Wow. Sexist, much?
The OP might want to get their advice from someone living in the 21st century.
Actually, no, but thank you for asking. OP might want to get
HIS advice from another man, one with different experiences. You just don't like what I said. That doesn't make me sexist. I'm an egalitarian, and treat others the way I would like to be treated. I'm fair, honest, and honorable, not that it's your business. Those are qualities that used to be appreciated and valued, but yes, as you say, in the 21st century I must be an outlier.
Many - thousands, probably millions, considering the portion of the population that is female.
Entitled - just watch some of the many tiktok videos of partners who think they are entitled to your money, house, whatever.
Take - women are just as human as men, and so are subject to the same weakness, vices, and evils. They'll readily game any advantage, just as any other human. Especially if there is no cost to them.
Fact is, men are at a disadvantage under the law when partners split. I didn't make the rules.
Thankfully, there are also millions of fair, honest, honorable, and egalitarian women out there. It's just hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Protecting yourself from potentially-bad partners is sound advice.
Have a good day,
-fixie
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Protecting yourself from potentially bad partners is indeed sound advice. I completely agree with that. We have a pre-nup. One way I used to protect myself from potential bad partner is to not discuss financial details in the early stages of a relationship.
I also happen to be a woman, like the majority of people on this forum. And I have a law degree, so I know the law. The fact is, the law is egalitarian. It says nowhere that men need to pay alimony to women, it doesn't say that men have to pay child support to women. What it does contain is rules about how marital assets should be divided (50/50 usually) and rules about how a higher-earning parent should pay child support to the lower-earning parent.
Absolutely there's a minority of people, of both genders, that take advantage of these rules. People should be aware of this and protect themselves against those kind of situations. But I absolutely don't believe that women form the majority of those people taking advantage. These days, women are on average better educated then men, they are often the breadwinners in a family or earn an equal income to men, so there are lots of women who have enough money of their own that they don't require any type of alimony or child support, and there are absolutely also plenty of men who are trying to take advantage of women in this way.
Generally, most jurisdictions around the world are working more and more towards no-fault divorces where each partner always gets half of the marital assets (unless there's a pre-nup deciding otherwise) and towards limiting the amount of alimony and child support that people can expect after divorce. These days, people are more and more expected by judges to pay their own way after a divorce and not depend on an ex forever. In my own country, the period that a spouse can receive alimony has been reduced significantly this year, and the lower-earning spouse is encouraged to increase their own income as soon as they can. Alimony is now seen as a way for someone to get back on their own financial feet, not as a long-term thing.
To OP: Mr Imma and I talked about our financial attitudes from the beginning, and they overlapped. We are both lifelong frugal people. We both had (4-figure) student loans that we brought into our relationships, and we discussed having them, but not the details at first. Mr Imma had another minor debt (less than €2000) and a few months in he asked me for help. He had gone through a rough patch, had gotten behind on paperwork, then this debt suddenly appeared. When he asked, I helped him. We made a plan together (it wasn't me who made a plan for him) and he paid the debt off in less than 2 months. Due to circumstances we decided to move in together after around 6 months of dating, after he was done paying back the debt. We had talked about having savings and student loans but moving in together was when we both "opened the books" and sat down with bank statements and pay stubs. If I had discovered some sort of additional, surprise debt at that point I wouldn't have moved in with him, but he had been honest with me from the start.
We have never combined finances so on paper he was just a roommate, until we bought a house together a year later and we signed a pre-nup. At that point I was the lower earner and I was the one who pushed for the pre-nup. These days I'm the higher earner. We still both have student loans because the terms are just too good to pay them off.
