A few months ago, one of the world's biggest pop stars, Taylor Swift, got married to American footballer Travis Kelce.

Her fans were ecstatic. Some traveled all the way to New York City on her wedding day. They waved signs, they sported friendship bracelets, and some even broke into a singalong of her song Love Story.

But another thing made headlines before her wedding, her ironclad prenuptial agreement with Travis Kelce.

Of course, prenups are more popular in the West, especially among wealthy couples.

But now, some Indians are also becoming interested in them.

For some, it's driven by social media and news about messy divorces. For others, it's a desire for greater financial transparency.

So what are prenups, and why do some Indians want them? And should India give them legal recognition and make them binding?

To learn more and to hear from lawyers, from couples, and experts on this, tune into the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kudrat (Host): Maneesh, a 28-year-old engineer working at a PSU. He told me that he’s been thinking of getting a prenuptial agreement.

Maneesh: बहुत सारी चीजें हैं मतलब इसमें जो prenup का main वो है कि transparency के लिए मेरा एक angle है और डर लगता है कि कुछ cheat हो जाएंगे तो फिर क्या करेंगे?

फिर हमारी property का क्या होगा या उसकी property का क्या होगा? और लड़ाई होगी तो कैसे mediation में सारा पैसा lawyers के चक्कर में लग जाएगा। इसके बजाय एक legal basis होना चाहिए, ये मेरा मानना है।

Kudrat (Host): Maneesh wants greater transparency through a prenup. He brought it up one evening with his girlfriend.

He wanted them to write down what each of them owned, what they earned, what they owed, so that later, if things went wrong, they would not have to fight over it in court.

But she heard something else.

She told me over text that she felt as if he didn’t trust her and was guarding himself from her.

That she would be the one leaving her life, her parents, to live with his family.

She wondered why he was so unusual and whether she was so untrustworthy.

Maneesh is among a small but growing number of Indians who are considering prenups.

But there's a problem. Indian law doesn't offer a clear answer on whether these agreements will hold up in court.

Goa is the exception. Under its Portuguese-derived civil law, couples can register a prenuptial agreement that determines how their assets will be divided.

Elsewhere, the legal position is far less certain. Couples can draw up and sign agreements, but that doesn't necessarily mean a court will enforce them.

Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief.

You’re listening to our Friday episode, where we tell stories about how Indians live, work and spend.

In today’s episode: what are prenups, why some are considering them and what happens if India gives them explicit legal recognition.

Virat: There's a lot of news going around in terms of property of the husband or maybe the husband being killed or something like that.

Therefore, I believe that some people are scared, and therefore they're like, okay, no property. The clients who come to us for prenups, when they come to us for prenups, and when we tell them before the meeting,

Kudrat (Host): That was advocate Virat Vilas Pawar.

He told me that he sees young men interested in prenups regularly.

Often, they’ve watched news stories of divorces gone bad. In some highly covered cases like Atul Subhash in Bengaluru in December 2024, Sambhav Jain in Noida last month, men have died by suicide.

Online, the blame settled on alimony and maintenance.

But the circumstances surrounding both deaths involved several overlapping personal, legal and financial issues. Reducing either case to alimony alone would miss that complexity.

Kudrat (Host): When people sit across from Virat asking for prenups, he has to slow them down.

Unlike in the West, Indian law doesn’t treat these agreements as automatically binding.

Professor Harikathik Ramesh, who teaches family law at OP Jindal University, explains why.

Prof Hari: There has been a propensity towards not recognising them as binding legal contracts, and the reason for that is contracts are governed by something called the Indian Contracts Act. And the issue is that the Indian Contracts Act has a provision that says a contract's object cannot be against public policy.

And with prenups, there has historically been a concern, and constantly been a concern, that in what is a prenup?

A prenup is saying, in case this marriage does not work out, how do the liabilities fall? How do we kind of divide our matrimonial property? How do we take care of these different issues?

The issue is that especially for Hindu law, given that marriage is considered to be a sacrament and not a contract, and this is something repeated very often by judges on repeat, that it's a sacrament, it's not a contract.

It is considered to be almost blasphemous to enter a marriage with the assumption that your marriage is going to fall apart. Because it's not meant to be viewed as a contract, it's viewed as against the public policy of wanting marriages to stay together. The Indian state is very invested in this idea of not wanting a high number of divorce rates.

Kudrat (Host): In countries where courts recognise prenuptial agreements, these contracts can determine how much a spouse receives when a marriage ends.

When media billionaire Rupert Murdoch divorced Jerry Hall in 2022, their prenup reportedly set out what Hall would receive. Her settlement included tens of millions of pounds and properties in England and France.

Golfer Tiger Woods reportedly paid his former wife Elin Nordegren around $100 million when they divorced in 2010, considerably more than their original prenup had provided.

But prenups don't always hold up. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg's agreement with actress Amy Irving, reportedly written on a cocktail napkin, was successfully challenged in court. Irving received around $100 million, roughly half his fortune at the time.

In India, as Prof Hari mentioned, courts have been particularly reluctant to recognise prenups under Hindu and Christian personal laws.

Muslim personal law takes a different approach. A nikahnama, or marriage contract, can include conditions negotiated by the couple, including mehr–which is essentially a sum of money or other property that the husband is obligated to give his wife as part of the marriage.

It can also include provisions on maintenance and financial security in the event of a separation. Courts have recognised and enforced certain such conditions.

For couples governed by other personal laws and even secular laws, the position is less clear. Courts may not treat conventional prenups as binding contracts, but still, couples can put their financial arrangements and intentions in writing.

Advocate Tanmay Patnaik says these documents can serve as persuasive evidence if a dispute arises.

So what exactly goes in a document like this?

Tanmay: As far as prenuptial agreements are concerned, they cover a host of things. They will cover, as far as classification of assets, right? These are premarital assets. They could be inherited assets, gifted assets, business assets. And they list out the ownership of the individual in those assets.

Now, there will also be a documentation of anything related to streedhan, which is what a woman would receive during marriage. There would be documentation of assets like jewellery, wedding gifts. Typically, those are allotted per se in the name of the spouse, the wife in that sense, from that perspective, and it's done so also to give some degree of protection. Now, another thing that prenups of course would cover is maintenance structures.

Now, if you look at the maintenance sort of, you know, the jurisdiction, the jurisprudence on maintenance in India, it typically is 25%. That's the number which courts have sort of determined as far as lifestyle is concerned. So prenups also sort of go beyond that number. They will put down floors and caps.

Kudrat (Host): And then, there’s other arrangements like trusts, which wealthy families sometimes opt for.

Tanmay: We are seeing a number of family businesses, family business owners and their families discuss setting up private trust structures. Now, those are found to be the most effective tool to deal with any kind of issue of matrimonial discord.

Because in that sense, you're really mitigating any kind of issues which may crop up on account of a breakdown of a marriage because the settlement of those assets have already taken place into a trust structure, which is completely insulated against these kind of risks. Yes, the conversation also does involve the future spouse, where they sort of have informed them that we're setting this up.

As you will appreciate, these are business assets, these are legacy assets. It does not mean that we're excluding you in a sense from the family. We will of course ensure that your maintenance and lifestyle is taken care of. But these are generational assets and therefore we have to ensure that whoever is a beneficiary of it is a direct lineal descendant.

Kudrat (Host): Still, you do not have to come from a wealthy business family to want protection.

In Mumbai, Ankur Borwarkar has built a business around that demand.

He founded Prenup India in March 2025. It’s an online platform that helps couples draw up agreements and consult lawyers.

Ankur: Middle-class people perhaps need the protection more and come to us more. When I say middle class, I'm talking about working professionals.

I'm talking about people generally under the age of 35, 30. These tend to not be in upper-class brackets. Yes, the wealthy do have... The agreements of the wealthy are very involved in the sense that depending on what they want to protect, right?

It could be things like family heirlooms, it could be jewels, it could be antiques, it could be foreign assets. The very common requirement for wealthy couples to protect. These are not generally the same requirements for non-wealthy, for non-upper-class couples.

Nonetheless, upper class, even in the middle and lower classes, they do want, they do need protection, and the argument is strong that they need it more than the wealthy. They are more at risk, they are more vulnerable than uber-wealthy or super-rich people in the event of a divorce or a separation.

Kudrat (Host): Prenup India offers three packages: Shagun at about twenty thousand rupees, Aashirwad at around forty thousand, and a custom option called Teej.

All include lawyer consultations and a notarised document.

Ankur: So our first job when a couple approaches us is generally to allay those fears. So we have to, like, inform all couples that, "Look, no one goes to jail for creating a prenuptial agreement, okay? There's no fine, there's no punishment, there's no penalty. The courts don't come after you simply for creating it.”

Kudrat (Host): Ultimately, Ankur says that even the exercise of drafting such an agreement is illuminating.

Ankur: So what we generally recommend to couples is that this is an exercise in transparency and honesty first and foremost.

The idea is to have these discussions, to invite the difficult questions, embrace them, don't run from them, because you want to find those differences today, resolve them today, and then begin your marriage on that understanding. It creates a much stronger foundation where both parties are on the same page. If they are not on the same page, they can find that common ground, right? So we push this first to anyone who approaches us.

Kudrat (Host): But, not everyone sees prenups as an exercise in honesty.

Maneesh’s girlfriend, for instance, questioned whether he trusted her when he first brought it up.

Online too, some women pushed back.

One woman argued that if prenups were legally recognised, couples should do away with gift exchanges between families altogether and split wedding expenses equally.

Others wanted household chores and childcare divided equally, while some wanted compensation for the career setbacks that pregnancy and childbirth can bring.

These women were not necessarily anti-prenups. But they also wanted recognition for the financial and personal sacrifices they might make in the marriage.

Kudrat (Host): So, what happens if prenups become enforceable in India? Here’s Prof Hari again.

Prof Hari: I think people typically look at pros. They see reduction in matrimonial litigation. They think the pros, given that things like maintenance, et cetera, are the most fought-over parts of family.

Kudrat (Host): One of the cons that Prof Hari pointed out was that the negotiation around prenups don’t happen in a vacuum, that both parties may not be coming in with the same power to negotiate.

Prof Hari: On a secondary level, I've always frankly thought about how many women in India are full-stop consenting to their marriage in the first place, that you can then worry about their consent to a prenup.

If consent to marriage itself is at a risky place, frankly, where there is a huge amount of familial coercion and societal coercion of women into marriages, especially in arranged marriage settings, right?

Then adding prenups to that is like adding fuel to the fire a little bit. Because what is the social setting? What is the actual negotiation position of women?

Kudrat (Host): Maneesh and his girlfriend have not signed anything yet.

Elsewhere, a few couples have put their names on a document whose weight in an Indian court remains uncertain.

The demand is growing.

The law has not caught up.

And the people who would have to sign these papers do not all hear the same thing when the conversation begins.

Outro: That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief, your once-a-week look at the stories shaping how Indians live, work and spend.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening!