Separate but equal?
I met my boyfriend last year and we really hit it off like a house on fire, the whole “love at first sight” thing. I can’t get enough of this guy, and he feels the same way. Rob started spending every weekend at my place in January, but that wasn’t enough. He started spending a lot of weekday nights here, too, and commuting to work in Pennsylvania from my house in New Jersey. You can imagine how well that went. So finally we bit the bullet and he moved in to my place in June. Which is excellent, and we love it.
Now, as a gay man, I’m not allowed to get married“yet. But I consider my partnership with Rob very, very significant, even though in the big picture it’s still a fairly young relationship. At what point, exactly, in gay relationships, does what’s mine become his, and what’s his mine? Married couples are, for purposes of the law, one unit: joint assets, common liability for debts. But for us gay people in serious relationships, we have a more slippery slope. We have to choose, daily, how things work.
Because I make a good living now, and Rob is currently a culinary student, I’m covering the majority of our living expenses, including monthly bills he brought into the relationship, like a car loan and a credit card balance. But I haven’t mentally assumed responsibility for his entire financial situation. Nor has he hinted that I should. He is happy that the monthly bills are paid on time, as he always did while single, and he focuses on other priorities, like cooking and golf and quality time with loved ones (all good things). I, the hyperactive planner and organizer, am beginning to think about our long-term future.
What’s the protocol? Do I realign my finances in one fell swoop to incorporate his? Or something more gradual? Do I take money out of savings, or contribute less to my 401(k), to pay off his car loan and/or credit card, no strings attached? Or does that mean he gets off too easy? He’s a competent man who can earn a good living. Should he just pay off his own loans and debts when he’s out of school, including compound interest over many years, as I did? But that seems stupid when my current assets could avoid all that. If love means all is forgiven, when is that exactly? After a year? Three years?
What about the really scary scenario, god forbid”what if we break up? What if I totally realign my finances to take care of his, and then Blam! We’re history. Are my investments in our relationship history, too? Or would he (morally, if not legally) need to pay me back, or some percentage? Wouldn’t that make it a loan? Should I call my lawyer to make a prenuptial without the nuptials? Ugh.
I’m not suggesting marriage makes all these questions easy for heterosexuals. I’m sure they face the same questions, especially if the two partners come to the relationship with uneven financial situations. But when they take the plunge, they also enter into clear water regarding the status of joint property. We in the LGBT community have to cobble together our own partnership rituals, our own legal protections, and our own financial commitments. Even with exquisite care and planning, we face a lot of unknowns; our partnerships are vulnerable in ways our married straight friends’ are not. We ARE separate”and not equal.
Great post. My partner and I went through a big transition earlier this year. After 5 years together, a child, a house, etc, we still thought of each other as long-term partners but not necessarily life partners. Because we chose not to get married (we had the privilege of making a choice, unlike same-sex couples) we didn’t have that convenient change in definition from being fiancees to being husband and wife to signal, okay, now we’re in this together.
We had already decided which parts of our finances to combine when we had our son, so for us the change was more an attitude change instead of a financial turning point.
We talked about having some sort of commitment ceremony without getting state married, but I didn’t want to do that because it sounds expensive and stressful and, well, you haven’t met my family.
So what did we do? We sat down and wrote something we call a “commitment document”, the equivalent of what some people write when they write their own wedding vows. It did have some financial aspects. It’s not a legal partnership agreement, per se, but it talks about our commitment to equally share the responsibility of earning money to support ourselves and our son. I think there’s also something in there about living within our means and living as simply as possible.