Sleeping with Money: The Big Breakup, Who Gets What?
Let’s say you’ve been together with your partner for a long time. All of a sudden you decide to call it quits. Who gets what? It’s an almost overwhelming task on all fronts – financial, emotional, and household wise. Since we can’t legally marry, the financial end is 
much less cut and dry than a straight couples would be. That only adds to the difficulty of parting ways and divvying up the house.
I can’t speak to this whole breakup thing personally. Kim was my first love and we’re still tremendously happy together over 15 years later. I never dated another woman and the few short-term boyfriends I had because I thought I should want to have a boyfriend at the time never amounted to anything but college age romance and companionship. All I needed to navigate the split was a good friend to listen to me complain and a few drinks.
What prompted me to think about this topic however was the news this weekend that our best friends were breaking up after 14 years together. Stunned and sad, I was the first to ask the inevitable question, “Who gets the cats?” And a myriad of other questions we chose to leave unspoken popped into our minds. I mean how do you undo a loving home you created for so long?
As I see it you’ve got the following main areas to figure out how to deal with:
- financial
- emotional and relationship logistics
- household
- children/pets
Financial
This is a tricky one because of the legal ramifications of not being married yet being able to own joint property as a couple. As I see it (and I’m not financial professional), if you own things jointly in the eyes of the law you need to split it up. For instance, if you both own the house you either need to sell and split the proceeds or someone needs to buy the other one out. Otherwise, you’re left to your own devices. You need to rationally look at who is entitled to what. For those keeping finances separate, it will come in handy at this point. The key point is — rationally and fairly. Depending on the nature of the breakup this could be harder than you might like.
Emotional and Relationship Logistics
Clearly breakups bring intense emotions. Even if you part on good terms, you can’t deny the years spent together. I realize the catholic church tries to do this with married folks through annulments, but let’s be honest here — how can you just erase a part of your life? You need to not only care for your own emotions but manage the relationship logistics with your now ex-partner as well as friendships you made as a couple. How do those friendships made as a couple look after the breakup? Do you stay friends? Let them go? All depends on the people involved. Messy at best but then again when were emotions ever cut and dry? In some communities the lesbian and gay circles run so small it is imperative you agree on some ground rules or you’re bound to run into each other at every turn or constantly step on each other’s toes.
Household
Anyone who has ever moved knows how much crap we can accumulate. Even if you are organized and fairly clutter free there is still a lot of stuff associated with being in a house. Who gets what? All I can remember with respect to this sort of split is the scene in St. Elmo’s Fire where Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson split up the CD collection. Fraught with emotion and pettiness, but it certainly captures the moment.
Children/Pets
If you created a family together with children, you now have a number of legal mazes to walk. I have no expertise or experience but what I do know is that it can differ by state and also differs according to who is consider legal guardian(s) of the child. This is probably one of the most difficult arrangements you need to work out. And, unless you have a great dual parenting relationship that is supportive, there won’t be any child support forthcoming from a legal standpoint as Nina discussed recently.
Pets are our furry children. In many households like my own, they rank right up there as children. Who should get the pets? Do you split up multiple pets? Do you let one partner choose? Do you share them? Never an easy choice either.
About the only thing I know for sure is that the single best resource out there for navigating divorce from the inside out is Debbie Ford’s book Spiritual Divorce. While it uses language of divorce and traditional marriage, I know firsthand from having read the book and being coached through the process (which can be used for changing your relationship to anyone or anything, not just a marriage) it totally applies to gay and lesbian couples.
How about you dear readers? What has been your personal experience?
I thought one of my past relationships was going to be a nice clean split. We were living together. Boyfriend moves across the country, leaves bulky stuff behind. It would have been cheaper for him to buy new stuff rather than ship everything across the country. Some bulky stuff we bought together, some we didn’t. We left the matter unsettled because we weren’t sure how to break down the expenses and decide who pays who for what.
Years later when the ex was having money troubles, he demanded money for the stuff he left behind. I didn’t object to giving him some money, but we couldn’t agree on a fair amount to give him because the stuff was many years old now. So we fought about it.
Lesson learned for this particular breakup scenario: cut your losses, and come to an agreement as fast as possible. To me, money was a device to rehash/revenge past issues. I wasn’t convinced it was all about the money.
Thankfully, my big “break up” happened when I was only 24 and neither of us had very much.
I recall the biggest problem being who got the videotape of “Moonstruck.” She put it in her boxes of stuff for moving out; I would sneak it off & hide it somewhere in my belongings.
About a month after she had moved into her apartment and I had moved into my house, she stopped by- screaming about the Moonstruck tape. I gave it to her- enough already!
…they split up a LP collection in St. Elmo’s Fire. That said, it doesn’t make it easier, but in the old days when the best you could do sharing music was record onto a cassette, dividing up a LP collection was fraught with much more anxiety than dividing up a CD collection. (If anyone fights over dividing a CD collection now they are totally Luddite.)
Nit-picky, I know. But that’s how break-ups are!
It was ’85…they were albums, not CDs. 🙂
I’ve lost a lot of stuff to two major breakups over the years, including some sentimental items (the favor from my best friend’s wedding, for instance) that I wish I could get back. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if Mer and I split up now, with the mortgage and the credit cards. I think the biggest concern for me is always emotions, though, not stuff. Stuff can always be replaced.
Thanks to all of you for the albums vs CD’s comment. I actually KNEW that but wasn’t even thinking when I wrote the post. See how these details slip through our minds when we just automatically think about today’s technology as a “given”….
I’m glad you are all astute 🙂 so you can keep me on my toes.
Hi Paula,
What’s with the anti-Catholic dig?
“I realize the catholic church tries to do this with married folks through annulments, but let’s be honest here ” how can you just erase a part of your life? ”
FWIW, when referring to the Roman Catholic Church, you capitalize the C. When you are using the word ‘catholic’ as an adjective, you use a lower case C. Not all churches practice annulment so I presume you meant to capitalize it.
Most Catholics I know aren’t dumb enough to think that annulment really means the marriage didn’t exist, especially if there is issue. So, what’s up with the remark?
It’s nice you bring the subject up, but you don’t really offer any real concrete suggestions when you’re fighting over the proverbial ‘wagon wheel coffee-table’.
I love this blog because there’s a lot in it that still applies to straight people. My friend and his girlfriend of 12 years split up and they had to dispose of a condo they purchased together. It was crazy complicated. They had to decide fair market value on it, then figure out what his portion of HOA reserves were and what he had paid into it so that when she bought him out, he would get back his share. (It was a recently converted 2-4 unit place so not that crazy to do the math since they were the first owners.)
Other friends of mine, when they were multiple cat owners, mutually agreed to either split them up, taking one each, or else one person whose life could accommodate pets took them all.
I don’t have any good advice on the finances or friends.
I feel bad for John and his ex. I would rather resolve stuff upfront rather than dredge through the subject again later.
Hi mapgirl. Thanks for your comments.
First, I never meant any disrespect for Catholics in any way. The lower case “c” was simply an oversight on my part. My entire family & partner are Catholics, some of which have had marriages annulled, so I don’t have any disrespect for this or any person’s belief system.
What I was trying to get at is my interpretation of the clever wording of what annullment means. If you check out Wikipedia’s definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annulment#Annulment_in_the_Catholic_Church the whole “null and void” language gets my juices flowing. If something is null and void does that mean it existed?
I realize there is a HUGE difference between the people who are Catholics and choose to practice in their own way versus the letter of the law. In this case I was speaking more toward formal definition than individual experience.
Nonetheless — thanks for the lively discussion…I’m always excited when my posts get folks thinking and talking.
Warmly
-Paula
Ok. Just wondering. I know too many folks who are bitter about Jesus that almost all their references are studied digs at a monolithic entity that shrugs off their enmity.