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A carefully crafted, fair, and balanced prenup can take care of lots of things the courts of various states won't, so if it only costs a few thousand bucks, why not get one? Plenty of people still worry that a prenup, by creating an escape clause, somehow preordains divorce. But isn't that like blaming a safe and well-lit emergency exit for the emergency?

"It's ridiculous," says psychotherapist Janis Altman. "If anyone in this day and age, with the current divorce rate, thinks life isn't going to change them, they're in LaLa land. Really crazy stuff happens, and if they can't handle a piece of paper, how are they going to handle cancer or crazy stepkids or 'I got fired'? It's really about: Life happens—deal with it."

But what about the person on the brink of commitment who says, "Prenup? I'm outta here." "That's not someone you want to marry," Altman maintains. "Because, when that happens, you have to ask yourself what their agenda was in the first place."

Advocates—including a growing chorus of marriage counselors—say that if both parties bring a spirit of honesty and fairness to the table, a prenup can be a good thing for a relationship. As Bob Nachshin and Scott Weston put it in their book, "Marriage, after all, is a give-and-take process, and negotiating differences in the prenuptial agreement is good practice for other issues that will present themselves along the way." Altman is more blunt: "If you can't get through the prenup process together, you probably can't get through a marriage, either."

The behavior of a potential spouse during prenup discussions and negotiations is often extremely revealing. Altman relates how one client broke off her engagement when she learned her fiancé was unwilling to continue raising her toddler twins in the event of her death. "I think a prenup is very indicative of how a relationship might turn out," she says.

Lovers turn out to be unwilling to share a dime, make allowances for changes, or even deal with their own debt. They get pressure from their relatives, who don't want a new spouse to end up with a share of the family business. Will your future partner stand up for you or buckle under pressure? Will he or she be willing to make sure your kids are covered in any eventuality? Tempting as it is to avoid the whole mess, you have to ask.

"There's a poignant moment when one person is doing something with such negativity that an outside party says, 'Whoa, you need to rethink this. I get a feeling this is going to hurt you in the long run,' " says Altman. "I say, better to find out before the invitations go out."

"My advice is to not even announce you're going to get married until you have a prenup," says Nachshin, "because once you have it, you really don't think about it anymore."

Altman recommends starting the discussion before you actually get engaged. That way, no one feels blindsided—and there isn't the pressure of a date or deadline. (As for postnuptial agreements, executed after marriage, Altman says that they often cause more problems than they solve, and legal experts agreed.)