future assets & earnings) when you’re in love and together reflects better intentions than after people are in the process of divorce.

   4. If a young couple decides that one of the parent will stay home with children or support the other through med school or law school, there are real financial consequences to consider that a prenup can address in case of dissolution of marriage.

   5. And the last thing is that I always think, well it won’t happen to ME. I will have a happy marriage because I am willing to try and I have good judgment and I am a good person, etc. etc. etc. But who really go into a marriage thinking it will fail? People don’t think divorces or deaths of a spouse will happen to them. But more often than we’d like to think or admit, it does.

   And one more thing, a prenup is NOT to make sure that your wife or husband gets nothing of yours. It doesn’t look good if you say, dear husband, you supported me for 4 years for med school, but, um, if we separate? you get nothing.

   Anyhow, just my 2 cents.

2. Rich Minx on 04.07.2007 at 10:28 (Reply)

   If one person has considerably more money than the other, a prenup seems fair to me. It’s not very romantic, but neither are divorce statistics.

3. clueless on 04.07.2007 at 10:36 (Reply)

   I don’t think prenup is necessary. Divorce is supposed to be messy, and hopefully the fear of going through it would make people stick together and try to work things out, instead of leaving when the going gets rough.

   My 2 cents.

4. Mike on 06.07.2007 at 13:59 (Reply)

   I agree that most times for a young couple with no money on either end doesn’t need a pre-nup.

   However, I think that it still depends on a lot of circumstances, including career plans for both people and the state you live in. For example- if one person is giving up their career to stay home with kids or giving up additional schooling to support their spouse through school in a state that doesn’t have alimony laws (Texas for example) a pre-nup makes sense. Wanda explained the reasoning behind that pretty well.

   Additionally, I’ve wondered about whether pre-nups in communities that didn’t traditionally have them have increased as the pre-nup has become more common. I would not be surprised at all to see divorce conditions related to one spouse leaving the faith or not living the tenets of said faith similar to the conditions spelled out for cases of infidelity.

5. SavingDiva on 09.07.2007 at 10:47 (Reply)

   Even marrying at my age (mid-20s), I would like to have a pre-nup. I would just like to be able to walk away with what I have saved if my marriage doesn’t work out. I feel as though I’m being realistic, not a killjoy (50% of first marriages end in divorce). I don’t want to have to pay thousands of dollars for a car that I never was able to drive…or even for credit card debt that was acquired before I was married….

6. Brett McKay on 10.07.2007 at 18:50 (Reply)

   Great comments everyone! It’s nice to see different perspectives on the issue.

   Wanda- Excellent points, especially #4.

   RichMinx- You’re right. Divorce statistics are definitely a downer. I can understand why people would consider a prenup necessary.

   Clueless- That’s an interesting take on it. Economists have shown that we’re more risk averse than risk taking, so maybe the fear of losing all your money will cause more people to stick out marriages. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it’s an interesting point.

   Mike- Interesting comment about “adhering to the faith” conditions in prenup. As a fellow Morm, I can’t help but think you’re alluding to LDS communities in Utah. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Mormons did. Personally, I think that’s pretty lame, but to each their own.

   Saving Diva- Yeah, paying for stuff you didn’t even get to use would definitely suck and I understand the desire to have a prenup to avoid that situations.

7. Cynthia Armistead on 09.08.2007 at 12:29 (Reply)

   I agreed with you when I was an 18-year-old in love. We had nothing, really, so why worry about a prenup? And, of course, we expected to be together forever.

   I did have something, though - something extremely valuable and irreplaceable that I gave up when I got married. I was a National Merit Scholar with a “full ride” from an Ivy League school. I’d also been working since I was 12, and had a part-time bank job that could become a full-time job any time I said the word. My husband didn’t have any job skills to speak of, but his intended job would be more lucrative than mine. We agreed that I’d work while he got his degree, then he’d support me while he worked.

   Unfortunately, that wasn’t in writing, and we divorced just as he graduated. Legally, I know that there have been cases in which judges have decided that spouses had “part ownership” of degrees in such cases, but I was too devastated to look out for myself legally at the time.

   If we’d had a prenup, negotiated when we (I, at least!) were in a clearer state of mind, that would have been arranged in advance. I’m fairly certain that my fiance would NOT have agreed to any prenuptial agreement that said that he would support me while I got my degree if we divorced, which would have been a much-needed wake-up call.

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9. Scott on 11.05.2008 at 14:20 (Reply)

   I am a fan of pre-nups…After losing my shirt the first time I dont think I’d ever get married again..unless I had a pre nup. Its funny how women who dont have money say they arent romantic….but women I date with money agree that a pre-nup is necessary. Guys..do yourself a favor. Get a pre-nup! Even if it is your first marriage. You wont be broke very long. Your career will take off. Protect yourself! When women say a pre-nup is just “preparing for a doomed marriage”. Tell them you have car insurance…in case you are in an accident. Why ont insure yourself in the event of a divorce? Men are totally screwed in a divorce. The law is NOT on your side. You do NOT want to rely on the kindess of her heart if the marriage ends. You need the law on your side!

   S.

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