On Divorce, Money, Bitterness

In My Humble Opinion
1

Because I’m getting married in 3 months, I’ve spent a lot of time paying particularly close attention to the marraiges of my peers- their successes, their failures, the things they had to learn the hard way, etc. I want to go into this marraige with a very realistic idea of what it takes to maintain it, and if someday in the future it turns out it just doesn’t work for us, how to be civil about dissolving it.

My fiancee had pre marraige counseling through the church both of us will be married in. Though neither of us were religious, we really appreciated the advice/discussion given, most of which were practical things ie are we eye to eye on money/kids/work etc. In the years leading up to deciding to get married we had also talked at length about these things, particularly financial goals.

But as the big day gets closer, I pay more and more attention to other people’s marraiges. Maybe this is irrelevant, I shouldn’t be comparing myself to others. But still… :dubious:

The thing that surprises me, at least as far as my co workers is concerned, is the level of selfishness and bitterness that goes on in many marraiges/divorces. I keep hearing people use language like “She spends my money” “He got my car in the divorce”. Both fiancee and I have agreed to have a joint account and both of us are of the consensus that our income/expenses are a collective thing. Ironically, its easier for me to save money when its for some cause greater than myself. When I feel that someone is counting on me for something, I’m more motivated than if I’m trying to do it for my own personal goals. Fiancee feels the same way, and we often have positive discussions about work/saving/etc since our goals are the same long-term. She comes from a culture where work and money are really emphasized as a collective effort- everybody pitch in, and everybody benefits, and her family is much more stable than mine contrasted by my family being about protecting what you have, and using financial superiority as leverage over others.

I don’t think of the money in the joint account as ‘mine’ but ‘ours’. I’m not a particularly materialistic person, and do not try to have an unnecessarily high emotional attachment to money/things. I feel that if someone believes this, if things were to change in their life, ie getting a divorce later on down the line, it can’t affect them as badly because leaving the marraige the other person didn’t “take” anything away. Sure having kids makes it hugely complicated in that scenario which is why we are not having kids too quick.

My mom is divorced, and when I share her sentiments she feels like I am being naive. She said that when she went into her marraige with my dad, she had the same idealism I did, that he wasn’t the cheating asshole he ended up becoming, but ‘changed’ over the years. At this point I don’t know whether to take her statement at face value or wonder if her opinion is strongly tinted by a very unpleasant divorce.

I know this post is long and disjointed, I guess TLDR version: I’m getting married, wondering about money, happiness, divorce, advice…

2

Oh and FTR: My mom loves my fiancee dearly, in fact my whole family does because she is a very hard worker and always willing to help people out. So its not that my mom has a bad feeling about her and thinks she’s going to clean me out or anything like that. But she/people thought my dad was an amazing guy, and according to her, over the years he changed until it got to the point she could no longer be married to him anymore. At that point they had a mortgage, other properties, two kids, and it culminated into a very long, messy bitter divorce.

My fiancee has stated if we ever decided during our marraige that divorce was the only option she doesn’t have a particularly significant attachment to money or things- that she would rather be broke, happy, and living with her mom and sisters (like she was before she got married :stuck_out_tongue: ) than angry, bitter, slighted, and vindictive.

I like this attitude since it is a huge departure from other divorces I witness from my peers, where it seems like a divorce brings out the very worst in people, and making very poor decisions.

But then again, maybe it really depends upon the person you decide to marry. If you marry someone who only really worships money, I guess it comes to no surprise that money will be what defines the marraige (and divorce!). If someone is possessive and selfish, a lot of their language will be about “theirs” “mine” and all the fairness contingent on them getting what they think they deserve.

I fell in love with someone who works very hard, has practical goals, stands up for herself/is assertive, intelligent, passionate, (also a complete knockout :smiley: ) and loves me dearly and wants to have a future with me. But despite all this I honestly don’t want to be too naive/idealistic about the future.

3

:shrug: I think that’s how most folks handle it. A joint account that is ‘ours’. With that said, my Wife and I are one of the few couples that don’t handle it that way. We don’t really handle it at all. We both have our own checking accounts and credit cards.

I pay for some stuff, she pays for other stuff. As new expenses come up like one of us buying a new car, we adjust other bills around. If she needs something and I have more money for it, I’ll pay. Or visa-versa. It’s never been an issue at all.

We never had an argument about money, or anything else for that matter. We did get married later in life (36). We are financially sound, but not rich. This has been working for us for 14 years.

4

You are right to be concerned.
Marriage is a huge financial risk and you are not wrong to try and educate yourself about what you are getting into.

If you truly believe ‘she would rather be broke’ then you are being naive.

5

I’m a pretty firm “our money” person myself, and divorced without much drama. My ex was the same way, so being on the same page helped immensely.

I do kind of feel that he ended up with “my” car, in that my mother gave me the car and my mother hates him and would never have given him the car were he not married to me, but in that particular case, giving up ownership of the car was my best move. It meant that when our daughter was with him, there was a car to take her to school or a friend’s house or the hospital, just in case. Also, it was one less thing to struggle over, and I was more than a tiny bit worried that if I didn’t make things as smooth as possible, he’d lawyer up, and he has much more in the way of legal and financial resources than I do, thanks to a wealthy lawyer brother with connections.

Since he ended up with most of the “stuff” (I left with clothes, kitchen gear and some personal items, but no furniture, TV, DVR, DVDs, and only a small proportion of the books I entered the marriage with - we’d had a lot of duplicates we weeded out, and he kept most of the titles I used to have), he also ended up with most of the credit card debt used to pay for the stuff. Not that there was a whole lot of debt left, but there was a small amount. It just seemed fair to us both that if he kept the physical items, he kept the debt incurred to purchase them.

Overall, I think the most useful thing to me was the mantra, “it’s just stuff”. And that includes money. Stuff was not nearly as important as our daughter, and us being good parents to her, which meant minimizing battles as much as possible. Since I have a conflict avoidant personality, I probably gave up much more money and stuff than I would have had I had a lawyer urging me on, but it worked for us. For all of us.

As for the OP, I think it can work both ways - yours and mine or ours - as long as you’re both truly on the same page about it. The problems come up when one person is a “your money, my money” person and the other an “our money” person - ESPECIALLY if one caves to the other in the throes of Twoo Wuv. If the Twoo Wuv disappears, the true feelings come out, and then there are Issues.

The one thing I would counsel is that both of you keep *some *credit in your own names, not always as joint accounts or credit cards. If, og forbid, you ever do decide to split, or even if one of you dies young, reeling from a divorce or widow/erhood is no time to find yourself without a credit history in your own name.

6

It really depends on the person. I’m broke, and I much prefer it to being married to my ex, and I really much prefer it to having lawyered up and spending protracted amounts of time and money on an acrimonious divorce.

I’m not sure you can always *predict *who’s going to prefer to be broke, but yes, there are those of us who took the path of not fighting over money because it was better for the relationship not to.

Even if I didn’t have a kid with him, I really would have taken the same path just to not be married to him anymore. That’s priceless.

7

Sometimes there is an inequality of contribution in the marriage. That contribution doesn’t necessarily have to be in the form of money. It can also be effort. If one spouse is a stay at home spouse (SAHS) and the other works 8 hours a day, I would expect the SAHS to spend about 8 hours a day on household tasks such as cleaning, cooking, etc. If the SAHS is spending a lot of time instead doing recreation activities, the working spouse can feel like they are being financially taken advantage of.

Sometimes people have different ideas about what to do with the money. Even if both spouses are working, one may be a saver and the other a spender. The saver may want to put lots of money in the bank for retirement, but the spender may instead want to go on vacation, buy expensive electronics, etc. The saver may feel like the spender is spending their money. And the spender may feel like the saver is storing away too much money.

Differences in financial philosophies are a big source of ill feelings in a marriage. You are smart to think about this ahead of time. In the end, both of you will need to know how to compromise with regards to money.

8

You both sound like practical folks, OP. Maybe having both of you sign a pre-nup would take away some of your worries about potential divorce-related fallout?

9

Yeah…

See the issue here is that you enter marriage with hopes and ideas of how it should be. And over time resentment builds up - not only over money - but over everything - unless you are really both very good at not holding resentment and dealing with issues.

SIXTEEN YEARS OF MARRIAGE AND MY HUSBAND HAS STILL NOT PLANTED THE BUSHES I ASK HIM TO PLANT EVERY SPRING.

(I love my husband dearly and the bushes are not that important to me, but this is the sort of thing that wears).

So what starts as “its our money and we want to be happy” becomes “we have enough money to buy her that dress she has been eying or me a new video card” and eventually becomes “every time we have money she gets what she wants and I wait” (even if it isn’t every time - confirmation bias SUCKS here). And by the time the marriage is to the state where you want to call it quits, all that resentment is well into “mine, mine, mine.”

So manage it. Communicate it. Try and talk in terms of fairness over time. “I think its great that you are spending Friday evenings hanging with the guys while I watch the kids, but I am not getting time to myself - and last week when the girls called to see if I wanted to join them Friday night your response was “Its guys night!.” I want you to make plans to watch the kids every Saturday afternoon while I go visit with my girlfriends, and for the once in a blue moon when I want to do something on a Friday night, I’d like you to skip guys night.”

Because what happens most of the time to couples who don’t have successful marriages is that one person is a giver, the other person a taker. And the giver is often a doormat who never says “hey, EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT.” And the taker doesn’t change his thinking so his response is “you know, I go out EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT” and you get resentment.

Very early on, its very easy for givers to give very willingly, setting up bad habits. And for takers to accept this generosity without a lot of consideration. (And you may share and trade being givers and takers over different things - you may GIVE all your holidays to her and her family while she willingly takes them, and she may give you a pass on ever cleaning the bathroom. And twenty years from now she may say “I ALWAYS clean the goddamn bathroom” and your parents may get ill and all of a sudden its “We ALWAYS spend Thanksgiving AND Christmas with YOUR parents!?!”

i.e. if I really want those bushes, I need to remind my husband, then I need to schedule a Saturday, put my husband in the car and say "we are going to go buy bushes and then you are going to help me plant them. " I can’t hold onto a once a year “we should plant bushes along the side of the house, can you figure out which Saturday you want to do that” resentment.

10

I’ve got one simple rule for a good marriage: don’t keep score. If you love the person you are marrying, then completely ditch the scorecard. That includes the “this is my item or my money” thought pattern. When that feeling arises (and it will) you should talk with your partner, but not about “your spending too much of my money” more like “I’m concerned that we are spending too much and won’t be able to meet our goals”. It will automatically defuse the trigger if its a we/our problem, even if its not. What’s more important - being right or being happy? I’ve always chosen being happy (at least in regards to marital disputes) and it has not backfired on me (yet). Married 11 yrs, living together 6 yrs before that.

11

I like your attitude, WhyNot. And to be honest, I’ve put myself in a hypothetical situation of “What if fiancee and I were married X years and got divorced”. That way I can think about the prospect of giving up some things and how would I feel about it. Honestly I would do whatever it took to not be bitter after the fact. That means if she ‘got more’ in some way, so be it. But foruntately for me, she feels the same way.

Something that made my mom very wary was the fact that my fiancee is starting grad school a month before we get married. In my mom’s case, she helped my dad through nursing school, both academically and financially. When they got divorced, she felt pretty stupid for helping him so much, because even though his nursing job lead to living pretty comfortably, he still pressed her for more in the divorce.

My mom is worried I might have the same fate she did, but the difference is that fiancee is aware of what happened to my parents, and made it a point to not start grad school unless she could do it without me having to support her through it. That ended up happening- she has a grant that not only pays for her entire 2 years but also covers living expenses. Combined with a part-time job her income will be roughly the same as mine while she is going to school. So in that case, she doesn’t feel like I have to ‘sacrifice’ anything in order for her to go to school.

12

I think your mother is just trying to tell you that EVEN IF the both of you are relatively non-materialisitc, people do change over time. EVEN IF you would never want to cheat on her and she would never want to cheat on you, statistically it’s likely that one of you will eventually want to cheat on the other (whether you follow through on it or not is a separate issue). EVEN IF you currently are in agreement about most of the “big issues” (money, sex, religion, kids), sometimes people find born-again religion; sometimes post-pregnancy hormones fuck with sex drive; sometimes people don’t like their kids, or what having kids turns their partner into. Disagreements on these issues may drive you or her to grub for money if your marriage goes down the shitter and you both view the other person as selfish and/or mean.

In essence, I think your mother just wants you to be realistic. Most or all of your divorced friends probably started their marriages thinking the same things you’re thinking now. Change and a bitter divorce can happen to anybody and there’s truly no way to predict it. Thinking you’re immune to a future bitter divorce, just because you get along well now, is overly rosy.

But I’m also of the opinion that worrying over something you can’t predict is a waste of time. So stop thinking about it and be happy with what you have while you have it. :slight_smile:

13

Is there a reason you don’t plant the bushes? He may be developing resentment that you keep asking him to plant the bushes when he thinks you can do it yourself.

14

And if there’s an inequality from the beginning, it’s very difficult to make it equitable to each partner’s satisfaction further down the line.

This is know from firsthand experience.

15

Our set up is exactly the same. Has worked for us.

16

Clay soil, its almost impossible for me to dig a bush sized hole in our soil - however, he is twice my size - its an easier job with two people.

17

I totally agree that most people do share money but I think your way is the correct way to avoid the fights that come from money in a marriage.

I shared money my first marriage and did not my second. It was such a relief to take the money issues off the table. However, for this to work, both partners need to earn and agree to continue to do so.

18

No, I don’t think so. My spouse and I share money and while we have had our share of arguments over the years, the only ones centering on money came from before we merged our finances.

Every couple is different. For some, sharing money leads to more money-related fighting; for some, it leads to less. The trick is figuring out which kind of couple you are and going with it, rather than looking at what works for anyone else.

19

FWWIW, my wife and I share in the expenses. No joint account, but she can know how much money I have any time she wants and vice versa. I pay the bulk of the bills and she gives me cash to pay the big bills (loans, mortgage) when she’s got a lot saved up. She also pays for vacations and ‘extras’. It works for us.

The big thing is communication. I watched some movie with a couple breaking up after a long marriage and the exchange that stuck with me was her saying, “you changed.” and his reply of “you didn’t”.

Hopefully, your marriage will last years and in those years you will both change. Keeping the lines of communication open will allow you both to share your feelings about those changes and how things can be adapted to fit those changing circumstances.

Best of luck with the marriage. I know I don’t regret making the plunge 8 years ago.

20

As others have said, different money styles can be a big point of conflict and that’s where “my money, your money” can be useful. My late husband was a spender. I’m more comfortable with a significant cushion. It led to stress until we split our money. Then it just led to me rolling my eyes and thinking he was ridiculous, but at least his habits weren’t threatening.