{"id":76862,"date":"2011-04-07T04:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=76862"},"modified":"2019-10-23T21:36:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T04:36:11","slug":"financial-security-for-unmarried-couples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/financial-security-for-unmarried-couples\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial security for unmarried couples"},"content":{"rendered":"
Money is one of the biggest issues couples fight about. It’s also one of the most important areas for clear communication. After all, money touches every aspect of our lives.<\/p>\n
I’ve written before about the importance of having good financial communication<\/a> with your spouse. It’s doubly important to communicate well with your partner if you’re not married. Many of the financial advantages married couples enjoy <\/a>are available to unmarried partners \u2014 but they’re not automatic. For unmarried partners, it takes careful planning and legal documentation to create the kind of benefits married couples get<\/b> the moment they say, “I do.”<\/p>\n To get a sense of the challenges and opportunities facing unmarried couples, I turned to financial expert Debra Neiman<\/a>. Neiman is a Certified Financial Planner and co-author of the book Money Without Matrimony<\/i><\/a>, a primer for unmarried couples setting up house together. I also spoke with two other, more personal experts on unmarried partnership: my friends John and Sarah. John and Sarah are living together and raising their daughter living together as unmarried partners.<\/p>\n According to Money Without Matrimony<\/i>, there are three core groups of people who choose unmarried partnerships:<\/p>\n John and Sarah fall squarely into Neiman’s middle camp: a couple in their mid-30s who enjoy their unmarried partnership and aren’t interested in marriage, but do want to share a life together. They’ve been together four years, and have a daughter.<\/p>\n “We have no plans to get married in the future,” Sarah says. “We’re happy being unmarried to each other. Right now I feel like the most likely reason for us to get married would be if we had no other way to achieve some critical benefit associated with marriage, like if we had to get married to get our daughter health insurance. But so far nothing like that has come up.”<\/p>\n Sarah says they manage their household finances through a joint account, but each maintain individual accounts. “I think we’d probably manage day-to-day expenses roughly the same if we were married to each other,” she says. They’ve just recently made the transition from graduate student income to a professional salary, so they’re facing some new decisions about how to handle savings and long-term plans.<\/p>\n Regardless of why you’re not married, or what stage of life you’re at, Neiman says there are five things every unmarried couple must do to safeguard themselves<\/b> and each other as they approach their financial life together:<\/p>\n These steps are all, obviously, good ideas for any couple. The better you plan ahead of emergencies and the eventual end of your life, the smoother the process will be for your loved ones. They’re essential for unmarried couples, though.<\/p>\n Neiman says not getting all the requisite legal documents in place is the top mistake unmarried couples make<\/b>. Money Without Matrimony<\/i> contains many troubling stories of couples whose failure to plan ahead caused catastrophe for one or both of them.<\/p>\n It’s not just about the disposition of substantial assets. Neiman asks couples to think about what will happen to their most personal items. What will happen to your journals? Any art you’ve created? Your pets? If you’re not married and you want your partner to have those things, you need to say so clearly in writing.<\/p>\n Once you have your documentation in place and have agreed on how to share your household expenses and long-term plans, keeping it running smoothly isn’t that different than it is for married couples. It requires the same commitment to clear communication and responsible use of resources.<\/p>\n My friend Sarah cites getting to write their own agreements about money as one of the best things about having an unmarried partnership. “The other side of that coin is having<\/i> to work out our own agreements, rather than letting the government make decisions for us,” she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Money is one of the biggest issues couples fight about. It’s also one of the most important areas for clear communication. After all, money touches every aspect of our lives.<\/p>\n I’ve written before about the importance of having good financial communication<\/a> with your spouse. It’s doubly important to communicate well with your partner if you’re not married. Many of the financial advantages married couples enjoy <\/a>are available to unmarried partners \u2014 but they’re not automatic. For unmarried partners, it takes careful planning and legal documentation to create the kind of benefits married couples get<\/b> the moment they say, “I do.”<\/p>\n To get a sense of the challenges and opportunities facing unmarried couples, I turned to financial expert Debra Neiman<\/a>. Neiman is a Certified Financial Planner and co-author of the book Money Without Matrimony<\/i><\/a>, a primer for unmarried couples setting up house together. I also spoke with two other, more personal experts on unmarried partnership: my friends John and Sarah. John and Sarah are living together and raising their daughter living together as unmarried partners.<\/\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[496],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span>Money Without Matrimony<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>Five Keys to Financial Success<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>More Than Money<\/span><\/h2>\n
Money Without Matrimony<\/h2>\n