You can write a prenup from scratch in parts of Canada. The bigger question is whether you want to research, structure, draft, check, format, and revise every part yourself. Prenuply gives couples a guided Canadian workflow and a personalized agreement template, but it does not replace independent legal advice or province-specific signing requirements.
This is a direct comparison between a blank-page do-it-yourself prenup and Prenuply's paid document-preparation service. Prenuply publishes this article, so you should treat it as a transparent explanation of our product, not an independent review. We will show what the service adds, what remains your responsibility, and when a lawyer-first route is the better choice.
This article provides general legal information, not legal advice. Each partner should have the final agreement reviewed by a separate qualified lawyer before signing. In Quebec, a marriage contract must be completed by notarial act.
DIY prenup vs Prenuply: the quick comparison
| Task | Write it yourself from scratch | Use Prenuply |
|---|---|---|
| Decide what the agreement should cover | Build your own question list and research possible issues | Follow a structured questionnaire about your relationship, province, assets, debts, support, and priorities |
| Draft the document | Find Canadian sources, choose clauses, define terms, and connect the sections yourself | Generate a personalized Canadian agreement template from your answers |
| Add unusual instructions | Write and integrate every custom clause yourself | Describe custom terms in your own words and answer smart follow-up questions when more detail would help |
| Check the whole draft | Review consistency, missing details, definitions, schedules, and formatting yourself | Use a structured generation and review process, then use available generations when you need an updated version |
| Prepare files | Format the document and create editable and printable versions | Download polished PDF and Word files |
| Get legal advice and sign | Arrange separate legal advice and proper signing | Still arrange separate legal advice and proper signing, with an optional lawyer-referral request for each partner |
| Direct document-preparation cost | Potentially $0, plus your time and any software | The current standard price is $49 CAD for three generations, before any separate lawyer or notary fees |
The key difference is not that Prenuply removes you from the process. You still decide the terms and provide accurate information. The service reduces the blank-page work between your decisions and an organized draft that is ready for professional review.
What “make it yourself” actually requires
A homemade prenup can be more than a short note saying each person keeps their own property. To create a useful working draft, you need to make dozens of connected decisions.
For example, if one partner owns an investment account before marriage, it is not enough to identify the account. You may also need to decide how later contributions, withdrawals, income, growth, substituted property, taxes, and commingling with joint funds should be treated. Similar questions arise with homes, businesses, pensions, inheritances, stock options, and debt.
A blank-page DIY process usually involves five kinds of work:
- Issue spotting: deciding which present and future events need rules.
- Legal research: finding the correct Canadian and provincial framework instead of relying on a US form.
- Drafting: turning plain-language intentions into defined, consistent provisions.
- Disclosure: preparing complete financial schedules and supporting records.
- Process management: exchanging drafts, documenting revisions, obtaining separate advice, and signing correctly.
You can do valuable preparation yourself. Our detailed guide to writing your own prenup in Canada covers the legal and practical risks. This comparison focuses on what changes when software handles more of the preparation and drafting work.
What Prenuply adds to the process
Prenuply is a technology company, not a law firm. Its role is document preparation. Here is what that means in practical terms.
1. A structured intake instead of a blank page
The questionnaire asks about the information that shapes the working draft, including the agreement type, province, partners, assets, debts, support choices, and protection priorities. You do not have to invent the entire interview yourself.
That structure can also make the conversation more concrete. “We should protect the business” becomes a series of questions about ownership, value, future growth, contributions, income, and what each partner wants the agreement to do.
The intake cannot know facts you do not provide. Both partners remain responsible for honest, complete information. Use the financial disclosure checklist to gather current records before the lawyers review the final draft.
2. A Canadian, province-aware starting point
Searching for free prenup language often leads to American documents that refer to states, community property, alimony, or laws that do not apply in Canada. Prenuply generates a template for the selected Canadian province and agreement type.
Province awareness is useful, but it is not a substitute for a lawyer applying current law to your circumstances. Canadian family law is provincial, and the professional or signing steps differ. We explain the major checkpoints later in this article.
3. Custom terms in your own words
Couples rarely fit perfectly into a generic form. You may want to address a family business, a cottage, a down-payment gift, a period away from paid work, or a specific plan for shared expenses.
Prenuply lets you describe special instructions in plain language. The system can ask follow-up questions when additional context would make the draft more specific. That is different from a static downloadable template, which only gives you the blanks chosen by its author.
This flexibility still has boundaries. A tool should not turn an inappropriate instruction into a confident-looking clause. Review what cannot be included in a Canadian prenup, and ask your lawyer about any term involving children, support waivers, tax, estate planning, or a significant imbalance between partners.
4. Connected sections and financial schedules
A prenup is a system of related definitions, clauses, and schedules. A change in one section may require changes elsewhere. If “separate property” includes a business but the financial schedule omits the shares, the document may not tell a complete story.
Prenuply turns your answers into a full agreement template with financial disclosure schedules. It also reviews the generated document and can ask for missing details before creating the final files. This reduces manual assembly work, but you and your lawyers must still verify every name, date, asset, debt, value, address, and term.
5. Revision capacity
The first draft is often the beginning of the discussion. One partner may clarify how mortgage contributions should be handled. A lawyer may recommend different support language. An asset value may change before signing.
The standard Prenuply purchase currently includes three generations. That gives you room to update information and create a new version instead of manually finding every place affected by a change. It does not include unlimited lawyer revisions, and a new generation is not a substitute for having counsel review the actual final version.
6. PDF and Word output
DIY documents often lose time to page breaks, numbering, headings, signatures, and schedule formatting. Prenuply provides both a polished PDF and an editable Word document. The PDF is convenient for reading and record-keeping. The Word version gives a reviewing lawyer a practical file to comment on or revise.
Formatting does not make an agreement enforceable. It simply makes the handoff easier and reduces avoidable clerical work.
What Prenuply does not do
A fair comparison needs a clear boundary. Prenuply does not:
- act as either partner's lawyer
- give legal advice about what you should agree to
- represent a partner in negotiations
- verify that every asset, debt, or value you entered is complete and accurate
- provide business, tax, pension, valuation, or estate-planning advice
- guarantee that a court will enforce the agreement
- replace independent legal advice
- replace the Quebec notarial process or Alberta's lawyer acknowledgements
Each partner can submit a separate lawyer-referral request through Prenuply, but the lawyers remain independent from Prenuply and from one another. Read how the Prenuply lawyer-review path works before you budget and schedule the final stage.
Where the time savings usually come from
The DIY route has no mandatory software fee, but “free” only describes the price of the blank page. Your total effort depends on how much research, drafting, comparison, formatting, and correction the document needs.
Prenuply's public workflow is designed around a questionnaire that most couples complete in about three minutes, followed by document generation that usually takes a few minutes. Custom terms and follow-up questions can add time. The more important saving is not a particular number of minutes. It is avoiding the need to build the structure and document from zero.
Both routes still require time for financial disclosure, discussion between partners, independent review, revisions, and proper signing. Our Canadian prenup timeline guide explains why couples should leave a meaningful buffer before the wedding.
A realistic example: business shares and student debt
Imagine that Taylor owns shares in a small incorporated design studio. Morgan has a student line of credit. They agree that Taylor's existing shares should remain separate, Morgan's pre-marriage debt should remain Morgan's responsibility, and income earned during the marriage will help fund shared goals.
If they draft from scratch
Taylor and Morgan must decide how to describe the company and share class, whether future shares are covered, what happens to retained earnings and salary, how personal contributions to the business are treated, and whether a sale or reorganization changes the result. They also need a debt schedule, rules for refinancing, and consistent definitions across the document.
They may write a perfectly clear statement of their intention while missing one of the events that could change the asset years later.
If they use Prenuply
The structured questions identify the business interest, debt, protection priorities, and custom terms. Their answers produce connected provisions and disclosure schedules in a full working draft. Follow-up questions can capture details that were initially missing.
Taylor and Morgan still need to verify the company and debt information. Their separate lawyers still need to assess the clauses, the disclosure, the bargaining process, and the law that applies. If the company has a shareholder agreement, trust structure, complex valuation, or tax planning, they should involve the appropriate professionals early.
The service improves preparation. It does not make a complex business interest simple.
Which route fits your situation?
A blank-page DIY draft may fit when
- your immediate goal is to organize ideas, not create a final agreement
- you enjoy detailed legal research and document drafting
- you have a reliable Canadian precedent for the correct province
- you are comfortable managing definitions, cross-references, schedules, and version control
- you will still obtain separate legal advice before signing
If you start this way, compare your draft against a strong Canadian prenup template checklist before sending it to the lawyers.
Prenuply may fit when
- you and your partner broadly agree on the goals
- you want guidance identifying the information a full draft needs
- your finances are understandable enough to describe through a structured questionnaire
- you want province-aware document preparation without drafting from a blank page
- you want PDF and editable Word files for review
- you understand that separate lawyer or notary costs come later
Start with a lawyer or notary when
- you and your partner disagree about major terms
- one partner is under pressure, has less information, or cannot participate freely
- there is a major wealth or income imbalance
- either partner owns a complex corporation, trust, professional practice, farm, or foreign property
- the agreement includes a substantial spousal-support waiver
- there are children from another relationship or coordinated estate-planning needs
- tax, pension, corporate, immigration, or valuation advice is central
- the wedding is close
- you are in Quebec and need the required notarial marriage contract
A lawyer-first route costs more upfront, but it can be the efficient choice when negotiation and professional judgment are the main work.
Province checkpoints a guided draft cannot remove
Canada does not have one national prenup form. These examples show why the final process matters as much as the software used to prepare a draft.
| Province | Important checkpoint |
|---|---|
| Ontario | Under sections 55 and 56 of the Family Law Act, a domestic contract must be in writing, signed, and witnessed to be enforceable. A court may set aside all or part of it in circumstances including significant non-disclosure or a failure to understand its nature or consequences. |
| British Columbia | Section 93 of the Family Law Act addresses written property agreements with witnessed signatures and grounds for setting them aside, including significant non-disclosure, improper advantage of vulnerability, or lack of understanding. |
| Alberta | Sections 37 and 38 of the Family Property Act set out formal acknowledgements for agreements that contract out of the Act. Each party acknowledges the agreement separately before a lawyer who is not the other party's lawyer. |
| Quebec | Article 440 of the Civil Code of Québec requires a marriage contract to be established by notarial act en minute, on pain of absolute nullity. An online draft can help organize goals and information, but it is not the final marriage contract. |
Other provinces and territories have their own rules. Review the Prenuply province guide, then confirm the current law and signing process with a qualified professional where you live.
Five questions to ask before choosing
- Are we trying to organize our thinking or produce a full working draft? A short DIY outline may be enough for the first goal.
- Do we know which issues we might be missing? A structured intake is most useful when you want help spotting categories and follow-up details.
- How complex are our finances? Software can organize information, but it cannot replace professional valuation, tax, corporate, pension, or estate advice.
- Do we have time for separate review? Neither option should be used as a last-minute shortcut around independent advice.
- What will the lawyers receive? An organized Word draft and disclosure schedules can make review more focused, but the professional still needs enough time to read, advise, and revise.
Frequently asked questions
Is Prenuply better than writing a prenup myself?
It is better for a specific kind of work: guiding a cooperative couple through structured questions and turning their answers into a complete, formatted Canadian agreement template. DIY may be enough if you only want to list goals or if you have the skill and time to draft the document. Lawyer-first is better when legal judgment, negotiation, or complex planning is central.
Is a Prenuply agreement legally binding?
Prenuply creates an agreement template for lawyer review. No software provider should guarantee enforceability. The applicable law, wording, disclosure, voluntariness, understanding, timing, legal advice, and signing process can all matter. Read more about prenup enforceability in Canada.
Does the $49 include lawyer review?
No. At the time of publication, the standard Prenuply price is $49 CAD for the document-preparation package, including three generations and PDF and Word downloads. Independent lawyers or a Quebec notary charge separately. Check the current pricing page before purchasing because products and prices can change.
Can my lawyer edit the Prenuply draft?
Yes. The package includes an editable Word download for review and revision, as well as a PDF. Ask each lawyer how they prefer to exchange comments and which version should become the final signing copy.
Can I use Prenuply in Alberta or Quebec?
Prenuply can help organize information and prepare a province-aware template. Alberta's section 38 acknowledgement process still involves separate lawyers. Quebec's marriage contract still requires a notarial act. Tell the professional how the draft was prepared and give them enough time to make any required changes.
Does Prenuply negotiate with my partner?
No. Prenuply turns the information and instructions you provide into a document template. If you disagree about important terms or one partner feels pressured, pause the drafting process and obtain separate legal advice.
Bottom line
Writing a prenup yourself can save the document-preparation fee, but it also makes you responsible for the question list, legal research, drafting structure, consistency checks, financial schedules, revisions, and formatting.
Prenuply's advantage is a guided Canadian workflow that turns your decisions into a personalized, lawyer-ready template with custom terms, follow-up questions, multiple generations, and PDF and Word downloads. Its limit is equally important: it is not a law firm, it does not advise either partner, and it does not replace the independent professional steps that support a careful final agreement.
If you and your partner are cooperative, your finances can be described clearly, and you want to move from ideas to an organized first draft, create your personalized Prenuply template. Then take the latest complete version and disclosure schedules to separate lawyers before signing.