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Celebrity Couples Who Don’t Have Prenups

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Hollywood keeps proving that a marriage license and a signed contract don’t always come as a package deal.

Financial advisors will tell any couple with real assets to get a prenup before walking down the aisle, especially when one or both partners are already wealthy. Some stars take that advice. Plenty of others don’t — and their marriages, and sometimes their divorces, show exactly what happens when love, not paperwork, is the only agreement on the table.

• Jessica Simpson reportedly paid Nick Lachey an estimated $12 million settlement after skipping a prenup before their 2002 wedding.
• Russell Brand walked away from his 2012 divorce from Katy Perry without claiming any share of the roughly $44 million she earned during their marriage.
• Dax Shepard has admitted he once wanted a prenup with Kristen Bell — back before her career eclipsed his own.

The No-Prenup Club

Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin got married at a New York courthouse in 2018 with no prenup protecting either of their multi-million-dollar fortunes. Prince Harry did the same thing that year, declining to shield his reported £30 million from his marriage to Meghan Markle, a choice that lines up with the long-standing royal habit of avoiding premarital financial contracts. Royal watchers have plenty to say about the family Harry married into, and the royals aren’t always who they appear to be once the palace doors close.

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell married in 2013 without a prenup, and Shepard has been candid about the backstory. He told Conan O’Brien he actually wanted one at the time — because he owned more property than Bell did. That math flipped as her career took off, and neither of them ever bothered to draw up a contract to catch up with it.

Divorces That Came With A Price Tag

Jessica Simpson turned down Nick Lachey’s request for a prenup before their 2002 wedding, convinced the marriage was permanent. It wasn’t — they divorced in 2006, and Simpson reportedly handed over an estimated $12 million settlement. She’s since spoken candidly about regretting the decision not to protect herself financially going in.

Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale married that same year, 2002, also without a prenup, and their 2016 divorce played out under California’s community property laws. Rossdale ultimately agreed to take less than the standard 50 percent split of their combined assets, along with joint custody of their children. Big-money splits like these are exactly why the topic keeps coming up in cases like other messy celebrity divorces where the financial fallout outlasts the marriage itself.

Walking Away With Nothing

Katy Perry and Russell Brand married in 2010 without a prenup, and when they divorced in 2012, Brand chose not to touch any of the roughly $44 million Perry had earned during their marriage. It’s one of the more surprising outcomes on this list precisely because he had every legal opening to ask for a cut.

Russell Brand didn’t take a dollar of the $44 million Katy Perry earned while they were married.

Perry’s finances have drawn scrutiny before, and her track record with the people around her has been a recurring subject for entertainment reporters. Christina Milian’s marriage to The-Dream lasted from 2009 to 2011, no prenup involved, and she reportedly secured a $4 million settlement plus child support once it ended.

Gabrielle Union Learned The Lesson Early

Gabrielle Union skipped a prenup before marrying Chris Howard in 2001. That experience stuck with her — when she married Dwyane Wade in 2014, she made sure a prenup was non-negotiable this time around, no exceptions.

Union’s about-face is the clearest through-line in the whole video: the couples who got burned the first time rarely skip the paperwork the second time.