After you and your partner decide on how to structure your personal finances, the next thing you both are likely to consider is buying a home together.

There are a few things you have to be aware of if you want to share an asset like a house or apartment. First, know what you can afford. If you and your partner have an equal income, it probably makes sense to own your property under joint tenancy with rights of survivorship. This method allows for a house or apartment to be transferred to a partner in the event one dies. It also clearly shows that both members have an equal stake in the property. If you and your partner aren’t paying equal amounts, you might want to consider being tenants in common. This allows for multiple parties to own an asset at different percentages. When someone dies, his/her share goes into his/her estate, and a will then directs to whom that percentage should go to. One caveat here: write a separate addendum that explains the ownership, such as who pays what percentage or dollar amount.

No matter how you structure the mortgage payments, one thing is clear: the first name on the deed is the one who’s responsible to pay taxes on the property. Neiman, a financial planner in Massachusetts, recommends that couples share the mortgage tax benefits exactly the way the way they pay the mortgage. So, if a couple splits the mortgage 50/50 and gets a $25,000 rebate, they should evenly divide that pot for $12,500 each. If you want to employ some strategy here, you should put the lower-earner’s name first on the deed for the house. Since they earn less, they’ll likely be assessed in a lower tax bracket and qualify for a larger rebate.

Things are a bit different if you already own a home or apartment and want to make your partner an equal owner. Most likely what you’ll have to do is slowly, over time, gift your partner half the value of the house. So you first have to determine what your net equity in the home is and then divide that by 2. So let’s say your net equity is $100,000, that means you’d need to gift your partner $50,000. But since you can only gift $13,000 per year to someone, it’ll take you a little over four years to make finalize the 50/50 division. So the best option is to start out putting a property in tenancy in common, where you can easily define the percentages owned by each individual, and once that’s done, go straight into joint tenancy.

So once you’ve got the house, now you’re ready for the kids. Although it would be great to think same-sex couples can raise their kids wherever they want, it makes sense to investigate which states aren’t likely to try to take your kids away. According to Lambda Legal, a law firm specializing in gay & lesbian cases, about half the states in the U.S. allow for second parent adoption – where the unmarried partner of an existing legal parent petitions to adopt the child in question. There is also stepparent adoption, which allows a person to adopt his/her partner’s child if the rights of the other parent have been terminated. What is less clear is whether same-sex couples can jointly adopt a child. So far, this has been taken up on a case-by-case basis nationwide. For more info, go to www.lambdalegal.org.

The most essential thing to do if you have kids is to write up a parenting agreement. This legal document is like a domestic partner agreement in that it should detail all parties responsible for raising the child and how many resources (money, time, sperm/egg) they’ve given toward the child. And don’t forget to spell out what should happen to the children should the couple split up. Outlining all this can save a lot of trouble in the courts, and allow you to determine what happens to your children, not a judge.

The third, and final, part of this series will be published next week.