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)

Meanwhile I find it bizarre that people find it bizarre and wonder how many of them complain that they carry all the mental load.

My personal and joint are the same email provider so all amalgamated into one inbox on my phone. Couldn't be more simple and I don't ever have to worry about passing or forwarding shared info on to DH, as he's already had it.

We do, ours is like [email protected].
It's used for bills, insurance, council tax, white goods receipts/warranty paperwork, anything shared to do with the house basically. But also anything like life insurance/pensions we ensure to forward important documents to it in case one of us died.
We both have access in case something happened to the other. We also have our own email accounts but we know each others password so we could get in to eg. Each others car insurance if one of us died.
Morbid when I think about it.

No We don’t have a joint address

when dd started nursery, we both created a child specific email address that we only use for child admin. We have it go to our phone with an alert.

occasionally a teacher or staffer doesn’t copy us both and we just reply or forward as appropriate, but it works really well.

He has personal and work (self employed) I have personal plus an old personal I keep for music subs etc, then we have a house email box which largely I monitor as we are project managing a build.

We have our own ones but do use a joint one for things like bills/tradespeople etc. Just so we both have access to any info needed depending on which of us is in the house that day/dealing with it. Just prefer it that it’s not one person’s responsibility.

I didn't think that anyone under 70 shared an email address. It's from the generation with a shared home phone number and no mobiles.

I think it’s a good idea, joint for household stuff, and a separate personal one. Don’t know why some are surprised. Makes it easier when one of the couple dies, too.

No. That would be weird.

Why is it weird? No one seems to have come up with a good explanation as to why yet.

No - we both have personal and work emails, and sometimes we forward stuff between them, like if he's done an Asda order and do I want to add anything, and that works fine. We do have some bills which are in my name (TV licence historically for example) and some that are in his (energy) rather than jointly, but it works away.

That all said, when our lovely cat had to be PTS a few months ago, the policy was in my name/email. The insurance would only speak to me to cancel the policy after we claimed thousands of pounds for tests. I wish we had had a joint account then, so maybe it's a good idea.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat for me, it just feels weirdly enmeshed. Like people can't even have their emails separate. Same for those creepy joint Facebook accounts. I don't want to be friends with my mate and their husband. Ewww.

I just think it gives an impression of a total lack of independence and agency. I also don't call my partner 'my other half' and I feel like email sharers would.
He's not my other half, I am a perfectly full and complete person thank you.

But how is it 'weirdly enmeshed' when people have their own personal accounts and the joint one is for, strangely enough, joint things?

No, we share finances, passwords, whatever, but I couldn't be doing with a joint email address. I can barely keep up with my own, seems a faff.

@heretodestroyyou Just when you think you've read the most ridiculous reach on the internet, along comes a new record breaker.

How does both receiving correspondence about things relevant to both parties 'weirdly enmeshed'? Is having a joint bank account 'weirdly enmeshed' too?

DH and I have personal accounts for personal things, and a joint account for... wait for it... joint things. He doesn't see my Amazon receipts, I don't see his weekly Fitbit stats, but we both see the car insurance renewal quote, updates from nursery and flight confirmations or changes.

We do - we have a joint one (set up when we got married) and an individual one each. We use it for lots of things - school, holidays, workmen, arranging social things that we'll both attend, joint bank accounts, restaurant bookings, etc. I do tend to be the organiser for school and social things, DH tends to be the organiser for finances and workmen, but means the other one is kept in the loop without having to either forward emails or remember to tell them about it and can also deal with them if they want to. It doesn't get as many emails as our individual ones so also means the key emails are easy to find. So we find it really useful. I'd find it odd if people only had the joint one though.

Interesting how the mix of answers has changed over the day! Maybe it is quite usual or should I say highly weird

My problem is my dh doesn't actually read them, but skims them so they look read but aren't. So it is just that little bit harder for me to manage. And I resent having to tell him stuff he could have read by himself in the inbox.

This is a disadvantage of a joint email account. Who decides who actions what?

For us, both schools and all other kids activities have both DH and my emails so we both receive the information. Mortgage etc too. Then for contracts and bills where it’s in one name we each take responsibility for specific area.

We both have each other’s email passwords in case emergency access needed.

Hubby doesn’t have one, he don’t even open physical mail so def wouldn’t bother with emails.

Never.

Boomer behaviour.

Clearly there’s no right or wrong way but I’m really interested in how couples manage digital life admin systems.

Its a lot and can be hard to divide efficiently and fairly.

Dont get me started on sharing responsibility for digital archiving of family photos, maintaining cloud access etc!

I did request this, but it never actually happened and we couldn’t have separate app accounts and it was either one of us missing everything. This way works just fine now and it would be more admin to undo it all again!

We found it nearly impossible to get doctors and schools to email us both consistently which is why we set it up.

Who deals with it is easy. You open it, you action it.

However I should say that our child is at a special school and has a lot of emails and contact compared to our other son at mainstream and it only got set up after a few communication fails.

DH and I are in this unfortunate category and have always had separate email addresses.

Yes. It's great and reduces the mental load immensely