You are here

Re-visiting the Finances again.

GoldenTiger's picture

Due to a current situation we are dealing with, DH & I are revisiting the current way finances are handled. A lot in our lives have changed - live in different state, new jobs, new business ventures, only type vacation visitations with SK due to distance, etc...

A lot has changed.

We are considering doing a total split of finances - voluntarily. 50/50 of all standard bills (mortgage, utilities, phone, TV, credit cards, Orkin) and after these joint bills are paid, we each keep what's left of our income for our own use in separate checking accounts that the other has access to in case of emergencies. We'd each be responsible for buying our own food (we have COMPLETELY different food habits anyway & I use CS to buy ethnic food already), our own toiletries & household needed items, and anything related to our own BK.

Since mortgage is a huge thing that we both contribute to 50/50 & we both would like to provide legacies to our children, I suggested the following: My son lives in this awesome place with us full time. He will remember this place as home & I'd like to give him the house when we die. DH is also contributing $ to the house but his kids haven't even seen the place & will only be visiting maybe 3x/yr on vacations/holidays so they will have o sentimental attachment. I don't want the kids to just sell the house & split proceeds cuz my BS is likely to want to live in it eventually. So I plan on getting a separate life insurance policy to cover the cost of 'buying out' his ssiblings after DH & I die. That way I gift my half to him & provide $ for him to buy the rest of it. SKs get the $ for their DF's half.

Finances - Has anyone else split finances as I've proposed above? How'd it work out?

House - How else is everyone else hadling the house inheritance thing with 2 sets of kids involved?

I'd love input good & bad before implementing this new plan.

p.s. we already have personal checking accts that has our 'allowance' put in each month to do with what we want & it was calculated to be enough to include stuff we wanted for our own BK (lessons, gifts, plane tickets, class trips, etc) with a little planning. After bills & allowance, the rest is thrown into the joint acct for food etc. My BS's CS is used to cover 1/3 of the household bills currently cuz he is 1/3 of the people load. The rest is put away in a separate acct for his future.
The change would mean BS is no longer providing 1/3, instead I provide 1/2.

I hate to go so clearly into the 50/50 realm with my husband, but clear feelings of fairness are extremely important to me & I'm hoping clarification of $ will help alleviate feelings of resentment.

So comment away & advise to truth!

Jsmom's picture

We have everything split up. In my opinion the only way. We split all the household bills. DH pays and I get a bill at the end of month and I write him a check. We have a joint credit card that pays for all the groceries and anything that is for the household. We split that up 50/50. As for the house. I would let that go. Sounds like you are being sentimental. Your son may not want it. If he does in the future, he can buy them out with proceeds from your estate. We have the wills (in process) reflecting that the kids get what each of us have individually. My son gets my IRA's etc and his kids get his. The life insurance goes the same way. If one of us precedes the other, the spouse gets the life insurance. The kids get the investments in a trust maintained by the other spouse. This way the BM is not involved at all for his kids. My son's SS is mine. It goes in as my income, nothing more nothing less. He pays for his kids and I pay for mine. That is how it should be. Especially if you listen to the stories on here. Makes me convinced, our way is the best.

If you set up the house that way, you will irritate his kids. Not worth the fight for those that survive. You need to just provide for him to do what he wants, not what you want.

stepmom-at20's picture

with the house i look at it this way they have a mom that will hopefully leave them a house so your biokids get the house.

GoldenTiger's picture

About our house & home...

DH has been working very actively to rehab from guilty fathering. Part of the process he's been going through has been to try & see the situation objectively rather than emotionally. In this process, he's also realizing how his kids view him. It kills him, KILLS HIM but he sees that due to his guilt parenting & BM's influence and controlling nature, the kids have been raised to see dad as little more than an ATM & gift factory. The only time in the past 7 months that his daughter (14) has called him of her own will, was to ask him to pay for a class trip in another state. They have a set time every Sunday to video chat & he's lucky if he can actually talk with her 50% of the time because she's constantly choosing to babysit or at a friends house or hell, once she was at the grocery store with BM & wanted to skip that week's chat. I've heard him tell her how excited he was to show her & to do all these cool things at our home like go fishing at our pond, or go exploring our woods on a walk & all he gets back is "uh, yeah." Then she changes the conversation. Obviously he's burned some bridges, but still. He's trying to share & she doesn't want anything to do with him unless it's her idea.

Already long story shortened - DH decided that he wanted us to will the entire house to my son whom he is sharing all these memories with & will forever remember the first time he took a chainsaw to a tree, or bush hogged, or sweated bullets with to pull up dead bushes. He wants to leave a legacy of these things to someone who will see the tree stump in 50 years & smile & remember when Dad did... And yeah, my son calls him Dad & his kids still call me by my 1st name. He's working toward actively 'fixing' things with his BKs, but has stated that unless he is able to get the kids to come around & get on board, he doesn't have a lot of hope left that they will be the ones to carry his legacy as a human being. Basically, he doesn't want to be remembered as only an ATM & my son is the most likely kid to honor his memory & the huge efforts he's made to become a better, evolving person.

Again, I have a huge need for fairness. Not equality necessarily, but fairness. I can empathize with how DH feels, & appreciate that he sees my son this way. HOWEVER, I don't feel it's fair to his kids. For the longest time, he's allowed them to see him as an ATM. Although he is trying to change their perceptions, it isn't there yet. If that's what they're used to & we die & they get no financial compensation from the house, I have no doubt that they will have feelings of unfairness. I couldn't blame them. I can already see it getting messy & would hate to put my son in that situation either.

They would not want the house to live in or use. It's just not them & they have no connection to it at all. To them, home is only where BM is, not with BD. They would want the $ it would bring. My son is the type that would use the house out of sentimentality if nothing else.

So I'm actually the one who is suggesting a life insurance policy on me with my son as beneficiary so that he would have $ available to 'buy out' his Ssiblings. By will it would be my son's home, but to be fair to SKs, they would have financial compensation to not dispute the will on that point. So I guess it's more accurate to say buy off, not buy out. LOL.

Regardless, I feel his kids probably should get something when their dad dies. It'd be cold to leave them out in the rain like that. Maybe I'm just setting myself up to get burned again. Any time I try to do something in the SK's best interest, I'm usually the one who gets burned.

It just feels wrong to let DH give his 1/2 of the house to my son & none of it to his. Part of me also thinks he's going 180 degrees from guilt parenting and taking it to the extreme. He tends towards extremes in general. And I don't want to allow a situation to arise where he overcompensates on my son where he's failed with his own. That won't turn out well either.

Being fair is the only protection any of us have. Right?

"It only matters if I care!" Biggrin

Rebel78's picture

I actually love the idea of how to handle the house - I think that is awesome! However, Steperg is right, what if he doesn't want it? I only say this since currently the woman who raised me and my sister is not married and 'gifted' part of my sister's inheritance to her early so is leaving the house to me - but she knows that I don't want to move back to the town I grew up in but I am very sentimental about the home I grew up in...I really don't know what we will do when she passes away...

As for the finances, I have heard both sides - to be honest I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey (if you don't know him...I definitely recommend his books!) and his philosophy is that you CAN NOT split finances once married. However - looking at my SO and I and when we get married I am scared out of my mind to 'pool' our incomes. We both make good money but he comes currently with ALOT of debt where as I have a nice 'nest egg' and savings set aside for things I really want...That is why I have told him that I won't marry him until he is debt free Blum 3

As an accountant - I also find it difficult to 'pool' money since it is harder to 'track' - but that is my accountant side coming out...

The only problem I see in some of the things you seem to be saying is that you each feel like you must 'provide' for your 'own' children and I guess I look at it in the way that when you marry the person you marry the children and therefore it's not about 'each to their own'. I know I will catch a lot of flak for that since I'm the 'newbie' and maybe just a bit naive Biggrin but I really hope I can keep that attitude even thru all the BS of the situation....

Currently since we are going to (have before) live together and not be married we will split 50/50, however I do know this caused a sense of resentment before which we have agreed to work on due to the 'food' and 'beverage' categories. I eat 'well' and cook and like to have a nice glass of wine after work or a couple beers on the weekend, he enjoys all of that as well but never bought any of it...ummmm..not so cool...so we have agreed that we will 'pool' our grocery money and go shopping together so it is 'fair' and he's not benefitting from me buying better stuff Wink I'll be happy to let you know how that goes..ha ha ha..

GoldenTiger's picture

We had pooled our $ initially, but DH kept using it up on his kids & his drinking habit. So by middle of the month, we couldn't even afford food. This kept happening.

We moved across the country, I put my foot down. Budget was made & his kids expenses & his own mad money needs were to be covered with his $500/mo allowance. My $500 is for the same. Everything in the pooled money is for household use - food, gas, paper towels, soap, etc. This has helped enormously.

Problem is, he still views the pooled money as the go-to fund for when he doesn't budget his money right or he can't afford everything he wants. That's literally taking food from my & my son's mouth to fund his kids' plane tickets AND his own personal interests. Apparently he can't do both. So I get blamed for his frustration that he has to give up getting his new 'toy' b/c he has to buy tickets for his kids. Oh, & I'm apparently not helping him FIND more money somewhere in the budget.

HUH?! He admits it's selfish, but also that he's never been able to even fathom doing anything that's not putting his kids first. So now he's frustrated b/c he expected to have both but can't unless we take it out of the food/gas budget, or I give up part of my allowance.

He is absolutely taking advantage of having a working wife that makes more than he does. I make more money (now) & so when he can't have his cake & eat it too, it's my problem to fix. I have no problem sharing anything I have, but I refuse to be taken for granted or taken advantage of. I'm expected to take care of my ENORMOUS student loans (bigger than the mortgage), my son's expenses, my truck payment, help with my parents' finances ( I agreed to it before I met DH), finance the start up of my new business, & oh yeah! Let's finance DH's kids & his hobbies BEFORE I have anything left to do something nice for myself like buy mascara that isn't 6 months old & causing eye infections!

He has: his student loans to cover (5% of mine!), his kids' expenses, and his hobbies. He has a company car & gas card so he doesn't pay for that stuff.

COME ON!!! How is $500/mo NOT enough when his kids will only be coming out 3-4x/yr at most b/c they are so overscheduled they can't spare the time away & quite simply, his daughter hasn't wanted to come out.

Basically, I'm tired of being his money babysitter. He's a big boy & should be able to afford himself & his kids all by himself. OK, well the $ responsibility for his kids should be shared with their BM. NOT ME. I have a kid to support to. I don't see him taking $ away from his kids, or telling them he doesn't have $ to send them on a class trip b/c he paid for my son's stuff. But I'm expected to?

I have a lot of resentment about finances due to irresponsibility on his part. I feel that pooling our finances has created a situation where I am ENABLING him to live high on the hog & provide for his kids beyond his means. I just keep getting more sucked away from me & shuttled to him "for the sake of the children." How about the sake of the person who busts their butt to earn the $ When do they get to stop giving & start enjoying the fruits of their labor? At times it's gotten so out of control, I had to pull my son out of xtra activities b/c he spent all expendable $ on his kids' stuff after already paying BM 2x the CS the state required! This went on for a YEAR, even after I kept telling him that my son's CS is for my son's stuff, not his kids. If CS goes into pool, the pool needs to be used for the child for whom it's provided, NOT the entire house. Before we ever pooled resources, he had agreed to make sure my son's needs & xtra activities would be provided for. He just got $ happy & forgot what it was for.

I guess I'm tired of enabling him to be so financially irresponsibly & blaming me for not having enough money for everything he wants for himself & his kids. I'm tired of paying the price for his greed & getting dumped on to fix it. The entitlement to use my resources without any consideration of my own needs has to stop.

I posted originally b/c I needed to hear from people if it totally ruined the relationship. I don't want to keep resenting him for this. It makes me not want to be close to him. So I'm hoping that if I get more control over what's causing the resentment,... you get the picture.

Sorry for the rant. This is a much fresher topic than my usual posts & I haven't had much time to cool down & be more objective.

"It only matters if I care!" Biggrin

Rags's picture

We don't split anything. We married, we are partners and if one of us goes before the other it all goes to the surviving spouse. We have joint accounts except for employer provided investment accounts though we are each others sole beneficiary on those accounts.

But, we don't have the yours and mine kid thing going either. I have no BioSpawn and SS is the only child in our household. If my Wife and I end up with more children then they all go in the pot equally as far as inheritance goes. I have been Dad to my Son (SS-17) for nearly 16yrs if you go by wedding anniversary dates and for more than 16yrs if you go from the first time he called me Daddy when was 15mos old. I would treat him no differently than I would any children my wife and I would have together.

Our Will leaves everything to the surviving spouse. In the event of our joint demise it all goes in to trust for our Son (my SS) until he graduates with a Bachelor's Degree from an accredited college/university or when he reaches age 40. This is our way of parenting from beyond the grave if we go before he pulls his head out of his butt and is designed to motivate him to make something of himself. The trust is executed by my Brother and my Dad who can each make decisions for the kid. The instructions are that nothing goes to BioDad or the SpermClan while the trust is intact. Only after he qualifies for the trust can my SS give it to the toothless SpermPeople. By then he will hopefully be able to make better decisions than that and will preserve our estate for his financial future.

My opinion is that unless there is some overwhelmingly compelling reason to separate finances, married couples should combine resources and operate out of joint accouts while being equally knowledgable on how the money is invested.

IMHO of course.

Best regards,

Success is rarely final. Failure is rarely fatal. It is character, courage and consistency of effort that count. Vince Lombardi (with some minor Rags modifications) To each according to their performance, screw Karl Marx. (Rags)