I haven’t a clue. I don’t live in CA and am not a lawyer.
I’m not actually worried about my wife leaving me. She did it once before (we’ve since reconciled) and didn’t raid the account. My preference for our having separate accounts is like my insistence of keeping disaster preparedness kits. Disasters are uncommon, but when they happen it’s too late to get ready. I saw a good number of people who got burned because of shared accounts, and keeping things separate seems trivially easy.
Wow. My mind is blown. Everything is clear to me now. Don’t worry I won’t share it with the rest of the unwashed masses.
I’m following the thread with interest. I am currently planning on moving in with my girlfriend. We have been discussing these issues. I hope through my marriage and divorce I’ve learned a few things.
Honestly I am pretty certain my husbands does more to take care of the family than I do. He gets the kids ready in the morning for preschool unless he has something and I have to, he does the laundry, he takes them to taekwondo
I do dishes, bathrooms, and work to make the money right now.
We try to split up the night time chores like bath time and teeth brushing for the kiddos, but after this baby is born he will probably get saddled with doing most of the childcare for the twins while I take care of the baby.
the great thing is he never makes me feel like I owe him anything for all the hard work he does with the kids, and I never make him feel like he owes me because I work full time while he goes to school. We don’t consciously divide up the house chores or childcare duties, we just do what we need to keep things going.
We have a basic division where I’m the kitchen/dining and downstairs-bathroom guy, and she’s the living-area and upstairs-bathroom lady, and we cooperate on laundry and our own bedroom (and other things get done as needed by whomever has the time).
There’s actually a bit of an ongoing dispute on this topic. I’m the type who thinks each person should have their own particular “jobs” they are responsible for around the house. She is the type who thinks everyone should pitch in whenever and wherever they’re needed.
This means if she tries to come in and help me in the kitchen (because she’s needed and she’s pitching in) I feel like she’s horning in on my job and why isn’t she taking care of her own responsibilities instead?
Meanwhile if she’s cleaning up in the living/dining area and I don’t come help, she feels (as she has explained it to me) unvalued–like she has a mere function and is not doing something that it’s worth it for everyone to do. (Something like that. I may have not formulated this correctly.)
So we’ve had our tiffs about this but we’ve come to understand each others’ “needs” so to speak. So we do have separate tasks, but I make a point to make sure she feels valued by my helping out with things that aren’t “my job.” (And I don’t get butthurt when she comes in and does the dining room “behind my back.”)
Having said that, we now have twins plus two other kids, so the division of labor is: She takes one baby, I take the other, and the house can go to hell.
No. It would make a lot more work for us. We each have significant assets and multiple accounts. It was easier to keep everything as it was, and just add a joint account for shared expenses.
It also keeps our discussions about budgeting, and the tracking of our respective budgets, simpler.
As far as getting the older kids ready for school etc, my wife and I share in the task of kind of just yelling at them all morning til they’ve managed to stumble into some clothes and things.
And I haven’t mentioned yet that she takes care of both twins all day while I’m at work, so that’s a major load on her side of things.
Just don’t keep ‘score’. The reason I say this is because everbody naturally feels like whatever they are doing on their end is more ‘valueable’ ‘harder’ ‘time consuming’ than their spouse, and it builds up stupid resentments. I’ll fully admit going into my marraige I was lazy as hell but that was because I was used to living alone and doing things on my own timetable. After a year and a half I’ve gotten a lot better about it.
Another thing that used to be difficult for my wife and I was doing a task together. Oh sure, set one of us to do it alone, and it will get done fine. But both of us together (at least originally) resulted in bickering and disagreements. For a while we’d just AVOID doing a task together. But I find that by learning to cooperate with each other and combining your strengths, you accomplish more, faster. My current philosophy is: If we do it together, it gets done 2x as fast, I don’t care if its not being done ‘my way’ I just want to get done and get to the fun parts of being married 
Was this your second marraige, or did you marry at an older age? I myself was no spring chicken when I married (30) but I’ll admit I wasn’t a homeowner/businessowner/parent either.
I don’t think you’re quite right there. My doing most of the cooking strikes me as being less onerous than my wife doing most of the child care, for instance.
If one spouse brings ongoing tax issues into the marriage, the smartest thing to do is to keep everything separate. Otherwise the “injured spouse” (IRS term for the spouse without the tax issues) will be responsible for all debts if there’s any default.
“Responsible” meaning the Feds will automatically garnish any joint accounts and/or even foreclose on a house if the house is in both names.
LOL, sounds like us. I am so glad my twins are old enough for preschool. All day with two children the same age is madness!
My parents had a single source of income, but they still kept two accounts, both shared, and separated a lot of the expenses - it’s not as if he had a lot of interest in taking us kids shopping for clothes, and she was never going to gas up the car. There was a certain amount each of them could withdraw each month without having to check with the other (hers was larger, as his monthly direct expenses were smaller) and they would use the second account as a “hidden piggybank” to stash money for extraordinary expenses.
To be clear, you’re offering a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist–I said in my post how we take care of the problem. (ETA: I now see you were replying to a pre-edit version of my post.)
But of course that’s not to say your advice might not be valuable for someone else reading it.
We aren’t legally married, although we will probably do that at some point. I was 35, never married, and had been an independent contractor for a long time. Which means that I am supremely anal about tracking my expenses for tax purposes. Every dime I spend is categorized and recorded. I save all my receipts.
He was 36, divorced, and in his marriage, they kept their finances separate. He already owned a house on his own. He’s a good saver, but he has a sloppy approach to budgeting and bill paying.
Prior to us getting together, we both received significant inheritances, that we have invested in various ways.
If we tried to combine things at this point, it would take a LOT of effort. And while we trust each other completely, we are also just very independent people when it comes to money. If either of us became disabled, for example, we would take care of each other. But while we both have good income and are able-bodied, we just don’t see the point. Especially since we will not be having children, which cuts down on the need for entanglement.
It’s kind of funny, because in the personal side of our relationship, we are really quite happily enmeshed.
Not for us. We married a little bit older and where both home owners at the time. We trust each other, and split things up. I pay for this, she pays for that. No big deal at all.
I just got a fairly large inheritance, and put it in my savings. She knows I won’t squander it on silly stuff, it will mostly go to fixing up the house. There just is no need for a joint account for us. It would just be a burden.
Yeah, we each maintain seperate accounts because we find that simpler. Every pay day, my money is deposited into my checking account, I transfer most of it into our joint checking or savings. What’s left in my checking is for stuff like computer games, books, dining out (and other crap that I want to buy. The reason this is simpler is that I’m the only one drawing from this account, so there is no risk I’m going to accidentally overdraw the account. It’s not that big of a deal and we have all each other’s passwords for our accounts should the need arise.
Me:
Litter box maintenance and feeding. All hail my four feline overlords…
Dog walking and pooper scooping
Getting the various tax forms and other information to the accountants
Dishes
Her:
All of the shopping and most of the cooking
Supplies and money to Miss DrumBum ( off at university )
Finances
Vacation planning and travel arraignments
Managing the staff
Shared:
Laundry. I can do any or all of the washing and drying except for Ms. DrumBum’s clothes. There was an incident several years ago with an expensive sweater…
Cooking. I do the baking and grilling. Ms. DrumBum does the rest.
The expat life makes somethings easier and other things much harder than they might be in a US assignment. We have a car and driver ( Fernando ) assigned to us so the usual maintenance issues are handled by him. Our empregada ( Gezela ) handles the household cleaning. Yard and house maintenance issues are handled by phone call to the company Services group. Shopping for food is a far more time consuming task. We get a food shipment once a year that usually has the majority but that is just things that will survive the trip. Since there are no Whole Foods or Safeway stores here, a fair bit of driving time is needed to get vegetables, meat, and fish. Add in the usual horrendous traffic and Ms. DrumBum can spend several hours running around.
Our philosophy is that life is better when we do stuff together. Our life is also too complicated to have set chore lists; we both know what things need to be done and so we both do them.
We both cook.
We both clean.
We both do laundry.
We both do dishes and fill/empty the dishwasher.
We both do what needs to be done with the baby.
85% of the time we shop (grocery and otherwise) together.
We both do yard work; I mow and she’ll do weeding, watering, etc. When I’m done mowing, or when it’s not needed, I help her weed, water, etc. Now we have a baby so this year we may need to rethink how outside work gets done.
Before the baby we both did snow removal. This winter it’s been all me, but it’s not like she’s sitting under a heated blanket inside eating bonbons.
Finances, taxes, auto maintenance, fix-it projects, and things of that nature are my jobs but I get to slack off on something else while those things get done. Sometimes I require a lovely assistant and she is happy to hand me tools or tell me the picture should be lower.
Amen to that.
While I wouldn’t necessarily call our assets significant, it’d be a pain in the ass to combine our accounts. We each have visibility to the other’s finances and we trust each other not to overspend and we both plan to continue working, so we’ve really never seen any reason to combine everything.
In our case, it has nothing to do with wanting to hide anything and everything to do with laziness.
I, too, worry about disasters and have a kit. How did having a single bank account make things worse?