Prenuptial Agreements & Estate Planning in New Hampshire | Granfield Legal

You picked out the ring. You booked the venue. You’ve argued about the seating chart for three weeks running. Somewhere in all of that, someone probably mentioned a prenuptial agreement — and you probably changed the subject.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you on Valentine’s Day: a prenup doesn’t end when you do. In fact, a prenuptial agreement can follow you — and your spouse — all the way to the probate court. Long after the flowers wilt and the champagne is gone, that document you signed before the wedding can determine who inherits your home, your savings, and everything else you spent a lifetime building.

So yes — love is forever. Your prenup might be, too. And that’s exactly why it needs to work with your estate plan, not against it.

A prenuptial agreement without an estate plan is like buying a beautiful house and never changing the locks. The paperwork exists. Whether it actually protects you is a different question.

What a Prenuptial Agreement Actually Does When One Spouse Dies

Most people think of prenups as divorce documents. And they are — but they don’t stop there. A prenuptial agreement is a contract, and in New Hampshire, courts treat it like one long after the marriage ends by death rather than divorce.

When a spouse dies, a valid prenup can legally limit or eliminate the surviving spouse’s right to inherit — including their right to the elective share, which is the portion of an estate a surviving spouse is entitled to claim under New Hampshire law regardless of what a will says. Without a prenup, a surviving spouse in New Hampshire can claim a statutory share of the estate. A prenup can waive that right entirely — and courts will enforce it.

The problem isn’t that prenups are powerful. The problem is when they’re powerful in ways nobody anticipated — or when they conflict with an estate plan that was never updated to account for them.

The Client Who Didn’t Know What He’d Signed

A colleague recently described a client who came in shortly after his wife passed away — suddenly, unexpectedly. He was distraught. And he was worried, because he remembered signing a prenuptial agreement years earlier and wasn’t quite sure what it said.

When they reviewed it together, the picture wasn’t pretty. His wife had entered the marriage with substantial assets — over a million dollars — and the prenup reflected that imbalance sharply. The terms specifically stated that in the absence of an estate plan, the husband would receive nothing from her estate.

The house they lived in together was in her name alone, because he hadn’t had the credit to be on the mortgage when they bought it. Under the prenup as written, that house — his home — wasn’t his.

He had never thought about any of this because they were going to live forever, obviously. Most people do.

How New Hampshire Courts Evaluate Prenuptial Agreements

If a prenup is challenged after death — whether by the surviving spouse, by children from a prior relationship, or by other heirs — a New Hampshire court will look at several factors to determine whether it should be enforced:

The Real Lesson: Prenups and Estate Plans Go Together

A prenuptial agreement is a powerful legal tool. But like most powerful tools, it causes the most damage when it’s used without thinking through the full picture.

If you have a prenup — whether you signed it last year or twenty years ago — your estate plan needs to account for it. That means your will, your trust documents, your beneficiary designations, and your healthcare directives should all be drafted with the prenup’s terms in mind. When they aren’t, you create gaps that courts have to fill — usually at significant cost to the people you were trying to protect.

Conversely, if you’re engaged and considering a prenuptial agreement, that’s the ideal moment to think about estate planning at the same time. The two conversations should happen together, not years apart.

A few specific situations where the prenup-estate plan intersection matters most:

• Blended families — where children from prior relationships have inheritance expectations that may conflict with a surviving spouse’s prenup rights
• Significant asset imbalance — where one spouse entered the marriage with substantially more wealth and the prenup heavily protects those assets
• Real estate in one spouse’s name — particularly a shared primary residence where the non-titled spouse’s rights depend entirely on what the prenup and estate plan say
• Business ownership — where the prenup attempts to protect a business from a surviving spouse’s claim but the business succession plan was never updated to match

So Before You Say “I Do” — Or After

If you’re planning a wedding and someone brings up a prenuptial agreement, don’t just change the subject. Talk to an attorney. Have the conversation. And while you’re at it, ask about estate planning too — because the two are more connected than most couples realize until it’s too late.

If you’re already married and you signed a prenup years ago that you’ve never revisited, now is a good time. Pull it out. Read it. Then call an estate planning attorney and make sure your wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations actually work alongside it — not against it.

Love may be forever. Your estate plan, on the other hand, needs to be updated.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this post. Laws may change — always consult a licensed attorney for guidance specific to your situation. Attorney advertising.