Do you have a joint email address with your spouse/partner?

[unlikelychump]

We've had one for 15 years now but it seems to have turned into a hindrance rather than a help. Part of a wider issue of course, but it has turned into just another inbox for me to manage with my DH having opportunity to read stuff (and not take action.)

If you have one how do you manage it, if you don't have one how do you manage admin stuff between you - just forwarding emails over?

(3 kids so lots of school stuff etc)

I think I'd find that uncomfortable. We aren't a joint person.

We've never had a problem both being on parentmail or whatever communications from school. For the dc's various hobbies they tend to go to the parent who mainly takes them, who tells the other one.

Definitely not!

Ive only heard of very elderly couples doing this.

DH and I both have our work email, and then a personal account each (eg gmail). We are both on the school mailing lists so both get all the kids admin stuff and agree how to split it, or let each other know if one of us has actioned something.

We have an old fashioned family calendar in the kitchen though - where every date, appointment, work trip etc is written. This is the family bible and neither of us makes a decision without consulting it.

Set up your own email account pronto!

No, I find it really weird when people do this, tbh. I’ll never email someone on a joint address.

Just set up one for yourself.

Schools are happy to email more than one address; this is the norm.

Yes, it’s a throwback from 20 years ago when we first had email. It’s now mine even though it has both names on. He has another email of his own now and doesn’t check the joint one as it’s “mine”

We never have done, it would never have occurred to me to be honest, I didn't really think that was a thing. I do most of our admin, we forward anything that the other one needs to see or act on. In an emergency either of us could access the other person's.

I’ve only heard of people who are very old or in controlling relationships doing this.
I would give the school your individual emails and move away from the joint email account system.

Sorry - just to be clear. I also have my own.

Seems to be unanimous so far!

No

My parents do drives me and them bonkers. They have separate for some things l. Nightmare for ordering presents for each other on Amazon.

Can see why it's handy for shared bills and travelling like hotel confirmations and things

I'd as soon share my toothbrush as my email account!

We do. Have had for more than 20 years.
Use it for all DC contacts - school, clubs etc, as well as important accounts such as vet, insurance, holiday bookings.
Can't imagine not both having access to all this information.

Also have our own personal accounts and our own work accounts.

As technology has improved and you can see all your messages in the same place it has gotten much easier to manage the separate accounts.

Are you quite elderly, I mean that politely. I don’t know of anyone else who would do this, it’s really weird.

No, makes me cringe when I see it too.

I've never heard of this! We just forward emails or copy each other.

God no! It would drive me mad.

When an email comes through for the children (school or activities), we screenshot it and we have a special Facebook messenger group for updates for the children. It includes my parents as they often do childcare and club runs for us. It’s then all in one place.

We have a joint one and a main one each. The joint one is useful because it is for the life admin stuff that we both need to see and we can see if it has been replied to by whoever gets to it first.

The elderly couple who we bought this house from, had one, it was the house [email protected], which was quite sweet. A little pointless though, I suspect she’d set it up and she managed it.

I also have never heard of couples having joint emails. Even I can very easily manage to forward emails to my DH, and he does the same for me.

Im interested in the efficiency aspect certainly. It seems lots of duplicate info is a waste of time.

Not at all elderly. Certainly handy for stuff like holidays and bills. But maybe not essential!

DH is pretty useless so I would be concerned if bills etc were in his name.

So why not put them in your name? Why duplicate the effort between mail boxes?

Three kids, separate email addresses, not an issue. I'm on most things as I work part time and do most of the kid stuff. If there's anything DH needs to know about we just talk to each other...

Comments about cringe are so weird- it's just a different way of managing information.
Like [email protected]
type mailboxes so the incoming messages can be actioned by the right person.

If you have four kids, several pets, two cars, and like to book holidays then there are a lot of messages!

I have one joint account with DH, just for stuff like utilities so we can both see it. It’s something we set up quite recently, andI don’t see it as ‘controlling’ at all -we both have our own individual accounts too - I have an iCloud account for my Apple stuff, Outlook for Windows/Word etc, a main gmail one for family & friends, and then I have rbearpublic@ for websites etc and rbearshopping@ for receipts & online shopping. I can either see them individually or together in the Mail app. The joint account is also useful for our adult DC to send stuff to both of us (though we all tend to use WhatsApp more than email for communicating with them, and we have both individual accounts and family group ones on there too.

We don’t but I was actually thinking about getting one! We are not old (30s) but I thought it might be easier for stuff we both need to see (eg kid stuff, home repair quotes, holiday booking info) and for making a joint calendar