Unless they live in a gay marriage state, same-sex couples don’t have access to marriage laws that say how property and income brought into a relationship is treated. Instead, partners need to come up with a system to handle their finances.
Here are the most popular ways and their consequences:
As a Traditional Marriage
Under this model, couples have two sets of property:
- Property from before the relationship: Each person keeps their separate ownership of what they had from before.
- Property from during the relationship: The couple treats anything that either person earns or acquires as belonging to both partners equally. Income and salaries, as well as expenses and debt, are all owned jointly. If the couple ever breaks up, they divide everything from during the relationship equally.
By Financial Ability
This model is for when couples want each other to contribute based on their ability to pay. Sometimes one partner makes substantially more than the other, and this model reflects that it would be too hard for the lower-income partner to pay just as much as the higher-income earner.
For example, let’s say one woman earns $100,000 a year, and her partner earns $50,000. They would still share joint banking accounts from which they’d pay all their bills, but the higher income earner would contribute two-thirds of the joint account, while her partner would only need to contribute one-third of the amount.
As a Business
Under this model, the couple agrees to split some things, but keep other things separate. They would still open joint banking accounts and have joint credit cards, but they’d only use them for certain things. For example, two men living in a house together might share a bank account to which they contribute a small amount for household expenses. They might also have a joint credit account they use for trips or for things they know they’ll share.
Banks can help set up this model. They can label accounts by purpose and assign different shares of ownership.
As Separate Individuals
Finally, couples can agree to own everything–income, debts, property, investments–completely separately. They’ll have no joint bank accounts or credit cards. Both small expenses like food and gas and large ones like mortgage payments are owed and paid for by each person individually.
So who pays what? It’s up to each couple to come up with a system, which can range from complicated (a weekly spreadsheet detailing how much each person has paid) to simple (“I’ll pay for the movie if you get dinner.”)
Which way do you think is best? What’s worked for you?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Speaking strictly for ourselves, my husband and I assume joint responsibility for everything so pool our income into joint accounts, pay our bills from joint accounts and spend evenly (with a slight tilt towards my spouse for his “medicinal marijuana.) Our income disparity is about 15% in my favor but we treat everything (and spend) equally. We live in CA.
I don’t think there’s a “best” way for all relationships. Based on my own experience, a couple can use all or most of these methods in different phases of the relationship, usually moving towards greater sharing of finances. Having children is also a big incentive towards “family,” as opposed to individual, finance, especially if one partner leaves outside employment to care for the kids for any length of time.
Yanz, I think that system is more typical when income disparity is small (around 15% as in your example). It also helps that you both spend evenly. I suspect there might be more problems if one of you had been a much bigger spender than the other.
Dana, that’s a good point. I agree that there’s not a “best way”–it’s up to the circumstances of each relationship. I think it’s true, as well, that when the relationship turns into more of a family, things move towards joint ownership.