Despite more and more young couples disagreeing about who owns what before marriage, not many of them are prepared to sign prenuptial agreements, according to a recent survey.

The Horizon Research Consultancy Group said only 4.8 percent of interviewees had adopted "antemarital property notarization," and only about 11 percent of the interviewees were inclined to do so.

The firm carried out door-to-door interview with 3,089 residents aged between 18 and 60 in 10 cities on the Chinese mainland, including Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenyang and Xi'an.

Some 20 percent of interviewees believe that a property agreement would create a barrier between the couple.

"I just feel weird about that," said Ye Kui, a 27-year-old college teacher who is going to be married next year. "It will hurt each other's feelings if talking much about property affairs, because we don't actually get married to the property."

Meanwhile, about a quarter believed only couples who didn't truly love each other or didn't trust each other would need notarization. Just 6 percent held the view that the agreement would be beneficial in protecting their property rights if something went wrong with the marriage.

Others believed agreements were not necessary because there was nothing worth including in such a document.

"I'm from a common family and she is too," said Wu Jianfeng, a 25-year-old employee of a chemical reagent company. "We don't have much property to fight about, so there is no need to do the notarization."

The survey showed that young people were more likely to accept the idea of prenuptial agreements than elderly people. About 12 percent of interviewees between 18 and 25 said they had done or would do the notarization, compared to 1.3 percent of those between 51 and 60.

Liu Chunquan, a lawyer with Guangsheng and Partners Law Firm, said that although the notarization was generally helpful, especially for wealthy families, it was not easy for Chinese people to accept the idea.

"People could think it a bad omen of divorce if talking about property before getting married," said Liu.

In a similar survey in Shanghai in 2002, the firm found that nearly 40 percent of unmarried interviewees said they would sign a property agreement before tying the knot.