261–270 of 450 posts
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Marriage itself is not really more of a risk to a man than a woman. Shared property from the marriage will get divided up, but that affects women the same as men. Having children is a slight risk because custody is a bit more likely to be given to women than men, so men are a bit more likely to have to pay child support. Having a spouse who stops working to take care of children is a large risk for both partners. One…
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Yeah but that’s not what I’m saying. If you think “well I’m going to do this this way because it’s easier to back out,” it will encourage you to treat the relationship in a way that makes it less likely to last.
Still a healthier alternative to broken relationships continuing for years because of the high bar to leaving it that are the de facto norm for our civilization. Commitment encourages treating the relationship as a sealed deal and not putting effort into its maintenance.
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Why commingle finances at all? A large percentage of divorces are due to financial disagreements... joint accounts have proven to be a failed model at scale. If you want to share money, have separate accounts and transfer money between them as needed/on a schedule. No room for impropriety/mistrust. Everybody has autonomy. If we choose to be realistic, rather than idealistic, we would recognize that a large percentage…
But now you are putting a price on the others time. Let’s say you make nothing yourself (starving artist, stay at home parent etc etc) and your cohabiting partner makes a few 100k, how do you decide what your time is worth vs your partner. Or your partner inherited a few million and does nothing but also feels they have to do nothing because they bring the money. When you separate, you might end up with nothing after…
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> Why commingle finances at all? Because it's simple and easy? I trust my partner; she trusts me; we discuss expenses beyond some fuzzy threshold that we both seem to understand intuitively. The alternative seems to require spreadsheets. Who pays for the kid's daycare? Who pays what percentage of the mortgage, and what ownership stake does that represent? What if someone's income goes dramatically up, or dramatically…
Until your partner decides one day that they no longer are going to abide by that trust and find someone else, raid the joint account, the investments, and sell things right from under you which they are allowed to do with no repercussions due to the marriage according to the government and on top of it disappear with the children. Trust me from experience. You may think you know someone until they up and change on y…
Then again, I don’t live in the US; people here (or maybe it’s just my circle) are less pre occupied with money and lawsuits. Even the most messy divorces I know of from my friends didn’t need lawyers.
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Why commingle finances at all? A large percentage of divorces are due to financial disagreements... joint accounts have proven to be a failed model at scale. If you want to share money, have separate accounts and transfer money between them as needed/on a schedule. No room for impropriety/mistrust. Everybody has autonomy. If we choose to be realistic, rather than idealistic, we would recognize that a large percentage…
But now you are putting a price on the others time. Let’s say you make nothing yourself (starving artist, stay at home parent etc etc) and your cohabiting partner makes a few 100k, how do you decide what your time is worth vs your partner. Or your partner inherited a few million and does nothing but also feels they have to do nothing because they bring the money. When you separate, you might end up with nothing after…
alternatively, life is too short to not worry about things like this, as mistakes can rob us of even this already short time we get
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But now you are putting a price on the others time. Let’s say you make nothing yourself (starving artist, stay at home parent etc etc) and your cohabiting partner makes a few 100k, how do you decide what your time is worth vs your partner. Or your partner inherited a few million and does nothing but also feels they have to do nothing because they bring the money. When you separate, you might end up with nothing after…
I wouldn't want to marry someone I can't figure out money with. For me and my GF, I make more so I pay more, for the reason you listed. I don't find that to be a problem, and not everyone can make a tech salary
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> Why commingle finances at all? Because it's simple and easy? I trust my partner; she trusts me; we discuss expenses beyond some fuzzy threshold that we both seem to understand intuitively. The alternative seems to require spreadsheets. Who pays for the kid's daycare? Who pays what percentage of the mortgage, and what ownership stake does that represent? What if someone's income goes dramatically up, or dramatically…
Until your partner decides one day that they no longer are going to abide by that trust and find someone else, raid the joint account, the investments, and sell things right from under you which they are allowed to do with no repercussions due to the marriage according to the government and on top of it disappear with the children. Trust me from experience. You may think you know someone until they up and change on y…
This doctrine developed into the various marital property laws we have today. Of course the wife no longer loses legal personhood, but the married couple itself still retains a kind of legal personhood, a couple can own property jointly, and when the marriage is dissolved the marital property needs to be redistributed back to the “shareholders” by a court.
At the same time, another change was happening: the cultural acceptance of divorce. While not so long ago, divorce was unthinkable for most, in modern times it’s completely normal.
So the law of marital property has developed based upon a model of lifelong marriage, whereas culture has embraced divorce and remarriage.
There is another culture that has a cultural acceptance of divorce and that’s the Arabs. But because they developed their marital property law afterwards, with the prospect of divorce and remarriage built in, it turned out in a completely different way. Instead of viewing the married couple as a single legal person (i.e. marriage as a corporation), they viewed the couple as individuals with a contractural arrangement, forbidden to interfere with each other’s property.
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I think having separate finances just changes the type of financial argument you’ll have.
Either you concretely agree on the finances or you don't. If you don't have any explicit understanding/agreement, the vast majority of relationships are going to have problems. Having separate accounts forces you to come to an explicit consensus
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In BC, Canada, there is no practical legal difference between marriage and long term cohabitation. Not getting married and living together is rather normal, and comes with the same risk of financial segmentation and alimony or child support.
Curious question - does this take effect for all couples/groups? I've been roommates with people for 3+ years before with no sexual/romantic interest. Would I be considered married to them in BC? Is this different for same-sex pairings? What if three people cohabitate for an extended period? Are they all married to each other?
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Children? In this economy?
You are the last in an extremely long lineage of people who had children in circumstances far worse that the current economy.