It’s engagement season!
And while everyone’s busy admiring the ring and talking about wedding
colors, it’s tempting to gloss over more serious issues, like your financial
future and money styles.
I’ve been working in the divorce field for over 20 years and
I’ve also been divorced myself. Now I’m happily remarried. So the suggestions and advice in this article
are from both professional and personal perspectives.
As I sit in the mediation room and I listen to a couple
describe how long they’ve been struggling with the problems that brought them
to the decision to divorce, I often feel that if they’d had heart-to-heart discussion
about tough topics like money styles, using credit, whether to return to work
after having children and household responsibilities earlier in their
relationship that we wouldn’t be mediating their divorce. They’d still be
married.
As a newly engaged couple, you can choose to have these
discussions now, before you tie the knot.
It’s like marriage insurance because you’ve had the tough discussions
before you’re confronted with a crisis you’re likely already on the same page
as you start to deal with the problem that’s arisen.
And you’ll be confronted with a crisis sooner or later. We create some crises ourselves, by
over-spending, paying bills late, or mouthing off at work and the boss
overhears. Other crises happen to us,
like the 2008 recession or getting your identity stolen. Other crises arise so slowly over time that
we don’t even realize they’re happening, like inadvertently pushing all the
income responsibility onto one spouse or failing to have enough income tax
withheld from your paycheck. But one thing
for sure: you’ll confront plenty of
crises during your marriage.
So whether or not you actually write up a premarital
agreement or prenup, it’s important to have the discussions:
• What
happens if one of us gets laid off?
• If we
have children, who will take off work and for how long?
• And
how will we handle the discussion if our feelings change about returning to
work?
• Do we
anticipate having to support our aging parents?
If so, what will we do?
• Will we live on a budget? Or will
we each have our own accounts and contribute a set amount of money to joint
finances each month?
• What
if one of us comes up short money-wise one month? 12 months?
These are just a few of the topics you’ll want to discuss.
These discussions and decisions can be challenging. That’s
why we suggest using mediation or Collaborative Law to facilitate the process.
In mediation with Peace Talks, you’ll work with both an attorney or financial
specialist and a therapist, so that if the discussion is hard you’ll have help
and support. We make sure that you talk
about everything you need to talk about before you get married.
We’ve mediated premarital agreements like this for years,
and we’ve learned some interesting things and we’ve helped couples understand
each other better.
For example, with one couple we worked with the husband had
become a millionaire overnight. But he’d been raised in a poor family and he
had a really strong work ethic. He had a
sense that the millions could disappear as quickly as they’d appeared, and he
knew that he’d need to reinvest a lot of his money into updating and upgrading
his inventions because, as you know, the world moves very fast and people copy
good ideas quickly. He couldn’t assume
that his one invention would continue to be the only choice for people who
needed it.
On the surface, his financial picture was that of a wealthy
man with solid investments. It wasn’t
until we discussed how quickly things could change for his business and the
fact that he wanted to continue to invent things that it became clear that his
savings would likely be used as business reinvestments, not fancy trips and
expensive cars.
He talked frankly about sharing a room with 3 siblings
growing up. He talked about using his newly acquired wealth to support his
former stepson, his mother, and a cousin. He had no legal obligation to support
these people, of course, but he felt very strongly about helping out since he
could.
His fiancée knew part of this story, but not all of it.
Tears came to his eyes as he talked about his former stepson, and sharing that
room with 3 siblings. Once she heard and understood where her husband-to-be was
coming from, what his values and priorities were, she agreed that they were
important to her, too, and that she wouldn’t stand in the way of any of these
goals.
That’s the happy ending.
But imagine if they hadn’t had that discussion in
advance. They had a baby on the way, and
what if his fiancée later resented how much he spent helping others rather than
buying a new house for their new family?
What if he reinvested his savings into a new business venture which
failed? For both spouses there could be
blame, shame and guilt attached to these events. But because this couple had thoroughly
discussed these possibilities in advance and agreed that they intended to live
modestly and that when the baby came that mom would give up her high paying job
to stay home without an expectation that she return to work, this really
reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings.
And, perhaps more importantly, because they knew how to have
these kinds of conversations if a new situation emerged that neither had
anticipated they’d already have the skills to have similar difficult
conversations because they’d done it before.
That’s a really important part of the premarital agreement
discussion—just the practice of how to talk to each other when things aren’t as
you’d hoped or expected.
Even in my own life it’s been helpful to remember these tips
and to remember to have the discussions early, before the problem becomes
worse. I remember one time I was
fretting about needing to take $20,000 out of the home equity account to cover
a number of bills. I was really upset
and I was having trouble sleeping. But
instead of holding onto this information even longer, I shared it with my
husband. I showed him the checkbook and
how we’d spent our money, and why this $20,000 was necessary. Once he saw the
balance sheet, he understood, and we agreed to withdraw the money. I felt better immediately. By withholding
this information from my spouse just because I anticipated that the discussion
would be unpleasant, I was actually making the problem worse.
Mediation and Collaborative law help you to have these
discussions in a safe and neutral setting. Your mediator or collaborative
professional will help you identify all the options for each topic and go over
the different choices with you so that you’re able to agree upon the best
choice. And if you don’t agree, it’s the mediator’s job to help you understand
why not and if there’s a possibility to bridge the gap.
We’d much rather see you before you get married than later
if things go wrong. Mediation and Collaborative Law can help you draft an
agreement which makes sense to both of you and also teach you the skills to
have these sorts of discussions on your own in the future. Because the only
constant is change.
