Premarital Counseling in California

Build a Shared Foundation Before You Say "I Do"

Communication, trust, family, and money: the conversations that shape a marriage long after the wedding.

Schedule Your Free Premarital Consultation

We are often sold the fairy tale that if you love someone enough, the logistics of building a life together will naturally fall into place.

But hoping for the best is not a financial strategy.

Most couples have talked about the wedding, where they want to live, and whether they want children. Fewer have talked about how they handle conflict, what they learned about marriage growing up, whose career comes first, or who gets the final say when they disagree.

These are questions about voice, agency, contribution, and dependence. When they go unspoken, small differences can harden into resentment, and one partner's paycheck, financial knowledge, or family wealth can quietly become greater authority in the relationship.

Premarital counseling is a dedicated space to talk through all of it: communication, values, family, intimacy, children, and money. As financial therapists, we pay particular attention to how money and power shape a relationship. There is no universally right arrangement. The goal is to make your expectations visible and create agreements that reflect the relationship you want to build.

What We Explore Together

Preparing for the Whole Marriage

Premarital counseling gives you structured time to talk through the parts of marriage that love alone won't settle.

Communication & Conflict. How each of you responds to disagreement, who pursues or withdraws, and how you know you have been genuinely heard.

Values & Family History. The values you want your marriage to reflect, and what you each learned growing up about marriage, gender, and success.

Roles & Partnership. How you will divide household and caregiving responsibilities, and whose career takes priority when your professional needs conflict.

Family & Outside Influence. Your expectations of parents, siblings, and extended family, and how you will protect your decisions as a couple while maintaining those relationships.

Intimacy, Trust & Vulnerability. What helps each of you feel emotionally safe, how you repair after a difficult conversation, and whether each of you can say no without fearing the consequences.

Life Goals. The kind of life you are trying to build, and what happens when your individual goals compete.

Children & Caregiving. Whether and when you want children, and your expectations about childcare, parental leave, and who might step back from work.

When you get married, you are not just merging bank accounts. You are merging two families, two histories, and two sets of unspoken rules about conflict, roles, caregiving, and money.
If you grew up in a home where disagreements were avoided, and your partner grew up in one where they were loud, you will approach conflict from two different realities. The same is true of money and your deeply ingrained "money scripts." Without proactive communication, those differences can turn into resentment. Premarital counseling allows you to:
- Learn how each of you responds to conflict and what helps you feel heard.
- Make unspoken rules and expectations explicit.
- Talk about children, careers, and extended family before those decisions arrive.
- Disclose student loans, credit card debt, or family financial obligations without shame.
- Decide which inherited beliefs you want to carry forward and which you want to reconsider.
A lot of traditional financial advice assumes married couples should split everything 50/50. But a split can look fair on paper and still leave one partner carrying more. If one partner earns significantly less because of the gender wage gap, or takes on the unpaid mental load of household management and caregiving, a 50/50 split penalizes them.
Contribution is more than a paycheck. It includes caregiving, household and emotional labor, and career sacrifices. In premarital financial therapy, we don't force you into rigid models. We help you define what "fair" means in your relationship, including whether equal has to mean the same. We talk about how to protect the lower-earning partner, how to value unpaid labor, and how to create an arrangement in which you both feel respected.
There is no universal "right" way to organize your bank accounts as a married couple. The healthiest system is the one that gives you both transparency and psychological safety.
Some couples thrive by putting every dollar into one joint pot. Others prefer a hybrid: separate checking accounts for personal spending and a joint account for shared bills. Either way, we'll talk through what financial privacy feels healthy, what would feel like secrecy, and whether each of you needs money you can spend without consultation.
Then we'll design the actual plumbing of your cash flow so that it makes sense for your brains, reduces administrative friction, and gives you both access to your financial accounts and information.

Five Areas of Financial Power

Ownership

What is mine, yours, and ours? We look at the assets and debts you bring into the marriage and how you would treat inheritance, family wealth, a business, or a future windfall. We also ask whether ownership should affect who has decision-making authority.

Contribution

What does each of you contribute, financially and otherwise? Does earning more mean contributing more? Is 50/50 important to either of you, and what does it represent?

Decision Making

Which decisions are individual, which are shared, and at what dollar amount does a purchase become a joint decision? Who has an effective veto when you can't agree? Can each of you disagree about money without fearing relational consequences?

Dependence

How comfortable are you depending on someone financially, or having someone depend on you? What would financial autonomy look like in your marriage? How might the relationship change if one of you stopped earning?

Meaning

Money can represent safety, freedom, success, love, responsibility, status, or generosity. What does it represent to each of you? What does earning more or less than your partner mean to you?

What Premarital Financial Therapy Looks Like

Premarital counseling is structured, time-bound, and deeply collaborative. We act as a translator for the conversations you might be too nervous to have on your own. Together, we will:

Understand how you handle conflict: who pursues, who withdraws, who accommodates, and how you repair.
Identify the values, family messages, and unspoken rules each of you brings into the marriage.
Define how household labor, caregiving, and career sacrifices will be shared and valued.
Set healthy boundaries with extended family, including when family support becomes family influence.
Strengthen emotional safety, trust, and intimacy, including around difficult topics.
Plan for children and caregiving, including whether a caregiving partner keeps the same access to and voice over household money.
Talk through life changes such as a business launch, relocation, sabbatical, or early retirement.
Complete a full, shame-free disclosure of all assets, debts, and credit scores.
Identify your competing money scripts and build an equitable framework for how bills will be paid and decisions made.
Protect each partner's autonomy, and learn the difference between collaboration, influence, pressure, and coercion.
Decide how you will revisit your agreements as income, wealth, health, careers, and priorities change.

Two ways to do this work

Premarital Counseling Package: An 8-hour structured program.

Premarital Intensive: A half-day or full-day intensive for couples who want focused time together. Learn more about the intensive

Learn more about my approach

Who This is For

This work is for engaged and committed couples who want to enter marriage with their eyes open, including couples who:

Want to strengthen their communication and learn to work through conflict.
Have different family backgrounds, values, or expectations about marriage.
Find certain topics difficult to talk about and have started avoiding them.
Have a significant difference in income, assets, or family wealth.
Are bringing a business, an inheritance, or children from a previous relationship into the marriage.
Are considering having one partner reduce work or leave the workforce.
Already communicate well and want to go deeper before they marry.

Koru is an LGBTQ and neuro-affirming practice, and we build these conversations around your relationship, not a traditional template.

Book a 20-min Consultation

Combining accounts is a personal choice, not a marital requirement. The goal is equitable partnership, not necessarily blended math. We will help you explore the pros and cons of joint, separate, or hybrid models based on your unique relationship dynamics.
Marrying someone with debt can feel terrifying, especially if you value high financial security. We provide a safe space to disclose the debt without shame, understand the history behind it, and create a collaborative, realistic plan to manage it together without triggering resentment.
No. Premarital counseling covers communication, conflict, values, family, intimacy, children, and life goals. Money runs through many of those conversations, and as financial therapists, we can go further with it when you need that.
A financial gap doesn't have to become a gap in authority. We talk directly about how income, family wealth, and financial knowledge shape influence in your relationship. Then we look at how to protect each person's voice and agency when decisions are made.
A financial gap doesn't have to become a gap in authority. We talk directly about how income, family wealth, and financial knowledge shape influence in your relationship. Then we look at how to protect each person's voice and agency when decisions are made.
Couples work depends on each person being able to speak freely. If either of you fears anger, withdrawal, or retaliation for saying no, please tell us. We will talk through whether couples work is the right place to start and what other support may help.