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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To say we're not buying a flat until we're equal financially?

96 replies

Teatimebear · 12/03/2017 11:22

DP and me want to buy our first flat, together. I have savings enough to pay for the deposit and DP wants to start looking now before the summer rush. He doesn't have much in savings (less than 5000) and I have also had to pay off for him a credit card debt from a few years ago which he did not tell me about until it became too obvious to hide. He does not seem to have a problem with it being this unbalanced, but really I'd be buying him half a flat!

AIBU to say I don't want to buy somewhere together unless we are contributing to it equally? If we use my money it will be ALL my savings (apart from pension). He gets whiny and defensive when I suggest he could sell some of his bikes to add to his share. Last night had a row where I said maybe I would just buy it, and he could live with me but my name on the deeds. Him "that's not what a marriage is about, we should be sharing everything" Yeah, like I shared his debts

I get very stressed about money and it took me a long time to save up all this so I want a reality check!

OP posts:

IAmAPaleontologist · 12/03/2017 13:08

It's about the relationship really isn't it. Plenty of people buy when not on an equal financial footing. Heck dh and I would still be waiting to buy if we wanted to be equal. It would probably never happen. But we value the different things we bring to the relationship and though the house is mostly "his" in terms of money it is ours in reality.

It is perfectly possible to buy together and protect your interest in the house but I wouldn't personally buy with someone who hid debt.

Viviennemary · 12/03/2017 13:16

You could buy the flat and protect your deposit. Which would be returned to you if you sell. Sounds as if you don't really trust him financially. I wouldn't be happy contributing a large sum to a house I was buying jointly with somebody else.

RainbowChasing · 12/03/2017 13:17

My friend was with her fiancé since they were 18. They were "that couple"- always together, completely loved up, seemingly unbreakable. They were planning to get married when they were both 32. In the run up to their wedding her father gave them a large amount of money so that they could buy their own home which they did. Two months before the wedding he broke up with her and turned vile overnight. He made her life a misery with his demands and she was forced to take anti-depressants to cope because he had gone from a loving man to an absolute nightmare literally overnight. Turns out he'd been seeing someone else. Anyway, the long and short of it is that because neither her parents or my friend had protected the deposit, and they had put the house in both their names (because they were due to get married) when they separated the ex-fiancé immediately got solicitors involved to force the selling of the house so that he could get his half. He had contributed nothing to this house at all as she had been paying the mortgage due to his irresponsible attitude to money and suddenly he was entitled to half of it. It's all well and good saying that if you're getting married then you should trust him but in the real world trust can be broken completely unexpectedly.

daisychain01 · 12/03/2017 13:18

Am I being unreasonable to ask him to scale things back and/or sell something to pay back some of the debt?'

I agree with your prediction expat

In addition to which it would be reasonable to finish the above sentence with "....because he's now sulking and has gone back to the same childish whining he used to do before we were married, rather than growing a pair and deciding he is going to stop behaving like an over-sized toddler"

daisychain01 · 12/03/2017 13:20

OP, definitely move forward with your property purchase, don't be held back from what you want to achieve in life.

BlueBlueSkies · 12/03/2017 14:45

I have been in a similar situation twice.

First time I bought a flat with my then BF. I had all the deposit, so we agreed that I would own 75% which was my deposit and half the mortgage and he would own 25% which was half of the mortgage. We split a few years later. He was only entitled to 25% of the money once the mortgage had been paid, as it was during the recession the house was worth less than we bought it for. He ended up owing me money to get off the deeds. However, I had been stung by having a joint current account with him and over the years he had been spending my money, as I was the high earner.

The next time I bought a house was all in my name. My bf paid rent and I felt in control. I then married him, even on our wedding day he was saying that he now owned half the house. We went on the buy and sell three houses and each time I was the only one on the mortgage, and the houses were all in my name. When we divorced I had to give him half the equity from the house. It was all he was focused on. He had also spent my money freely and had lots of debts I did not know about, I had to pay them off too. I was also the high earner in that relationship.

My advice, listen to what he is telling you now. He will not change!

Firesuit · 12/03/2017 14:48

Don't marry him. Not even if he gets his act together. Live together if you want, but have legal ownership of the house in proportion to your contribution.

No-one who is ambitious, successful and capable of making their own way in the world should get married. Even if their partner seems similar. You know you will always take responsibility for yourself, you can't know if they will change.

The only people who should want to get married are those whom sensible people wouldn't marry.

Willyoujustbequiet · 12/03/2017 14:55

Just buy as tenants in common. Both names are on the deeds but you stipulate the percentage share.

Its easy and very common.

Bansteadmum · 12/03/2017 15:06

Buying a property together is a bigger commitment than marriage IMO. Suggest if you go ahead with buying now you have a legal agreement giving you a proportionate share of the property.

What's the plan longer term if you want DC, given his lower earnings, for you both to work FT?

littleoldladywho · 12/03/2017 15:07

Depends how honest you are being about the whining tbh.
When dh and I met, I was in your position - I had a fair amount of savings, and he preferred to spend his available cash on a new car or whatever. Nothing wrong with that (nor how he chose to pay for it - most people buy vehicles on credit of some sort). (We were in exactly the same job, so we earned the same amount)
So I provided the first deposit for our house.
Later my income dropped - first because I chose to make a career change by going back to university, and then later, three kids

All income and expenditure has been shared from the point we hitched. When I decided to go back to school, it was actually money that came from him that paid off my student loan. Since having the kids (and you will be well aware of the issues surrounding children and expectations of care) he has always been the major wage earner. Despite being a rabid feminist (!) we work as a partnership and accept that is currently how it is.
There is nothing wrong with one partner contributing more than another to set up together. I would say it is fairly ordinary. But you do have to be setting up together. Given that it sounds as though you loathe the man, I'm not sure why you would want to be shacking up, tbh.

harshbuttrue1980 · 12/03/2017 15:11

Like other people have said, buy the house together with both names on the deeds, but have it written into a contract that you get your deposit returned if you break up. That's the same advice I'd give to a man in your situation too - I don't see why anyone, man or woman, should have a free ride on the back of someone else's efforts, but it would be unfair for him to live as your partner and not have any interest in his home at all. If you break up and sell the house, you get your deposit back first, and the equity is then split.

pringlecat · 12/03/2017 15:15

In your shoes, I wouldn't contemplate getting married until he's built up some significant savings to demonstrate he's on the same page as you are, financially.

Once you're married, half of your money is his. If you won't put it into the house he wants and he divorces you, he may well end up with that half anyway.

dataandspot · 12/03/2017 15:31

All the people saying their partners will not screw them over should head over to the relationships board and see how many posters trusted their partners and then got badly burnt!!!

engineersthumb · 12/03/2017 15:38

When my wife and I bought out house (before we married) we were short of a few thousand on the deposit though we has jointly saved a lot. My parents in law stepped in and gave my wife the money. I signed a statement accepting that this formed part of her inheritance and wolf be returned to her if we separated. I have always been happy with this arrangement, we earn similar amounts which probably helps.

Scholes34 · 12/03/2017 15:50

As others have said, it's about trust and your attitude to finance. When DH and I decided to get married, I was earning more than him, but I had negative equity on a shared property. He contributed towards paying that off because our ultimate goal was to have a property together.

Am I being naive here, but if your partner can run up a debt on a credit card - of £5,000 as a pp has said, don't you notice where that spending might be going/what he might be doing with the money/that he's being cagey in some way?

kaputt · 12/03/2017 17:29

There's nothing wrong with one partner contributing more, but I agree with everyone else who's saying it's the attitude that stinks.

I know a couple where she had a deposit, and so she got the mortgage, and then he covered the payments until he'd contributed as much as her deposit, and then she added him to the deeds, or they became tenants in common or something.

Obviously if one of you has a much higher paying job, or family money or something it's maybe different, but if you've both had the chance to save, but only one of you has, then that seems like a fair solution to me.

If he's not even willing to do that, then no he'd not be one for me sorry.

raceday · 12/03/2017 17:53

I think it's about trust and attitudes. I had a lot of debt when I married DH and he provided the full deposit for our house. My name is on the deeds and he has never had any issues with being the main breadwinner - we share our money in full and regard all expenses as household expenses. He paid off my debt because he didn't see the point of the household in paying out money in interest when there was a large amount of family savings.

I would be wary of holding back on a property purchase until he has saved up a deposit however. We bought our house five years ago and it's gone up 30% since then (we're in London) - if DH had waited around for me to get a deposit together, we'd have been priced out of the market and would only have been able to afford to buy in the suburbs.

IamFriedSpam · 12/03/2017 18:49

For me the issue isn't that things are unequal it's very unlikely things are going to be equal financially in any marriage - one person is inevitably going to earn more at some point. The issue would be that he seems a bit irresponsible with money and happy to have you bail him out. Why didn't he sell bikes immediately to pay off the credit card?I'd also be wary of contributing more before you're actually married.

Rainbowqueeen · 12/03/2017 19:21

Different attitudes to finances is one of the leading causes of divorce and relationship breakdown.

It sounds to me like you have very different financial values. It's fine to have unequal financial contributions IF you have the same underlying financial values. If you don't, that's a recipe for disaster.

I would be seriously evaluating if this relationship has a future

Bluebell9 · 12/03/2017 19:57

My DP and I are in the process of buying a house. I have more deposit and earn more, I'll have a bigger % of the house and pay that percentage of the mortgage. Obviously we both hope we will be together forever, and so the money won't matter, it's our house. But if we do split up, we know we get get out what we put in financially.

oleoleoleole · 12/03/2017 20:17

No YANBU.

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