Prenup Review by a Florida Attorney Before You Sign

1. What the $750 Review Includes, and What It Does Not

The review is a flat fee from $750, and the fee buys a defined piece of work. You know before the engagement exactly what you are paying for and what would cost more.

What the review includes

• A conflict check on you, your fiancé and the lawyer who drafted the agreement, before anything is sent.
• An engagement letter that names you as the only client and puts the fee in writing.
• A full read of the agreement and every schedule attached to it, clause by clause.
• A written analysis in plain English that measures each term against what Florida law would give you with no agreement at all.
• A list of the changes worth asking for, in order of what each one is worth to you.
• A call with me to walk through the analysis and answer your questions.

What the review does not include

• Negotiating with your fiancé’s lawyer or writing redlines. Revisions are quoted in writing before the work starts, and drafting a new agreement for one spouse is a flat fee from $2,450.
• Representing you in a divorce or in any later challenge to the agreement. Litigation is quoted per matter and never carries a flat fee.
• A prediction of how a court would rule on the agreement years from now, or a promise of any result.

Turnaround is quoted at the consult. The time depends on the length of the agreement, the size of the financial schedules and the number of days left before the wedding.

2. Why Your Fiancé’s Lawyer Cannot Advise You

Your fiancé’s lawyer represents your fiancé. Florida’s ethics rules do not let one lawyer represent both sides of the same agreement, and the lawyer who drafted yours owes loyalty to the person across the table from you. A friendly lawyer who explains the agreement to you is still explaining it on behalf of the other side.

Florida does not require you to have a lawyer at all, and I would rather say so plainly. For the divorce side, a Florida prenup needs to be in writing and signed by both of you, and nothing more. An agreement you sign without a lawyer is enforceable.

A review is still worth having, for two reasons.

1. You cannot negotiate a term you have not noticed. Most of what a prenup takes away never appears on the page, because the agreement replaces rules many people have never heard of, such as a spouse’s right to 30 percent of the estate at death. The review tells you what each clause gives up, measured in what Florida would otherwise give you.
2. The review comes before the signature, and nothing else does. Once the agreement is signed, the terms can change only if your spouse agrees in writing. A lawyer’s advice before the wedding is the one point at which you can still ask for a sunset, a support floor or a right to stay in the home. An agreement signed after separate advice is also harder for either of you to attack later, which is why a careful drafting lawyer will encourage you to get one.

3. What the Review Checks

The review makes four passes over the agreement, in the order a challenger would make them years later.

The legality screen

Some terms fail however carefully the agreement is signed. A prenup cannot reduce a child’s right to support, so a clause that fixes or waives child support in advance does not bind the court, and terms on timesharing or a child’s religion stay open to change. Florida also lets a judge order support despite an alimony waiver if the waiver would leave a spouse eligible for public assistance at the separation or divorce. Some forms include a clause that tries to waive that protection as well. No Florida case has tested such a clause, and I ask for it to be struck.

The disclosure audit

Florida treats harsh terms as a reason to set an agreement aside only when four things are all true. The terms were unconscionable when signed, the challenger got no fair and reasonable disclosure of the other side’s finances, never waived further disclosure in writing, and could not otherwise have known. One sentence found in most prenups knocks out the third part on its own, the written waiver of any disclosure beyond what was provided. Once you sign that waiver, the schedules attached to the agreement are most of what you will ever be able to point to.

So I read the schedules the way a litigator reads exhibits. Each asset should carry a value, the date of the value and how it was reached, with debts and income listed too. Entries such as “value unknown” or “to be provided” get flagged, and so do the assets most often left off, namely retirement accounts, business interests, trust interests and expected inheritances.

The signing formalities

The divorce side of a Florida prenup needs a writing and two signatures. The waivers of rights at death run under the probate code, which requires the waiving spouse to sign in the presence of two subscribing witnesses. A notary’s seal is not a subscribing witness, and a Florida appeals court said in 2021 that it found no law letting one spouse’s signature serve as a witness to the other’s. If the agreement waives your rights at death, the signing plan needs two witnesses who sign as witnesses, plus a notary.

Each clause against Florida’s defaults

The last pass tells you what you are giving up. Each clause is compared with what Florida law would give you if there were no agreement.

• Property. Without a prenup, a Florida divorce court starts from an equal split of marital property, and earnings during the marriage are marital. A broad release paired with a clause that property belongs to whoever holds title can reach everything bought in the other spouse’s name, growth included.
• Alimony. Florida’s 2023 alimony law ended permanent alimony for divorces filed on or after July 1, 2023, and caps how long durational alimony runs by the length of the marriage. A full waiver gives up whatever remains, and an agreed amount stays open to modification unless the agreement waives modification in specific words.
• The elective share. A surviving spouse can claim 30 percent of the estate whatever the will says, unless the right was waived.
• Homestead. A surviving spouse has rights in a Florida home that a will cannot override, unless waived. A general waiver with no address, a short move-out deadline after a divorce filing and no right to stay after a death are the terms I flag.
• Retirement plans. Federal law gives a spouse survivor rights in many workplace plans, and a consent signed before the wedding does not count, so the agreement should say who signs the plan’s own consent form after the wedding.
• Fees. A clause awarding fees to whoever wins a challenge makes any later fight expensive for the spouse with less money.

4. What Should You Ask for in a Prenup?

The question I get most from the person handed a draft is, “What can I ask them to change without starting a fight?” When the review finds a problem, the fix is usually a change to one clause rather than a new agreement. The requests below tend to be accepted by a drafting lawyer, because each one keeps the agreement’s purpose and limits what it costs you.

• A sunset or a step-up. The alimony or property waiver ends after a set number of years, often 10 or 15, or a lump sum grows with each year of marriage. A waiver that is fair after two years of marriage is a different bargain after twenty.
• A support floor. A minimum payment if the marriage ends, written as the lesser of a dollar figure or a percentage so the payment stays affordable if the other spouse’s fortunes change.
• The marital home. A right to stay in the home for a set period after a divorce filing or a death, with the estate paying taxes, insurance and major repairs, and a residence clause that agrees with the general waiver.
• Earnings and retirement growth. Savings from marital earnings, and the growth on retirement accounts funded during the marriage, carved out of the separate-property definition so they are shared.
• Life insurance. A policy that secures whatever the agreement promises you at death, owned or payable so that a later will cannot undo it.
• A mutual fee clause. Each side pays its own fees, or the fee clause works in both directions, so the wealthier spouse is not the only one protected.

5. If the Wedding Is Close

Florida sets no waiting period between signing a prenup and the wedding. Timing is still the classic way to attack one, because a signature collected under the pressure of a booked ceremony is the evidence an involuntariness argument is built from.

In Flaherty v. Flaherty, a couple had lived together for several years when he proposed on Valentine’s Day 2002. The husband first mentioned a prenup in early June and delivered a draft in late June, less than a month before a July 13 wedding in Las Vegas. Eleven days before the wedding she met with a lawyer, who advised her not to sign because the draft waived her elective share, any interest in property acquired during the marriage and all alimony. The lawyer said she would try to revise it with the husband’s lawyer, and the wife did not hear from her again until after the wedding. The final draft reached the wife when she picked him up at the Las Vegas airport at 11:30 p.m. the night before the ceremony, and she searched for a notary until 2:00 a.m. and signed without reading it.

Years later the divorce court enforced the agreement anyway, reasoning that she had waited more than six years to challenge it. Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal reversed in 2013 and set the agreement aside for duress and coercion, because the husband offered no evidence that she signed voluntarily, and it refused to count her silence during the marriage against her. The agreement predated Florida’s current premarital statute, and the statute now keeps laches and estoppel available to either spouse, so waiting is riskier today than Flaherty makes it look.

A shorter Florida case points the same way. In Simzer v. Simzer (1987), both spouses were 59, and the trial court found the agreement was signed a few hours before the marriage with no disclosure of the husband’s assets. The appeals court affirmed the ruling that voided it.

The calendar alone does not decide these cases. In Jackson v. Seder (1985), the husband gave the wife an agreement his lawyer had prepared, with a financial statement, about 17 days before the wedding. The wife had talked to a lawyer months earlier, when he first raised a prenup, and chose not to have this one reviewed. The agreement waived alimony, property and any claim against his estate. Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal enforced it, because she understood what a prenup does and signed freely after full disclosure of his assets.

With a wedding close, there are three honest options.

1. Sign on schedule after a review, with the schedules attached and the review and its date in your file.
2. Move the signing earlier or the wedding later, so the agreement is negotiated with time to spare.
3. Sign now on terms you can live with and amend after the wedding. After the marriage, a Florida prenup can be changed only by a written agreement signed by both of you, so an amendment needs your spouse’s agreement and signature. A change to the waivers at death signed after the wedding also requires fair disclosure of each spouse’s estate.

What makes a prenup invalid in Florida walks through every ground a challenger can raise.

6. Confidentiality and the Conflict Check

Please do not send the agreement before we have agreed that I represent you. Florida’s ethics rules protect what a prospective client shares, and the same rules can bar a firm from a matter once it has read a person’s confidences. A prenup names your fiancé, the drafting lawyer and both of your finances, so the firm has to confirm it represents no one on the other side before reading any of it.

The order of the steps is short.

1. The no-cost consult covers your wedding date and the kind of agreement you were handed, without the document.
2. The conflict check runs on your name, your fiancé’s name and the drafting lawyer’s.
3. The engagement letter names you as the only client and puts the fee in writing.
4. You receive a private upload link for the agreement and its schedules.

7. The Death Side of the Agreement

Most reviews concentrate on the divorce terms, and most prenups spend as many words on death. The waivers at death in a Florida prenup usually give up the following rights.

• The elective share, 30 percent of the estate whatever the will says.
• The intestate share if your spouse dies without a will, and the share of a spouse left out of a will made before the marriage.
• Homestead rights in the home.
• Exempt property and the family allowance.
• The preference to serve as personal representative of the estate.

Words such as “all rights” waive every one of them. Florida requires no financial disclosure for a waiver at death signed before the wedding, so a disclosure argument that might help you in a divorce gives you nothing at death. Whether a prenup applies at death covers how courts have read those words.

The second question is whether any promise to you at death is carried out. Many prenups promise the spouse with less money something at death, such as a sum, a home for life or a trust. A promise that lives only in a will the other spouse has yet to sign can be undone by a later will. Some forms say the will controls if the will and the agreement conflict, which gives the other spouse the power to change your benefit alone. I ask for that clause to be struck, for the promise to bind the estate even if no will is ever signed, and for the will, the trust or the life insurance to be in place by a date the agreement sets.

The death side is where I read a prenup differently from a divorce lawyer. A widow or widower who signed an agreement decades earlier is held to its words with no chance to renegotiate, and the people on the other side are usually the children of an earlier marriage. The Florida elective share and second-marriage prenups cover that situation in more depth.

8. What a Prenup Review Costs

A review of a prenup the other side drafted is a flat fee from $750. The fee covers the conflict check and engagement, a full read of the agreement and its schedules, the written analysis against Florida’s defaults and a call with me.

Negotiation and revisions with your fiancé’s lawyer are quoted in writing before they start. If the review shows the agreement needs to be rebuilt, drafting for one spouse is a flat fee from $2,450, and a postnuptial agreement signed after the wedding is a flat fee from $2,950. The full fee table sits on the prenuptial agreement page.

Each fee is honored for 90 days from the posted date of October 6, 2026. Government costs, if any, are additional and passed through at cost. A challenge to an existing agreement and any divorce litigation are quoted per matter and never carry a flat fee.

Book a No-Cost Phone Consult to start with the wedding date and the conflict check.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The draft that arrives three weeks out. A bride receives a forty-page draft three weeks before the wedding, with the groom’s schedules marked “to follow” and a signed waiver of further disclosure on the last page. The first request is the schedules, with values and dates, before anything else is negotiated.

The second marriage with grown children on both sides. A widower in his sixties owns the home, and the agreement has his new wife waive homestead and the elective share. The draft says she may live in the home for life, but that right appears only in a will he plans to sign later. The request is to put the occupancy right in the agreement itself, binding on his estate, with the estate paying taxes and insurance.

The planned career break. A future spouse plans to stay home once children arrive, and the agreement says property belongs to whoever holds title. Everything bought from the other spouse’s salary would stay in the other spouse’s name. A step-up tied to the years of marriage, or a share of retirement growth, is the usual request.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §61.079 (Uniform Premarital Agreement Act). §61.079(3) (a premarital agreement must be in writing and signed by both parties; enforceable without consideration other than the marriage); §61.079(4)(a)5. and 6. (the parties may contract for the making of a will, trust or other arrangement to carry out the agreement, and for life insurance death benefits); §61.079(4)(b) (the right of a child to support may not be adversely affected); §61.079(6) (after marriage, amendment, revocation or abandonment only by a written agreement signed by the parties); §61.079(7)(a) (not enforceable if the resisting party proves involuntary execution; fraud, duress, coercion or overreaching; or unconscionability at execution together with no fair and reasonable disclosure, no voluntary and express written waiver of disclosure, and no adequate knowledge); §61.079(7)(b) (court may require support notwithstanding the agreement to the extent necessary to avoid eligibility for public assistance); §61.079(9) (limitations tolled during the marriage; laches and estoppel available to either party); §61.079(10) (the section does not alter the formalities of agreements under §§732.701 and 732.702).
• Fla. Stat. §732.702(1) (the elective share, intestate share, pretermitted share, homestead, exempt property, family allowance, community-property claim and preference in appointment as personal representative may be waived before or after marriage by a writing signed by the waiving party in the presence of two subscribing witnesses); §732.702(2) (fair disclosure required for a waiver signed after marriage; none required for one signed before marriage). §732.2065 (elective share of 30 percent). Art. X, §4(c), Fla. Const., and §732.401 (homestead devise restriction).
• Fla. Stat. §61.075 (equitable distribution begins from the premise of an equal distribution of marital assets and liabilities). Fla. Stat. §61.08 as amended by ch. 2023-315, Laws of Fla. (permanent alimony eliminated and durational alimony limited by length of marriage, for petitions filed on or after July 1, 2023). Fla. Stat. §61.14 (agreed support remains modifiable).
• 29 U.S.C. §1055(c) (spousal consent to waive a qualified survivor annuity); Treas. Reg. §1.401(a)-20, Q&A-28 (an agreement entered into before marriage does not satisfy the spousal consent requirement).
• R. Regulating Fla. Bar 4-1.7 (conflicts of interest) and 4-1.18 (duties to prospective clients).
• Flaherty v. Flaherty, 128 So. 3d 920 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013) (2002 agreement delivered in final form at 11:30 p.m. the night before the wedding, after the wife’s lawyer advised against signing; set aside for duress and coercion where the husband offered no evidence of voluntariness; ratification and laches not applied to a spouse who did not challenge the agreement during the marriage). The agreement predates §61.079, whose subsection (9) now makes laches and estoppel available for post-Act agreements; no case resolves the tension. Simzer v. Simzer, 514 So. 2d 372 (Fla. 2d DCA 1987) (voiding affirmed; “The court found that the agreement was signed a few hours before the marriage and that there had been no disclosure of the husband's assets.”). Jackson v. Seder, 467 So. 2d 422 (Fla. 4th DCA 1985), review denied, 479 So. 2d 118 (Fla. 1985) (agreement delivered with a financial statement about seventeen days before the wedding enforced).
• Williams-Paris v. Joseph, No. 4D20-1760 (Fla. 4th DCA Nov. 17, 2021), n.1 (an agreement signed before a notary only; the court disagreed that the two-subscribing-witness requirement was met and found no case law letting one party’s signature serve as a subscribing witness to the other’s, but did not apply the point because it was not raised below). Hahamovitch v. Hahamovitch, 133 So. 3d 1008 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014) (agreed alimony remains modifiable absent a specific waiver; broad release reaches appreciation), approved, 174 So. 3d 983 (Fla. 2015).
• Waton v. Waton, 887 So. 2d 419 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004) (agreement prepared two weeks before the wedding, wife’s lawyer chosen from a list suggested by the husband’s lawyer, a 25 percent interest in the husband’s insurance company scheduled with no stated value and later valued at $386,000 as of the marriage; enforced after eighteen years of marriage). Waton v. Feder, 927 So. 2d 1086 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (per curiam; summary judgment for the lawyer reversed on whether he failed to advise the client of her rights as a spouse; collateral estoppel from the divorce did not apply). Both opinions read in full.
• Statutes retrieved from flsenate.gov and the in-repo statute files on October 6, 2026.

What I Look For When I Read the Other Side’s Draft

In 14 years of law practice, I have learned that a prenup costs the most when someone signed it believing it had been explained.

The clearest example I know is a Florida case I have reviewed through two opinions. A woman from Morocco, 34 years old, decided to marry a man she had lived with for six months, and the wedding was set for six weeks later. The man had been divorced before and insisted on a prenup. The agreement was prepared two weeks before the wedding, and she chose her lawyer from a list of names his lawyer suggested. Attached to the agreement was a list of his assets, and his 25 percent interest in the insurance company where he worked appeared on it with no stated value. An accountant later put that interest at $386,000 as of the wedding.

Eighteen years later she had not worked full time in thirteen years, he had a net worth of over three million dollars, and she had waived all alimony and any share of the property. Her lawyer testified that he did not specifically remember her, and that he was certain he had represented her because he had signed the attorney’s certificate on the agreement. A Florida appeals court upheld the agreement in 2004 and acknowledged the result was harsh. The wife then sued the lawyer who had advised her, and in 2006 the Fourth District Court of Appeal sent the case to trial on whether he had failed to advise her of her rights as a spouse under Florida law. The court accepted her theory of the harm in one sentence. “Had she been properly advised, she might not have married him with the agreement in question.”

My reading of that case gives me a few take-home points.

The first is the list of names. A lawyer chosen from the other side’s list can be entirely honest and still be the wrong person to test the agreement, and the reviewer should be someone you found yourself.

The second is the asset with no number next to it. The court enforced the agreement anyway, and the number turned out to be $386,000. The review is the moment to ask what an unvalued asset is worth, because after the signature nobody has to tell you.

The third is that the advice belongs in writing. In the divorce, the proof that she had been advised was a signature on a certificate and a lawyer who did not remember her. A review that ends in a written analysis, in plain English, of each right you are giving up is a record both of us can point to.

Practice pointer. Ask the reviewing lawyer for a written list of every right the agreement waives, set against what Florida would give you without it, before you sign. If the lawyer cannot produce that list, the review has not happened yet.

Avoid treating a signed certificate of independent counsel as proof that you were advised. The certificate records that a lawyer was present, and the advice itself is what you are paying for.

An honest limit belongs here. The 2006 decision sent her claim to trial and decided nothing about who would win it, and a review cannot make a one-sided agreement fair if the other side refuses every change. What a review can do is let you decide with the numbers in front of you.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The cases above are published opinions in other people’s matters, not matters this firm handled, and they predict nothing about yours.

Updated on October 6, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Each spouse should have independent counsel. Do not send the agreement or any confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.