Would you expect your spouse to share their wealth with you

[JollyQuail]

Just wondering, if your partner was considerably wealthier than you, would you expect him to share all his wealth with your after you’re married?

Name added to houses; joint bank accounts, name added to BTL properties.

I would feel very uneasy doing this.

If you're not prepared to share your good fortune OP, then from my experience you don't actually love your partner. Marriage is about sharing everything for the good of you BOTH. My advice would be to think very seriously about how much you REALLY care about your partner BEFORE you get married.

I earn a lot more than DH and share it happily with him, as we’ve been together 25 years and both started with very little.

No way would I marry again if anything happened to him/us, I wouldn’t risk my hard earned wealth going to anyone but my kids.

This is what I was going to say.

Lifetime partners, - absolutely.

Very different if it were a widow(er) or divorcee with children and a reasonable expectation from the dc they would come into the assets built up by both their parent when they were together - then I don't think the 'new woman' or 'new man' should expect everything to be theirs, no.

You want to keep your assets? Don’t get married then.

if they are drawn up by a solicitor with both parties taking legal advice they are almost always upheld. However, I wouldn’t take the risk that they might not be

If this is how you feel, I'm not sure you should be getting married.

Is there something behind this like a lot of pre-marital assets you want to leave to existing children rather than new partner?

If I was your partner I'd assume you didn't plan to be married to me forever/that you didn't see me as an equal partner.

Just live in a committed relationship, share and be generous, declare your love publicly, buy a house together equally if you want to, but keep your assets separate. If you have always wanted to be married then sharing assets comes with that. That's the deal.

If someone had huge amounts of generational wealth, and we were both young and just starting our, I wouldn’t be opposed to a graduated prenup that increased the divorce settlement by length of marriage.

marriage is at its core a financial contract. The whole point is to share resources. At this stage in my life, I have built up resources with my DH. Those assets are to fund our retirement and to fund our child. If something happens to him, that goal doesn’t change. I could have another romantic relationship, but I couldn’t remarry, because I would then compromise the commitment we made together to take care of our financial future and our child’s financial future.

DH is my second marriage. It’s not like I am opposed to multiple marriages. It’s just that with my first we had no child and we did not build up assets. That lifetime commitment just didn’t kick in.

I would understand that the main residence if mine, should be in both our names as otherwise they're not living in their own home. As a woman, I think we're more vulnerable and more falls to us in terms of caring tasks that limit our time and earning potential. So I would expect my husband, if I had one, to answer this question differently. I would not see the need to make extra homes in his name also. Whether I would be prepared to put all my wealth in a shared account would depend on what I knew of him and his approach to managing money and work. If he was going to give up working or buy extravagant toys for himself, I would instead try to give us both the same amount of disposable income. Responsibility for paying bills would be proportionate and take into account who is accruing greater earning potential as well as who is wealthier. I would have a pre nup so I knew there would be no drawn out divorce if things didn't work out.

Yup

That's why I promised " with all my worldly goods I thee endow" when I got married.

I think the modern equivalent is " all that I have I share with you"

Basic tenet of marriage

Even in a second marriage with children? I totally disagree. The children have to come before the partner in terms of finances

Not if children come along. No chance if there are children as a result of the marriage, which is how it should be.

So what's fair in a second marriage with children but no joint children, where the wealth was created by one party after the second marriage?

Sharing is an issue for you @JollyQuail, they don't have to have access to all your assets at inception.

If you are already thinking and trying to pre-empt a future split then a prenup is sensible, does your partner agree?

"To make a prenup as watertight as possible, certain conditions must be met. Each party must enter into the agreement with full knowledge of their future spouses financial circumstances. A solicitor will evidence the information to a judge by way of an exchange of financial disclosure between the parties"

I most certainly did, and in a karmically pleasing turn of events, I am now more financially secure than he is.

You're not "giving" your spouse half unless you divorce. You share. You share the profits from buy to lets, the holidays, the equity, the nice home and/or cars and the investment returns.

It's a bit Scrooge McDuck to sit grumpily on your piles of money on principle.

If it doesn't sit well, don't get formally married.
A marriage contract is a very big thing. It's a financial risk for some people. All the romance of a wedding distracts from that.

I'd never do it again. Not unless I had nothing to lose.

No I would ring fence it. I would be generous with every day stuff but not assets acquired before the marriage. I would ensure they had a home for life, in the event of my death but ultimately it would pass to our children, if there are any.

Pre nuptial and post nuptial agreements are not water tight. Not by a long shot.

In those circumstances I personally would feel I had chosen to make my partner and their children my new family, and would want to share equally any wealth created during the existence of that family unit.

You may really love your partner, but if you have children from a previous marriage I think they should be your primary concern. Wealth should be joint if you accumulated your wealth together. The wealthier spouse can still look after their spouse but I don't think they should be "entitled" to it.

This is becoming a serious issue for second and subsequent marriages, step children, children from previous marriage and blended families. Assets moving to 2nd partner on death and they then exluding children from the first marriage from inheritance etc. If you are in this situation you need to get advice on ring fencing Assets to where you want them to go. Don't rely on anyone's good nature or someone doing the 'right thing' on divorce or death. They often don't.

You wouldn’t be giving anything away unless you divorced, and if you’re going into marriage with divorce in the back of your mind, I would say you’re probably not in the right headspace to get married.

This is why I will never marry again. I would not want to share anything.

You work out something that feels right for both of you.
Personally I can't see any need to make all accounts joint and all property (as in houses) jointly owned, whether or not one partner is richer than the other. Some means of sharing outgoings fairly according how much each partner earns is important, and so is safeguarding the interests of a partner in case of an eventual breakup, so they can each afford to live somewhere. So if one partner didn't want to give half of the home she already owned to her poorer spouse, she might pay the deposit on a buy to let property in his name.