It is a truth occasionally acknowledged that choosing a husband may be the single biggest financial decision of one’s life.

Before I got married, I spent a lot of time thinking about money. Don’t get me wrong – I was thinking about outfits, venues, catering and seating plans; but I was also thinking about money.

I got married at 31 years old. By desi standards, I was practically a dinosaur, however I was adamant that I would rather be alone than married to the wrong person. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I waited for my Mr Darcy.

By the time my Mr Darcy came along, I had built up a decent amount of money in my own right. I’d been working for eight years, climbing the corporate ladder. I was paid well, and I had saved well (greatly helped by the fact that I had lived with my parents for most of that time). I had started investing from a young age, and I had essentially zero debt besides my student loan. What I didn’t have was a house. So I was cash-rich, asset-poor.

Mr Darcy, on the other hand, had his own home – along with a hefty mortgage. He had a great job, and what looked like a large income on paper, but once the mortgage, bills and general life expenses were paid, there wasn’t much left over. So he was asset-rich, cash-poor.

He was also divorced and had been financially burned as part of the split. On paper, this could have been a disaster in the making. But my perspective was that we had complementary assets: he had the house, and I had the cash flow. He could provide a roof for us to turn into a home, and I could give him some financial breathing room.

However, I knew he had financial scars from his first marriage, and equally, I had assets I wanted to protect. So when he broached the topic of a pre-nup, I breathed a small sigh of relief. In desi culture, the idea of a pre-nup is borderline offensive. Many people see it as nefarious – as if one party is already planning for divorce. 

What people often forget is that every marriage already comes with a prenup. If you don’t write one yourself, your country or state has already written one for you in the form of divorce law.

Now I don’t know how you feel about your government, but personally, I don’t have much confidence in them fixing a pothole, let alone making a decision of that magnitude on my behalf. It seems far more sensible to make that choice deliberately. And you might ultimately decide that the default government position is fine for you.

For us, it was about acknowledging reality. We were coming into the marriage with different experiences and different financial positions. Putting some formal structure around it that reflected our specific circumstances felt like the right choice for us. 

It is worth noting that prenups are not cheap. Ours cost in the region of £5,000 (and this was after negotiation and not having complex terms and arrangements). But in the context of the assets we were trying to protect, that felt like a sensible investment. They are also not strictly legally binding in England. However, courts do take them into serious consideration. If the terms are fair and both parties entered into the agreement with full information, then more often than not, the courts will uphold them.

If many years later the terms look unreasonable – for example, if circumstances have changed dramatically or children were not properly considered – the courts can override them. In other words, a prenup is not an iron cage. It is a framework.

And the process of creating one is simple at its core. You are required to divide your financial life into three categories:

• Yours,
• Mine,
• and Ours.

To do that properly, you have to be honest about what you own and what you owe. I found that exercise incredibly useful.

Starting a marriage with that level of transparency makes it much easier to keep talking about money over time.

It’s far harder to start those conversations later, especially if something has already gone wrong. It is better to fix the roof while the sun is shining.

A few things worth doing, whatever your situation:

• Find out what your country’s default divorce law actually says. You may be fine with it. You may not be. Either way, find out.
• If you are going into a marriage with meaningful assets – savings, investments, property, a business – consider whether a prenup makes sense.
• Talk about money before you get married. And then keep talking about it.

Today, my husband and I talk about money freely. Once a month, we sit down, usually over dinner or a cup of tea, and look at our finances together. There’s no tension around it. If anything, it feels strangely enjoyable to track our progress and hit our milestones. Some people assume that thinking about money so carefully before marriage is unromantic. I see it the opposite way.

Marriage is one of the most important partnerships you will ever enter into – emotionally, legally and financially.

It seems strange to me that we spend months discussing flowers and chair covers, but feel uncomfortable discussing assets, debts and expectations.

It may not be the most romantic way to think about marriage, but it is an honest one. Choosing a husband might just be the biggest financial decision of your life. The question is not whether money will shape your relationship (because it will). The question is whether you choose to be part of that conversation.