@morrismm , if your D decides to marry, get a prenup.
I don’t know whether this is true, but if the apt is in her name only, she owns it, legally he has no claims.
I have a friend who made some bad choices about letting her credit be used when her long term boyfriend was buying a house for them. He was in the process of buying/selling a business so his financial status affected qualifying for the mortgage. So, her name was on the mortgage but not the title. And, he wasn’t divorced yet (don’t get me started…) Well, several lawyers later, he finally got divorced, but his wife could have gotten half of that house, and my friend was still on the hook ofr the mortgage. Somehow it got resolved in a way she is happy with, but geez… not smart.
Cbreeze, it is state law specific. In my state, as an estate attorney told us, if the other spouse has contributed to the maintenance and/or mortgage payments for a piece of RE that is a separate property of the other spouse, the non-owner spouse likely has an equitable lien in the RE. I have no idea if the case mentioned in the article is still “good law,” but it explains how the concept works:
http://www.law.gonzaga.edu/law-review/2013/11/16/labor-assets-separate-property/
D1’s apartment is in her name only. So yes, if they broke up I guess that would make it easier.
Cbreeze, I’ll have to ask her if she would consider a prenup. It probably would be a good idea.
@BunsenBurner, you are correct about the matter being state law specific. However, since morrismm’s daughter is not married yet, I think the apt belongs to the person in the deed only. However, if we are talking about a married couple, different laws will apply, therefore I suggested a prenup so each person can negotiate what will happen in the event of a divorce.
Much of this thread has focused on the concerns of parents of the more affluent member of a couple – the one with higher earnings/less (or no) debt – and these are very legitimate concerns.
But I would like to hear some opinions from parents of the less affluent partner. What concerns do you have?
“I’ll have to ask her if she would consider a prenup. It probably would be a good idea.”
Many years ago, just before I got engaged, I read that marriages that have a prenup are actually less likely to fail than marriages in general.
Of course, there are several reasons that this could be true. One possible reason is that in order to write up the prenup the couple has to talk about finances, which is a good thing to talk about prior to marriage.
Cbreeze, equtable lien situations may apply to unmarried couples, too. The prenup has to be drafted carefly to addess this issue. I am not a lawyer, just happened to research this issue in WA, so there is that. A prenup that makes a partner give up his future rights might not be well received.
The May 2017 issue of Consumer Reports has a large article on family money matters and potential disagreement on such.
One of the sample scenarios is a fiance/e with $100,000 in student loan debt. There are also other scenarios like failure to launch, funding kid’s professional school, commingling assets in marriage, etc.
Last night when I was having dinner with D1 and her fiancee, they told me they are going to have a prenup. They asked me what would be an equitable way of contributing to the common account and what would be considered “my assets” if there was a split. They also asked for a lawyer to draw it up. I gave them my divorce attorney.
D1 has no debt and she makes substantially more than her future husband. He is in high tech, so he does quite well himself, so he doesn’t need her to support him. Both of them have their own expensive ECs and they don’t want to have to “ask for permission” every time they want to spend money. I also think D1 wants a bit more security after seeing what I went through.
My suspicion is as they grow older together with kids, their assets would be more co-mingled. One reason I really like my future SIL is he knows where D1 is coming from and he is willing to accommodate her.
It’s gotten confusing hasn’t i?. When my H and I married no one ever talked about these things, but we carefully kekp our money separately - each writing a check each month into a joint account which was used to pay bills and other joint activities. He owned property which was kept separate and his and we purchased together a different residence…we did that for about a decade and then said “to heck with it” and started to commingle and he quick claim deeded the properties just for ease as we were in the thick of raising the kids and simply getting too busy to be careful about mine and yours stuff. That lasted until about 5 years ago (and 25 years of marriage) and we switched banks and just set up two joint accounts. The world has certainly gotten complicated, and we were probably pioneers. I remember how shocked our very close friends were when they learned how we were managing our finances.And then my H became a SAHH and that was a rare, rare thing when he did that. I’m pretty open-minded about things. If one of my boys were to become involved with someone with truly significant assets and no trust management I’d probably counsel them to get a pre-nup or at least not comingle until they were feeling very secure in the marriage.
Personally I think in this day and age there ought to be a document that married couples create if one or the other decides to drop out of the work force simply to spell out what happens if one ceases to contribute financially in hard cold cash to the marriage. I know there were long and lengthy conversations about this when my H “retired” young Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think the courts are as “friendly” to non-contributing spouses these days sad to say and with college costs what they are, I don’t think it favors someone who wants to set aside a college education.
A prenup should be a negotiation agreed by both parties on what is fair and equitable. It’s better to talk about these things while they are in a positive frame of mind. If a prenup becomes contentious or non-equitable then it doesn’t bode well for the marriage.
@oldfort, each person has to be represented and counseled by his/her own lawyer. To make it legally impartial, your future SIL should seek his own lawyer, not one recommended by you, your D or your lawyer.
When I got divorced we only used one attorney. I recommended mine for them to consult with on different options. The future SIL is certainly free to seek his own representation. They need to work it out to what makes them comfortable. BTW - D1 told me a prenup is quite normal among her friends.
Looks like the Consumer Reports articles on family money issues are on line:
http://www.consumerreports.org/personal-finance/solving-family-money-fights/
My kids are still in college and not dating anyone. However, we have talked to them their entire lives about debt and savings. They’ll both graduate debt free and substantial savings in their IRA’s and savings accounts.
We have talked to them about being aware of how much debt a potential mate is bringing to a relationship.
Selfish as it sounds, we ALWAYS put their savings for college ahead of a lot of other things. Even when we couldn’t really afford to, we kept saving for them. Something would really irritate me, even if it’s none of my business, if my kids then helped a significant other pay off their college debt.
Hubby and I always comingled, but after my parents died I put my inheritance in a separate account. Not for any selfish reasons, but I wanted to consider what to do with the money. Once that money is all spent I’ll close the account again. Even if it doesn’t really matter I wanted those funds to go towards particular things. It wasn’t for me alone to benefit, but it was for me alone to decide. And hubby was fine with that.
Well, some of us did not have parents helping us with college education money! I had college debt going into my marriage, but I was working and making more than my husband at the time, so I do not consider that he was helping me pay off my debt! We both had car loans, and we paid all our loans off before we had kids. I would never insert myself into my children’s finances. My D does ask for advice sometimes, but I would never have suggested a prenup before her wedding, even though she will receive a significant inheritance someday.
If my H’s parents had insisted on a prenup, our wedding would NOT have happened! Marriage is an equal partnership, I would not have agreed to it. Even as a stay-at-home-parent, I have never felt that I had to ask permission to spend anything, and since I handle all the finances, he wouldn’t know anyway! But I have always been very frugal.
If I was in widowed and considering remarriage in my later years, with assets earmarked for my kids, then I could see an agreement but more in the way of estate planning.
Where is the love? Everyone is making it sound like marriage is a business decision. You get married for love not the solidity of the person’s balance sheet.
If my fiance’s parents demanded a pre-nup and my fiance didn’t tell them to butt out, that would be the end of our engagement.
It’s one thing if two people want to get a pre-nup (and I can especially see this for later-life partners and/or when children are involved) but when a parent demands it? No. It doesn’t bode well going forward if parents are already inserting themselves that much into the couple’s decisions.
“For richer or poorer” didn’t make it into our wedding vows as we wrote our own. Probably because we basically always figured we’d be “for poorer” 
Where did you read there’s a parents’s “demand”?
Everyone who has kids know that we can merely make suggestions but no one can make our adult children do things they don’t want to do.
The US divorce rate is 53% and among the biggest reasons for divorce are communications breakdown and financial issues.
The notion of “marrying for love” as we know it in popular in modern culture wasn’t commonly practiced…especially by the well-to-do until sometime in the 19th century.
Until then, with few exceptions…marriages were more akin to business contracts whether it was to preserve the aristocratic pedigree of an aristocratic/gentry household in Medieval/Early-modern Europe, expand one’s wealth/landholdings, etc.
Also, legal marriage as recognized by modern nation-states is essentially a business partnership contract of sorts even though many nowadays avoid thinking about it in such terms because it’s considered exceedingly unromantic.
Funny as that’s the mentality common among my parents’ generation who were born between 1920 and the late ‘30s/early 40’s. However, that wasn’t the prevailing mentality among most in my grandmother’s or great-aunt/uncles’ generation or before.
Another funny part is despite the notion of romantic love continuing in my generation, there is a return to the more “practical” mindset of our grandparents generation to an extent…especially discussing finances BEFORE marriage. A lot of that comes from seeing too many neighbors and classmates’ parents end up in serious marital acrimony/messy divorces with adverse consequences for classmates because of financial differences.
Incidentally, most relatives in my generation follow an adage commonly attributed to Ben Franklin that one must thrive financially/personally before getting married.
Someone having substantial debt*…especially if its from consumer spending/gambling/being careless with money would have been much more of a dealbreaker for my grandparents’ and my generation of relatives whereas it wouldn’t have even come up in conversation in my parents’ generation.
- Only exception is educational spending, but only if the person concerned is making his/her best efforts to pay it off and is well on his/her way to doing so.