A Prenup Is Not About Divorce. How It Protects Your Money, Debts and Investments in Indonesia
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5 min read
Imagine you buy Rp50 juta of mutual fund units this year, using your salary. Next year you get married. Three years later the fund is worth Rp80 juta. Whose money is that?
Without a prenuptial agreement, the default answer in Indonesia may surprise you. It is not only yours. This post explains the rule, what a prenuptial agreement (perjanjian pranikah or perjanjian kawin, a written deal between spouses about money) changes, and how to make one.
It is general information, not legal advice.
Most people think a prenup is a plan for divorce. It is closer to a rulebook for money.
The Marriage Law (UU 1/1974) has a default rule. Under Article 35, things you get during the marriage become harta bersama, joint marital property. Things you owned before the wedding, plus gifts and inheritance you receive, stay under your own control unless you both agree otherwise (summaries of Article 35 from hukumonline and legal journals, retrieved 2026-10-16).
A prenup lets you choose a different rule. For example, each person keeps their own salary, savings and investments separate.
That is all. It does not say you expect a divorce. It says you both know where the money stands.
Here is how the default sorts common things. This is NetWort's simple reading of Article 35, not a ruling on your case.
| Item | Usually treated as |
|---|---|
| Salary earned after the wedding | Joint |
| Stocks or fund units bought after the wedding with that salary | Joint |
| A fund you bought before the wedding | Your own (harta bawaan) |
| An inheritance or gift to you personally | Your own |
| New units you add to that old fund after the wedding | Mixed, and hard to prove |
The last row is where trouble starts. Legal commentary says that once your own assets mix with joint money, you may have to prove where each part came from (research summarised from Indonesian law journals, retrieved 2026-10-16). Old bank statements and fund reports become your evidence.
Look at the opening example again. You bought Rp50 juta of units before marriage. Say you add Rp30 juta from your salary after the wedding. Now the pot is Rp80 juta, but part of it came from joint income.
That is a NetWort illustration with made-up numbers. The point is simple: mixing money makes ownership blurry.
A prenup with full separation of property can keep the picture clean. Your portfolio stays yours. Your spouse's portfolio stays theirs. If you want to keep the two parts apart without a prenup, keep a record of what you owned on the wedding day.
You can do that in NetWort by listing each holding and its purchase date. We come back to this at the end.
Debt follows a similar logic. Doctrine reads harta bersama as covering debts taken on during the marriage too, and hukumonline says a personal debt can be paid from joint property when the spouse agreed to it (retrieved 2026-10-16).
We cover that side in detail in our guide to the perjanjian pisah harta and marital debt. This post focuses on the savings and investment side.
Yes. Before 2016, Article 29 allowed it only before or at the wedding. Constitutional Court ruling 69/PUU-XIII/2015 changed that. A written agreement can now be made before, at, or during the marriage, if both agree and a marriage registrar or notary validates it (hukumonline and academic summaries, retrieved 2026-10-16). We did not read the ruling text itself, so check it with a notary.
Late is better than never. But an agreement made later may not rewrite what already happened. Ask your notary how it treats assets you bought before signing.
The usual path, as described by hukumonline:
Step 3 matters. Legal writing says an agreement protects you against outsiders, such as creditors, only after it is validated and recorded. Without that, it may only bind the two of you.
On cost, OCBC (2023) estimated a notary at about Rp2 juta to Rp5 juta, and more for a long, detailed deed. That figure is old, so ask a notary for a current quote. We could not find a current fee for the KUA or Dukcapil recording.
"Will it hurt the mood?" Maybe for ten minutes. Compare that with arguing about a Rp80 juta portfolio years later.
"Does separate property mean separate lives?" No. You can still run a joint household account. Our post on joint and separate accounts for couples shows a few ways to do it.
"Is it only for the rich?" No. It matters most when one person has savings, a business or debts before the wedding.
Write down what you own today, with the date you got each asset. If you plan to marry, or already are, that list is your first piece of evidence.
Open Holdings in NetWort and add each stock, fund, crypto coin or gold you own, with its purchase date. Then see how much of your portfolio you can prove came from before the wedding.