You can have marriage without love and love without marriage. But in the good old USA in 2017, there are a lot of business considerations associated with marriage. Some make life easier, some make life harder, some benefit some to the detriment of others.
Part of building a life together, if that’s what you want to do, is solving problems together, and taking advantage of opportunities. Paying off debt of any kind, sacrificing lifestyle now for career opportunities later, dealing with family illness and disability, resisting temptation to stray, taking risks and accepting the resultant successes or failures all can come into play. It’s hard to predict who will make it or not. Debt may reduce the odds, but not to zero.
Although I didn’t see my marriage as a business arrangement, I definitely thought we had a verbal contract before I said “yes.” Even though we were madly in love, I wanted to be sure we each understood what our expectations were for our life together. I was willing to make some concessions, but there were some non negotiables he needed to understand and agree to before it was a done deal. I told him exactly who I was and what I needed to be satisfied. It was important to him that I understand he was never going to be wealthy and that I not be disappointed about that.
Whether or not a particular married individual sees his or her marriage as a business arrangement, for many law-related and transactional purposes, it is regarded as one.
I don’t know where you heard this, but this just isn’t accurate.
Agree you can tie up the money anyway you want. If there is a provision for money withdrawal at some point in time it is because that is the way the trust was written.
I am dealing with three irrevocable trusts at the moment. All three have that provision about the income distribution to beneficiaries. When I researched for Crummy letter, that was the impression I got. If not legal, it seems certainly a standard practice which means there’s a good chance BF had access to some money.
A Crummey power (named after a case) allows creation of a “present interest” by giving the beneficiary the power to withdraw a certain amount within a certain window of time after which the power lapses. It is a tool to convert something that does not qualify as a gift into a qualified (for the IRS purposes) gift. 
It does not mean that the beneficiary of that trust have to take the distribution… Most often, the beneficiaries let the power lapse. Your estate attorney should be able to explain how this works.
The Crummy letter isn’t about receiving the income generated by a trust. It’s the right to receive any new money gifted into the trust, within a short period of time, and typically limited to the gift tax exclusion. BunsenBurner explained it correctly. The legal right to withdraw the money isn’t the same as the practical ability to withdraw the money without consequences. Let’s say his parents gift up to the gift tax exclusion to his trust every year. His parents could tell him that if he chooses to withdraw the money from the trust, they won’t be making any new gifts to the trust.
Poor Crummey kids… imagine living with the last name that would get misspelled like that! OTOH, if someone gave me $14k a year with no strings attached, I might put up with a crummy last name and the teasing that goes with it! 
We have had a few couple friends who did the split expenses and kept separate bank accounts. They are all divorced. Not saying it cannot be done but to me finances are all part of building a complete life together. To me the separation of money implies that one is retaining the funds for an exit strategy. I get how it works when your not married or living together and maintaining separate households. But when you combine the living arrangements it gets very complicated. There are so many expenses and purchases. How do you split that? I just did a Home Depot run and picked up some lawn fertilizer, lime, and grass seed. Do I come back and say, “Hi Honey. I got a bill to split, I need $52.35. Thanks…Love you…” lol. Dishwsher breaks. lets split it. I just can’t image people complaining about every nickle. If the person you purportedly love is going to be upset that you bought Pantene shampoo instead of Suave, then how can that be healthy? Consumerism is all about grades of items. It sounds like one would be resentful if one partner buys top of the line products all the time and the other partner wants to scan craigslist/yardsales. Money is fungible. To me a team needs to just put the cash into a pot and spend from that. Seems very divisive that one earns more and therefore should pay for more. It would happen anyway since the top earner is throwing more into the pot. I get the business angle, but not the emotional angle.
@MassDaD68 The friends I know who split expenses keep one joint account and use debit cards from that account to pay for anything household/family/kid related. I’m a fan of separate accounts after witnessing how many of my female friends felt they had to “hide” their purchases from their husbands for fear of confrontation. I’m not talking big expenses, but a manicure or taking the kids out for lunch. To be fair, I’ve also seen husbands hide scratch tickets and a new tool, etc. and hide it from their wives to avoid nagging.
Let’s not forget that the majority of posters here aren’t in the low income range and probably have pocket cash for those little expenses. Those little expenses add up though. In low income households, there is no discretionary monies for that pizza or manicure so something has to give.
We have always kept separate bank checking accounts and one joint savings account that we both contribute to and yes my husband and I reimburse each other when it makes sense. We take turns if we go out to eat etc. vacations come out of joint, and so on. It has worked for 30 years. My parents did that for 60 years of marriage.
That agrees with my understanding. The window as I understand is the year it is produced to let the beneficiary know what’s available. The certain amount is x% of the income produced from the pricipa in the year that may also include the annual gift for certain expenses. None of that contradicts there’s a very good chance Deb’s daughter’s BF had access to some fund even if his trust is controlled by someone else.
Maybe I am just old fashioned. Not sure what has changed in loving people from when mom’s stayed home and the Dad’s went off to work to support the family. Everyone has a role in this. there is no I in team. Discounting people contributions to the household is destructive. Marriage is all about give and take.
Of course it is. But I think that some couples have difficulty appreciating contributions other than cold, hard cash.
So when one member of a couple earns less than the other – because that person is a stay-at-home parent or has eldercare responsibilities or works in a lower-paying field – there is a tendency for both members of the couple to consider the lower earner to be less important.
And less important people have less power in decisions.
When my husband and I moved to our current house, I was only working part-time because our kids were still relatively young and needed supervision and transportation after school and during school vacations. Our new house was bigger than our old one, and we needed furniture for two more rooms. One day, without consulting me or even saying that he was going to do it, my husband went out and bought the furniture. He felt he had the right to do that because of his higher income. It would never have occurred to him to consult me. And although I was delighted with his choice of dining room furniture, I absolutely hate the furniture that he bought for the living room – furniture that I have now been living with for 17 years.
In my mind, I was making an important contribution to the household both through the time I spent on family responsibilities and through paid work, and I felt that I should have had the opportunity to be an equal partner in the choice of furniture. A decision like that – one that a family lives with for many years – should be made jointly, in my opinion, unless one person says “Go ahead and choose it yourself. I don’t need to be involved.” But there is no way that I would ever have been able to explain that to my husband. In his mind, all the choices were his because he made most of the money.
My S and FDIL both have high paying jobs and will come to the marriage without student debt. There is also the possibility of inheritance, some day, on both sides. After they were engaged, I had dinner with my S and asked if they were planning on a prenup. He said they discussed it, but I have no idea whether they have/will pursue it. I saw my role as raising the question, not dictating a particular action. However, if they were to ask me, I would recommend that they each engage independent counsel so there would never be a question of coercion or lack of understanding. As a matter of fact, they are in the process of trying to buy an apartment before the wedding, so they will be connected legally, in terms of real estate, before they are connected legally, via matrimony.
That hurts. I would have thought furniture should be more up to you since you stay home more and more into housekeeping.
@Iglooo, I actually think that my husband and I care equally about furniture. I could have given other examples, but this was the one that popped into my mind.
@MassDaD68 said “there is no I in team.” I’m not sure I agree. Even when we become members of a couple, we don’t lose our own identities. This is part of the reason for each person having some discretionary money (unless the budget is so tight that this is not possible).
For example, I’ve been in Weight Watchers for a year now, and I’ve lost 35 pounds that I really needed to lose. I would like to lose 15 more. My husband does not approve of my choice to join Weight Watchers because he feels people should be able to lose weight on their own without the crutch of an organized program. But he and I are different people. I have not been successful losing weight on my own, and I find the support of an organized program very helpful. So I pay for Weight Watchers out of my own money, and he doesn’t complain. This works for us.
Maybe because it was our dynamic, but because my wife has been a SAHM, I never really saw money as “my money” per se, it was ours and there is enough trust between us that we don’t question what the other person bought for themselves (helps that both of us have a very, very hard time spending money on ourselves). Funny part is with big things we tend to talk about it, actively look for it, because we enjoy shopping together, figuring out what we want, so we work together on it. If my wife bought a new lounge chair for the living room (as we just have, thanks to our 1 yr old dogs being the spawn of Jaws making the decision to get rid of an old couch for us), I woudn’t have a problem with it.
I never really understood the concept of ‘my money’ or ‘her money’, even when she was working before we had a kid, and I often have to yell at her hesitating to spend money on herself (she with me as well, even when it is something like a tool I need to fix something around the house, not exactly a new sports car). I don’t think it would be any different if she made more money, either, it is just the way we operate and operated (doesn’t mean it was always perfect, there were some strains around my MIL who was, shall we say, a financial wreck and needed help, and in the early days when I discovered the online world before the internet ie services like AOL and compuserve, which were expensive, had some issues, but it wasn’t about my money or her money, it was about expenses and budgets and such).
@musicprnt, it sounds like the dynamic between you and your wife is such that having individual money may not be necessary.
But what do you do if one of you wants to spend money on something that the other thinks is foolish or inappropriate?
What if one of you had a weight problem and wanted to join an organized weight-loss program but the other believed that this is a ridiculous waste of money? How would you handle that situation?