Here's some irony: she wants to get married. So all you people telling me to just marry her may get your way, haha! She
offered to do a prenup. We'd both need attorneys for it to be valid in my state. Don't want to do that, but I also don't want to mix my assets with her debts. Why can't you just check a box on the marriage certificate that says you'll keep your stuff separate? I'll figure something out. I still don't see much benefit to marriage, but I want to make my lady happy. And even though I don't care much for the institution, I am honored that she wants me to be her husband.
I doubt you need a prenup, but you should both go spend an hour talking to a lawyer just to get clear on how your state views each spouse's assets and debt. In most or possibly all states, the debts that spouse A incurred BEFORE the marriage will remain spouse A's debts--they will not become spouse B's debts; spouse B will not be liable for them and no creditor can come after spouse B for them. (See link 1 below).
Also, in
non-community property states, even debts that spouse A incurs AFTER the marriage are only spouse A's debts; creditors can't come after spouse B for them. There are exceptions--for instance, if spouse A gets a mortgage to provide a home for the family, or runs up credit card debt buying groceries for the family, that might be considered spouse B's debts. (See link 2 below). Are you in a community property state? How does your state treat debt incurred by one spouse during marriage? Go to a lawyer and see. The same kinds of lawyers who handle prenups and divorces are the ones with the knowledge to educate you guys on this.
Finally, if you get married and then unfortunately get divorced, even in non-community property states courts may split marital assets and debts (ones incurred AFTER marriage by either spouse) however they deem fair--for instance, I think it's fairly common for courts to say, "well, after the couple got married, spouse A got student loans in order to further his/her career and bring in more income for the family, and then spent years supporting the family on that higher income, so either spouse B has to pay off some of those debts, or spouse B has to get somewhat less than 50% of the marital assets so as to compensate spouse A for that."
Premarital debts:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/debt/wife-not-married-to-spouse-s-old-debts-1.aspxDebts incurred during marriage:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/debt-marriage-owe-spouse-debts-29572.htmlEverything is going great! GF still pays rent/contributions (whatever you want to call it) at discounted rate. Neither of us feel weird about it; we actually have fun negotiating who is going to pay how much for other stuff too. She's back in school now, so she will just pay what she can afford.
Some couples just lump all the money together and don't worry about it. We like to keep ours separate and make sure both of us feel we are getting a good deal. I guess they are sort of opposite solutions to the same problem of not letting money hurt a relationship.
Someone (including me) might have said this already--I don't want to re-read the whole thread to check--but for future reference, when she's out of school and working, here's some food for thought: some people don't think it's truly fair for couples to split household expenses 50-50 unless the two of them both earn about the same amount of money.
My DH and I split expenses proportionally to our incomes, because we both think that WHAT TRULY MATTERS IS TIME--in other words, we should split time (a.k.a. time spent working) equally. So, for example, if I have to work 7 days to pay my part of our mortgage, then he should have to work 7 days to pay his part of our mortgage. I earn twice as much as him (such is life as a corporate lawyer), so if we split expenses 50-50 I'd be done paying "my half" by like the tenth of the month, while he would have to keep working until the 20th to pay "his half"--and thus I would have 20 days worth of salary to do with as I please every month--to invest, spend, whatever--while he only had 10 days. How is that fair? Why should one of us work twice as long as the other to pay for "their half" of our joint expenses? So to be truly fair, we split all our joint expenses (mortgage, utilities, groceries...) 66% (me)/33% (him). That way, although we contribute very different amounts of MONEY to our expenses,
we each contribute the same amount of work, a.k.a. the same amount of
time.
And this was, BTW, my idea--I just don't think it's fair for me to have orders of magnitude more "spare money" than him, or fair to him to have to work twice as long to pay for the things we share, just because I went into a career that pays a ton. And this setup also gives us a lot more flexibility; as our job situation changes, we just do the math and recalibrate how much each of us pays. So we don't have to look at, for instance, whether this really exciting dream of a job opportunity for spouse A would still enable spouse A to pay "his/her half" of the expenses; instead we look at whether we,
as a couple, can pay all our expenses (by recalibrating the percentages) while allowing spouse A to pursue his/her dream.