Money Moral Dilemma: Should we split bills equally if my husband has higher outgoings?

Augustus_the_Strong

What does your husband think?  Is he refusing to pay his half? 

Qwertybaz

I’ve never understood how having his and her money in a marriage works, surely it’s complicated and leads to arguments.

I’ve been married for 40 years and we’ve always had a joint bank account where all our joint income goes. All bills are paid from this and we are both free to spend what we want, providing the funds are there. Yes we will discuss any major purchase but other than that, we are not tracking who is spending the most or what purchases are made. 

We are a team and it’s the teams money. 

I earn far far more than my wife, but that’s because her career was interrupted to bring up our children, leaving me free to develop my career, so sharing our money equally is the only fair way to do it

Ringo90

"I might be old-fashioned but..." yes, in my opinion the idea of sharing everything is a bit old-fashioned. This might have been normal when marriage had different dynamics: 100 or even just 50 years ago many women didn't have their income, marriages were thought to last forever, people tended to have just what they strictly needed and less superfluous personal belongings etc. but things change and so of course the way we deal with money changes as well.
Like many have said if the child was part of the household I certainly wouldn't ask the father to pay separate for their food etc. and I would act like I was really a second mother to him or her. But when that's not the case, I don't see why I should pay for someone else's child when I am not even allowed to act like a mother to them. And surely not even the law allows me the same responsibilities and privileges.
Of course if your husband risks of going broken because of these expenses by all means help him by paying more than your fair share. That's a different matter because it's about supporting him when he struggles.

Kimmi1002

Should be split equally - I'm in this situation, my partner has a child from another relationship, he doesn't expect to pay less on the bills because he chose to have a child with someone else. Bills should be split equally such as gas/electric, rent/mortgage, food etc. anything on top of that is down to the individual it relates to to pay.

Kimmi1002

Kimmi1002 said:

Should be split equally - I'm in this situation, my partner has a child from another relationship, he doesn't expect to pay less on the bills because he chose to have a child with someone else. Bills should be split equally such as gas/electric, rent/mortgage, food etc. anything on top of that is down to the individual it relates to to pay.

Also, an after thought - when CMS is worked out it is worked out solely on the parent and doesn't include the household income and in my situation I'll pay for things for his child while he's under our roof but at the end of the day it's not down to me - when in our case - he's back with his mum.

LameWolf

We've always kept our money separate, both of us having been screwed to the wall financially by our respective Exes due to having joint accounts. It worked very much in our favour when his Ex tried to extract more money from him because she'd overspent (again) and was in debt. At the time my husband was out of work and on JSA, so we were effectively relying on my disability money to make ends meet. If we'd had all our money in one pot, it would have been a lot harder to tell her to go and do one; but because my husband didn't know what my actual income was, he was able to fend off her moneygrubbing hands.

And no, I wouldn't be prepared to subsidise someone else's child, had the situation arisen.

Doc_N

Since you’re married, and marriage should be an equal partnership, why aren’t you both just pooling all income and paying all expenses out of that pool?

Why would you want separate finances at all?  I’ve always earned twice as much as my wife, but so what?

smartwoman

Meganandrea999 said:

I think this really depends on your relationship. I have a similar salary to my partner but I have a lot more debt I’m trying to pay off. I wouldn’t expect him to pay more l, but he’d have to understand that currently I can’t afford for example to move somewhere else and pay more, so unless he insisted that he wanted to pay more he would have to wait until my debts were paid off. If he did pay more I would want to contribute extra once my debts were paid off for a period to repay him as I don’t think it’s fair for him to subside me without being repaid, or I might make an agreement that if we split he would get a slightly larger enough of the equity based on the extra he paid. 

I don’t think there’s a right of wrong. I don’t think it’s fair so expect you to pay more to subsidence someone else’s last relationship, but if you can afford to and want to it’s completely your choice 

Totally agree, we have a similar arrangement, I have a larger share of equity in our home as a percentage paid but we have a formal agreement that the original deposit is returned pro rata as paid and the balance of any surplus shared equally - in the event that we split up. We are used to having separate homes so have both a joint account for shared expenses in our home but also have our own accounts. We currently earn similar amounts but in the past I have earned a lot more and at times my husband has. At times I have totally paid for a holiday if he has not the resources and the reverse has happened. We feel we are both a couple and try partners and importantly there are no arguments about who spends what, which I had with a controlling partner / shared account previously. 

DontBringBertie

After reading the initial question, I was looking forward to reading the outdated preachy views that you MUST share all money once married. I wasn’t disappointed.

JGB1955

DontBringBertie said:

After reading the initial question, I was looking forward to reading the outdated preachy views that you MUST share all money once married. I wasn’t disappointed.

I agree totally - been married for 43 years, both have kept independent bank accounts since we started saving for a house back in 1977.  My husband worked for a High Street bank so it was important that we weren't totally beholden to his employer.  We have a joint account - he pays in £600 a month and that covers all of our household bills other than food - which I pay for.  I pay nothing into the joint account.  We've never had a cross word about money in the 47 years we've been a couple. 

We need to sort out an imbalance in our net worth due to inheritance (which might only be a problem once the second of us dies) but working on reducing that £280K once I can find a way to spend it!