I have a question regarding a prenup. Maybe people here have good ideas.
I know someone (she) who inherited a house in a hcol area. When getting married they made a prenup so that she would keep ownership of the house. They also had separate accounts but lived together and spit the bills, an otherwise happy marriage. Then came a time, after both of them earned some money that they wanted to renovate the house. That caused some issues, because if the house is completely her's, should he chip in for renovations? Together they have enough money for renovations, but she herself doesn't. They will obviously both benefit from the renovations, and he is willing to chip in. But I don't know what would be a good solution.
Obviously this is someone else, so I won't get too involved, but I'm going to get married soon, and things like this make a prenup look like it doesn't solve problems, rather replaces problems with other problems.
Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
121–130 of 205 posts
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many places, you don't. Washington State all property is 50/50. Half my income is my wife's, even though I make 800k and she makes nothing. I dunno, the idea that you are willing to make a commitment to someone for the rest of your life but also try to hold back money from them is so alien.
Even though Washington is a community property state, you can still have a prenup agreeing that your two incomes will be separate property, if you so wish and if you execute it correctly.
Sure, but why?
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#123I don't understand couples that keep separate finances. When you get married its "we" and not "me". It seems like keeping one foot out the door. Note: I've been married for 23 years with everything tracked in joint accounts the entire time but we do have a small "fun money" monthly budget item for each of us that is a black box.
Other couples think of ‘we’ differently than you do. Everybody deals with money differently.
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correlation doesn’t imply causation and if there is correlation it doesn’t imply the direction .
This link is to a study that was a randomized trial, which means it can theoretically contribute to establishing causation: > In a six-wave longitudinal experiment, we investigated whether randomly assigning engaged or newlywed couples to merge their money in a joint bank account increases relationship quality over time. Whereas couples assigned to keep their money in separate accounts or to a no-intervention conditi…
Sure. I was speaking in generalities.
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#125I have a question regarding a prenup. Maybe people here have good ideas. I know someone (she) who inherited a house in a hcol area. When getting married they made a prenup so that she would keep ownership of the house. They also had separate accounts but lived together and spit the bills, an otherwise happy marriage. Then came a time, after both of them earned some money that they wanted to renovate the house. That c…
IANAL, but if the prenup doesn’t already cover this, then they could always draw up a new contract amending it.
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#126I have a question regarding a prenup. Maybe people here have good ideas. I know someone (she) who inherited a house in a hcol area. When getting married they made a prenup so that she would keep ownership of the house. They also had separate accounts but lived together and spit the bills, an otherwise happy marriage. Then came a time, after both of them earned some money that they wanted to renovate the house. That c…
Prenups can say (almost) whatever you want, so the short answer is to cover maintenance expenses in the same document that gives you a stake in the property in the first place even if that stake is just a residence one. Of course that's much more obvious in hindsight but there's also postnups which can amend the prenup.
If I were pitching in to renovate a property I'd want equity in it. You can do that with or without the inheritance or the prenup: figure out the value of the property before and after the renovations and assign that percentage to the person that covered them.
That's what I'd do in a non-romantic housemate situation but of course a marriage is way more complicated and there are lots of pieces that aren't purely legal or equity in nature. A prenup isn't going to absolve you of that.
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're thinking all the money of both people has to go in the same join account, but that's not the case. You can have a "for the bills" join account, and then each person has their own separate account. Every month each person transfer a certain amount to the joint account to cover the bills (50/50, 70/30, whatever split works for them). Any other money is spent in the person's own account and has nothing to do with…
> You're thinking all the money of both people has to go in the same join account, but that's not the case. That’s quite literally what the study is suggesting. All money in one account results in the most satisfaction. https://academic.oup.com/view-large/402916029?guestAccessKey...
> All money in one account results in the most satisfaction.
Does it though? It could also be seen the other way around as "If you're already satisfied and trust each other, you are more probable to use a join account".
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if one person has significantly more money than the other person? Prenups exist for a reason
In many places, you don't. Washington State all property is 50/50. Half my income is my wife's, even though I make 800k and she makes nothing. I dunno, the idea that you are willing to make a commitment to someone for the rest of your life but also try to hold back money from them is so alien.
My rationale is that prenups are an acknowledgment that sometimes, people discover things don’t work out. Agreeing what each person has from the beginning confirms the commitment of marriage is beyond the money/wealth that existed before.
I’ve never been married yet but this perspective seems rare. So many people’s lives get destroyed or seriously damaged after a bad divorce. Why not do something that would ease the pain for both parties?
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many places, you don't. Washington State all property is 50/50. Half my income is my wife's, even though I make 800k and she makes nothing. I dunno, the idea that you are willing to make a commitment to someone for the rest of your life but also try to hold back money from them is so alien.
My rationale is that prenups are an acknowledgment that sometimes, people discover things don’t work out. Agreeing what each person has from the beginning confirms the commitment of marriage is beyond the money/wealth that existed before. I’ve never been married yet but this perspective seems rare. So many people’s lives get destroyed or seriously damaged after a bad divorce. Why not do something that would ease the…
The alternative is to say, "knowing who we are now, we are going in together. Fifty fifty. Egalitarian. If someday in the future we split, we both walk away with half."
Holding on to the idea that somehow anything is "mine" or "yours" rather than "ours" is a waste, imo. You can try and protect "mine" with a prenup, or you can accept the "ours" nature and make peace with that. I find the latter to be simpler, more elegant.
Re: Couples with joint checking accounts are happier
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
For most people it's because they live paycheck-to-paycheck, at least after things like 401(K) contributions. Of course if you are lucky enough to have $30K+ coming in per month and your necessary monthly bills are closer to $5K then budgeting and tracking spending out of the checking account is wildly unnecessary. But if you have say $5K-$6K coming in each month and $4K of that goes to necessary monthly bills then c…
Why would having separate accounts eliminate the need to communicate for larger purchases for couples in the latter situation. Sounds like that would lead to even bigger issues.
Separate account transactions can't accidentally cause a critical bill payment to fail from the bills account (joint or individually managed). They de-risk the effect of small purchases, which it's fine for one person to keep to themselves, on the bill payments which affect all partners.
Purchases might cause insufficient funds for topping up the bills account later, but that's on a longer time cycle, and someone will know about it. So it doesn't eliminate the need to communicate about large purchases (or the sum total of many small ones), but it does eliminate the need to "check in" before individual purchase decisions, and eliminates showing each other the fine details of all your personal transactions when each of you sees the statements of your joint account(s).
E.g. some people are happier buying a bagel every day for lunch, or maybe an ice cream, or trying something else, when their partner is not posted an electronic trail that shows each bagel or ice cream purchase every day, exactly what time of day the transaction occurred, and price accurate enough to infer number of fillings.