New relationship joint account? Good or bad idea

RaspberryBaskingShark

Seems a bit early days to be merging finances, when you’re both married to other people. Could get messy.

If by ‘joint account’ you mean one joint account for rent and bills that you both pay into and essentials come out of, then that’s less concerning than a joint account where that’s your ONLY account and your salaries get paid into it (run a million miles from that unless you’ve been married years and are willing to place your entire financial livelihood in the other person’s hands). But you’re still linking financially, your credit ratings may affect each other’s, and you’re running the risk of the other person racking up a planned or unplanned overdraft that you’re financially responsible for and can’t get off the account until it’s repaid.

If your gut is saying ‘no’ then listen to it, especially when his reasons seem to be ‘so we feel like more of a team’ which is pretty flimsy, do you not feel like a team already?

Your marriage is in the process of ending so you know more than most that even if you love and trust someone it doesn’t guarantee you’re right for one another. It’s far too early for the two of you to be linking financially and seems a bit rushed moving in together while you’re both married to other people. Listen to your gut and don’t do it or you’ll probably be here in six months time asking how you extricate yourself from a joint account that’s £3k overdrawn when your ex won’t stop spending money on it or answer your calls.

Another thing to think of is how it might affect the divorces somehow, forgive me for speculating but if you’re both divorcing very recently and simultaneously and formally sharing finances with with someone new while still married it could make things more acrimonious with your spouses, complicate the financial settlement (does the money in your joint account belong to the marital estate of your husband? His wife? Who?) and it heavily implies an affair which may have social repercussions too.

My advice: stay living separately until the divorces are finalised then if you want to live together get a rental, keep separate accounts, one person pays rent the other bills and food and at the end of each month tally up how much you’ve both spent and redress the balance by transferring money to each other. See how it goes for a couple of years. You may well find things feel different once the drama of both being married wears away and you’re into a ‘normal’ everyday relationship getting to know each other.

Alexd52

tacpot12 wrote: »

There is really only one advantage to having a joint account; if one person dies, the other has access to the money in the account automatically.

Everything you need to do to live your live can be done from your sole accounts, but having a joint account might paying for things equally a bit easier.

If you open a joint account, you should keep your sole account and receive all the money that is your income into it. Agree with your parnter how much you both need to pay into the joint account and what this account can and cannot be used for. It should really be used for expenses you want and have agreed to share; e.g. rent, water rates, council tax, food, etc.

If you want to save for something, I would not do so in a joint account; I would suggest you both have your own savings accounts and manage your savings separately. If anything happens to the relationship it will help to know that your savings are safe.

This is what my wife and I do, we both came into the relationship with our own accounts, and felt no need to change that. We opened a joint one, initially for the mortgage, but we now use it for other shared expenses etc.