WHEN VERONICA *, now 52, was at her father's deathbed, he implored her to get a prenuptial agreement to protect her inheritance. She complied with his last wish, but in turn alienated her future husband. "Even though I didn't have a fortune, he perceived it as a lack of trust," she says. Veronica doesn't think the prenup made their subsequent divorce negotiations any easier. "I don't recommend them; it put up a divide in our relationship. It assumes things will go wrong."

But Jason *, a 46-year-old financier now dissolving an eight-year marriage, thinks he is being cheated out of hard-earned money, and regrets not having a prenup. "People marry later, and years of labor may come to fruition during a marriage--labor that has nothing to do with the spouse," he says. "And yet, the law says the spouse gets half." He wishes his financial matters had been settled in good faith at the outset. "Prenups are negotiated when people are thinking of each other as human beings. In a divorce, everybody is out for themselves."

Prenups have grown in popularity in the past 20 years--in concert with no-fault divorce laws, which allow divorce without evidence of adultery or abandonment. But the betrothed and their lawyers remain passionately divided on whether prenups prevent heartbreak.