It had the look of a typical Hamptons workout class: There were rows of yoga mats, women in ritzy sportswear and olive oil shots on offer. But it didn’t sound like one.
“You like a house more in Greenwich than in Scarsdale,” Marcy Katz theorized to the group as she perched on a bluestone-paved porch in Water Mill, N.Y. “Well, then, all of a sudden, the rules are going to change drastically.”
Katz is no Tracy Anderson, a fitness instructor to the one percent. Instead, she is a matrimonial lawyer to New York’s elite, and on a recent Wednesday morning, she addressed just over two dozen women on yoga mats at the sixth installment of Prenups and Pilates, a fitness-meets-marital-contract class. It’s a chance for exercise enthusiasts to pose in downward dog and grapple with the consequences of choosing between Connecticut and Westchester living.
The Frankenstein pairing of divorce talk and calisthenics is the brainchild of Lilli Donahue, who debuted the concept last year and has also brought it to Casa Cipriani, the members-only Manhattan haunt. Donahue, 35, is the founder of WhatIf Legal, a matrimonial lawyer marketplace of sorts, and the host of a podcast aptly named The Prenup Podcast. “My algorithms are all about divorce, prenups, relationships,” she said of her social media feed.
Donahue, wearing olive green athleisure, kicked off the event by interviewing Katz and a wealth adviser. It took place in the backyard of an East End manse, just north of Montauk Highway, and drew many self-employed workers and a mix of relationship statuses, including divorcées and married women. Some attendees donned green-and-cream hats with the word “prenup” slapped across them.
Blake Rayfield, a 24-year-old influencer, took notes on her iPhone and raised her hand to ask whether prenuptial agreements can be altered during marriages. Katz explained the importance of leverage in establishing these pacts. “I would try to negotiate for whatever you can before the marriage,” Katz told Rayfield, who was discussing marriage with her long-term boyfriend. “But you can definitely change it if you’re both agreeable.”
After the legal and financial advice, which lasted 30 minutes, Marina Enright, a 26-year-old Pilates instructor, took control of the event and called for cat-cow stretches. “So just take a deep inhale, in through the nose, arching the back, exhale,” she said as a song by the Nigerian artist Tems blared in the background.
Before hosting events like these, Donahue worked at Capital One in business development. It was during her time there that her father was diagnosed with lung cancer. She began having more honest conversations with him about his six-year divorce from her mother. Their relationship didn’t involve a prenup.
Donahue discovered that her mother had been evicted from her Park Avenue apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan after the divorce. “I thought that my mom just wanted to move with her boyfriend in New Jersey,” she said. “I didn’t clock as an 8-year-old that there was no home for us.”
Those exchanges, in part, spurred Donahue to found her start-up almost two years ago. Today, she is its only full-time employee. Part of the company’s mission is to increase knowledge about prenups. She introduced the fitness concept last December after attending Pilates & Pitches, an event that offered female entrepreneurs free exercise and breakfast in Manhattan.
Donahue similarly doesn’t charge attendees. Instead, the part-workout, part-educational programming serves as marketing for her company and podcast. She is now planning a Prenups and Padel event, using the popular Mexican sport to appeal to men.
Donahue’s goal is to make dishing about prenups as destigmatized as conversing about egg freezing. “A few years ago, no one wanted to talk about egg freezing,” she said. “And now if you work at a large corporate company and they don’t offer you the benefit of egg freezing, they’re idiots.”
Prenups are shedding their taboo. This year, Belle Burden’s best-selling book, “Strangers,” about the collapse of her marriage, included details about her prenup. More than half of engaged or married Americans ages 45 and younger have signed one, according to a recent survey Bloomberg News commissioned from Harris Poll. That was up from 2022, when a Harris Poll found that 41 percent of Gen Z and 34 percent of millennials had one.
Emily McCarthy, a 43-year-old model agency owner and interior designer, is not one of those people. McCarthy, who lives in Westhampton full time, didn’t sign a prenup before her first marriage. But at the event, she said she hoped to learn more about the option now that she was newly engaged. “Maybe I’ve now learned the hard way, and maybe I should try and do this correctly this time,” she said.
Once the event concluded, the women ventured to a nearby pool house, where protein balls and halved PopUp Bagels awaited them. Donahue said goodbye to one of the attendees by the porch. “I need to run,” she told Donahue.
“Wait,” Donahue responded. “We need to talk about your prenup.”
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