How to make unpaid mat leave fair with DP?

[Fairpay]

Hi all, I have a 5 month old DS (first child) with my DH. We have similar jobs with similar pay - he earns about 10% more than me but followint my next pay review shortly that gap may narrow.

I’m on mat leave at the moment and get 6 months paid, 3 months SMP and 3
months unpaid.

We jointly own the house and pay the mortgage 50/50 though I own a greater share for now as I contributed more of the deposit. All bills are split 50/50 from our joint account.

My question is - for those with DPs and children, what arrangements did you make during mat leave to make the unpaid bit fair? Should we say he’s saving £X per month on childcare and so shoud give me the equivalent amount, or half of that? Or he should pay my share of the mortgage and bills for three months? And so increase his share of the house more quickly during that period?

I appreciate this depends in part on the sums involved, but I’m interested to get a sense of what other people did.

FWIW, this isn’t a situation where he is unwilling to pay! I read so many posts about crap partners like that on here. He is very much a 50/50 parent and wants to do what’s right and fair, but we can’t quite work out what that looks like!

Thank you!

I meant should he have less spending money than his wife.

So this prompted an interesting chat with DH this morning! I don’t think we’re really that far apart in our thinking from most of you - we just haven’t had to revisit how we’ve done things so far, because we’ve both earned similar amounts and no-one has been on unpaid leave at any point. There was an “if it ain’t broke” attitude really.

We agree that neither of us should ever be worse off financially (ie have disproportionately less to spend on personal “leisure” stuff than the other) because we are on unpaid leave or have been made redundant etc. We are a family and we will jointly tighten our belts and the other person would always contribute more from their own “personal” funds in that scenario. Where we differ from the majority here seems to be the logistics of doing that - we haven’t changed our accounts set up yet because we haven’t needed to yet.

But I can see how it would be extra admin to have re-evaluate your finances every time there is a change in circumstances, and adjust what goes into the joint pot to be spent on mortgage, bills as well as individual leisure stuff, and that that would be unappealing for some people. I think we all need to account for different personalities and preferences though. We both said we would like to have the opportunity to re-evaluate periodically, check our budgets against our spending and adjust accordingly.

I don’t think there is currently any need for us to pool everything and split the “disposable” income 50/50 so long as we stick to the principles that 1) We need to ensure that our joint responsibilities - house, baby etc - always come first in terms of spending priorities, and 2) Neither of us should ever be worse off because of the sacrifices we may make for our family, or because of unfortunate circumstances outside our control, like illness or unemployment.

I really don’t get any of this when you have children. I just don’t understand how it could work. What constitutes fair and how would that be ascertained? What about breastfeeding mothers. Does the other half have to contribute more again as the half she is eating is actually feeding ‘the shared asset’? Fair is too hard a concept as too many confounders.

We just pooled it all. I’ve always been the higher income earner. DH took a hit with job progression for many years to enable me to do my job if we had kids (was the only way it would work so we both had to agree in that for kids to be in the table) so he halted, sat stagnant then started his progression later than otherwise would have plus had a lower overall eventual earning capacity. If we divorced at any point I would have been financially fucked and rightly so. I don’t understand the concept of taking the piss by getting nails done or whatever. My DH has always spent stuff on frivolities for himself and while I have often rolled my eyes (how many PlayStation games does a grown man need and how would he think he’d get time to play them), I certainly don’t think it’s taking the piss. I also couldn’t think of anything worse than him contacting me to ‘agree’ on his purchases. If there was enough to cover a roof over our heads, food on the table, bills, desired holidays and agreed savings amount and he wanted to buy frivolous shit on top of that power to him.

I really don't get it. Is it because TV has convinced people marriage is about romance rather than legalities?

When you marry someone, it's a contract that everything from then on will be 50/50. If you don't want that, what's the point in marriage? The party and the dress?

@HoppingPavlova I think we can be fair without being pernickity! Fairness doesn’t necessarily mean contributing pound for pound. We do the food shop out of the funds in our joint account, which we contribute to in equal amounts (at least so far because we’ve been on the same salary and both working full time), and we definitely don’t adjust our contributions based on who eats what. I’m breastfeeding at the moment and my DH has no issue with keeping me stocked up on sugary cereal bars! And I won’t insist he “pays me back” for the beer or wine he will occasionally drink that I won’t.

Your set up makes a lot of sense in a situation where your DH took a hit with job progression. As mentioned in my last post, I think one of the starting points should be neither person being worse off because of what they have sacrificed for the family. It sounds like there is general consensus on this thread on that point, but it’s just how we choose to go about it that’s different.

I’m also not sure that it makes sense that married couples should have access to each other’s money for their own individual spending when those “sacrificial” circumstances don’t exist. I’d be interested to know whether people really think we should have pooled all our income as soon as we got married simply because “that’s what marriage is” (as some people seem to have suggested that). Or is it rather that you think income should be pooled because, if you have children or get sick, there are going to be periods of time when one or other of you sacrifices salary or job progression for the sake of the family. If the latter, I’m with you on that! And perhaps my attitude isn’t as crazy as some of you think…! We’ve just only been married for a year and haven’t need to adjust our approach yet.

I’d be interested to know whether people really think we should have pooled all our income because...

For me it's because a) legally, all your money is shared anyway and b) it's bizarre to me that anybody would be happy for their wife/husband to have less than them. Not just because marriage is fundamentally about becoming one team who share everything equally, but also because if I loved someone enough to be my life partner I wouldn't want them to have less than me. And I would expect someone who loved me to feel the same.

@ArmWrestlingWithChasNDave Marriage isn’t a contract that everything will be 50/50 - at least I didn’t sign those T&Cs! 😂 My vows were (and I’ve actually gone back to read these) - to be true, loving, faithful and to care, respect and cherish. In law we also have a legal duty to support each other, but that doesn’t mean a duty to pour all money into the same pot, regardless of the circumstances, and split it down the middle. Even if we got divorced and the court had to decide on the split of assets in the absence of agreement, it wouldn’t necessarily be 50/50 - it would be what the court considers fair, taking into account various factors like the length of the marriage, our ages, incomes, employment status etc.

It’s absolutely fair enough if combining absolutely everything is how some people would like to do it - I’m not trying to convince people our way is better at all. Just that it has worked for us in our (short) marriage so far, and that we are open to changing it, but we would want to do so in a way that is fair, which for me means respecting what each person is bringing to the table in the marriage, both financially and in every other respect.

My understanding is also that if we maintain separate bank accounts, they may not necessarily be considered marital assists in the event of a divorce. Again it would be up to the court in the absence of agreement. But it would certainly be cleaner in the event of a divorce to start discussions about the one account that holds our joint money and two separate accounts holding the surplus (plus savings pots too I guess).

Also @ArmWrestlingWithChasNDave , I got married during the pandemic so there was no party and there wasn’t even a wedding dress - just a summer dress I bought in the sale. So I can assure I got married in order to be married, not for the party and the dress, but thanks…

Marriage isn’t a contract that everything will be 50/50 - at least I didn’t sign those T&Cs!

You really did. How can you now know this?

How can you NOT know this, rather.

@ArmWrestlingWithChasNDaveRe your point (b), I think part of the issue here is that I can’t picture a scenario where my DH would have less than me or I would have less than him outside of unpaid leave, sickness etc. In those situations, he and I would (and legally must!) step up for the other.

But outside of those situations, if he were just a much higher earner than me before and during the marriage, it does feel odd and kinda grabby to say that I should get half. If I want a higher salary, I need to earn one! But that’s probably just my thinking because I’ve never had to deal with a situation where I earn significantly more or less than my partner. If I did, I guess I would’ve swallowed my pride and done things differently even before we were married I guess.

We pooled everything from day one, to be honest it just seemed easiest, it ever occurred to either of us to do any different, but we were young and both at the same stage of our careers and earning roughly the same. He now earns 10 times what I do but my job has considerable non monetary renumeration which the family has benefited from.

In 32 years of marriage I cannot remember a single time when he has queried my spending and I have certainly never felt the need to justify anything or query his. We have argued about lots of things but never about money. I might occasionally raise a quizzical eyebrow at the bills for his horse and he may look askance at yet another load of yarn arriving for my knitting obsession but neither of us would ever seriously question the other. It helps that we are both very open and upfront about money, I seriously struggle to understand how people can share a child with someone but not know how much they earn , we also have very similar attitudes to money and priorities we discuss everything very honestly. Our number one priority is that the children will be as secure financially as we can make them. We do have separate credit cards and ISAs and [pensions so that we utilise the tax allowances.

The thing is family expenses get more complicated, the older they get and the more children you have; who pays for childcare, evening babysitting , music lessons , the money for the cake sale, non uniform day, afterschool club, football boots , clothes, and shoes, school uniform, lunches, birthday party presents, orthodontic treatment and all the myriad different ad hoc day to day stuff. Too often I see young female colleagues who have somehow found themselves paying for all this stuff from their salary and consequently have no spending money while their partner is, at best, blissfully unaware, and at worst, spending his money on his 'hobby'. At the other extreme is the colleague who has a massive spreadsheet and a monthly reckoning up (which seems to take a whole weekend) and involves her justifying why she paid for an extra tap lesson or why she spent more than the allocated £5 on a birthday party present or whose turn it is to pay for babysitting this month. Honestly life is too short, if you trust someone enough to have a child with them you should at least be able to be completely open about finances, even if you each keep a personal account as well.

Also I am afraid the 'vows' you make on day are just for show, they have no bearing in law. You signed a marriage contract which means that prima facie everything is shared, you can argue it out in the divorce court but that is basically the starting point. "with all my wordly goods I thee endow" did at least have some bearing in reality.

@ArmWrestlingWithChasNDave

How can you NOT know this, rather

Because I know what the law is. There is a wealth of case law on the division of assets following a divorce. Although 50/50 split is a handy start point/rule of thumb, it’s certainly not applied in every case, and it’s definitely not a contractual term. If it were, there would be no need for court intervention to decide what’s fair. You could just sue your ex spouse for breach of contract. But that’s not how it’s done.

@Peaseblossum22 See above! I’m aware of the status of my vows.

@ArmWrestlingWithChasNDave Hmm thinking about it again I wonder if we’re
talking at cross purposes? I’m talking about what happens in the event of a divorce, but I think you’re talking about the general principle that assets are jointly owned upon marriage? I’m being pernickity about the language perhaps, as I don’t think “50/50” is the best way to articulate that principle, as it implies the assets are being split during the marriage.

In practice, if you’re not getting divorced, it doesn’t have to be a 50/50 split. That’s not a contract term. If I wasn’t being supported by my husband in accordance with his legal duty (or vice versa), I’d have cause for complaint, but I haven’t ever heard of someone going to court to enforce a contractual term of 50/50 division during the marriage, despite being otherwise supported by their spouse financially. To me, the joint account is our way of supporting the other. We don’t need to split the rest of it 50/50 to be complying with our marriage contract! But if anyone had heard different, I’d be interested to hear about it!!

@Peaseblossum22 Your approach sounds very fair and healthy! We also both know what the other earns, both salary and bonuses. We talk about any pay rises we get, we discuss together making amendments to our pensions, what our taxes are etc.

We also ensure we jointly pay for absolutely everything for our house and child. He’s paid for half of every nappy, silly sensory class, toy and item of clothing. All of my mat leave clothes and new bras have been paid for from the joint account. All holidays, meals out, takeaways, food shops, presents for family etc come from the joint account. As our lives have merged more and more over the last few years, including before we got married, the amounts we have each put into that account have increased. That will remain the same as our DS gets older and if we have more children.

Now that I’m about to move to SMP and unpaid, I think he will massively increase his standing order to the joint account and I will cancel mine, which is v straightforward for us based on how things are already set up. We’ll
do that after sitting down and working out what our “household” expenditure actually is and how much we need in that joint account each month. DH will put in however much is necessary to ensure I’m not out of pocket because I’m on mat leave. If he gets sick, made redundant or does his own unpaid leave at some point, the scales would tip in the other direction.

I suspect as more children and their food and activities eat up more and more of our incomes, the question of what to do with the extra disposable income leftover after joint expenditure will become moot!

A marriage contract is an agreement to share everything equally. If somebody is refusing to do that, you can legally force them to share via a divorce. 50/50 is the starting point but the outcome may be different if the marriage has produced children. You can't stay married AND enforce the splitting of assets, because within a marriage everything is jointly shared. A court can't give somebody money they already legally own.

You can both agree not to share what you have and not to pursue your rightful ownership via a divorce. But why on earth you'd enter a marriage with no intention is share is beyond me; just stay single if you want to keep all your income.

Because I know what the law is.

You don't. You've also been badly misinformed about what's in your bank account not being marital assets. 😔

I think you're basically agreeing with most of the posts here, youre just going the long way round about it 😁
If you both just have your salaries put into the JA, split spending money and transfer equal amounts to PA: job done.
If you get paid a regular amount into your PA, then transfer 50% money into the JA: nice and easy.
But on maternity, in month 3, your wages drop. You figure out what % you need pay, what % he pays, transfer it in. The next month, he gets paid a bonus, recalculate again. The next month, your wage drops again, recalculate again. Only hes already transferred the same amount as last month across, so now you need to explain the situation, and ask him to send more money.
Then your wages stop, and you're unpaid for 3 months. He needs to transfer all of his wages into the JA. That feels a bit unfair...maybe I should fund some from my savings?

I appreciate that it probably/ hopefully won't go that way with you, but there is a reason that all of those threads were men contribute a small amount to family life, and women carry the financial burden of children. I mean, obviously it's because those men are dicks. But also because maternity leave often sets a precedent of women shouldering the responsibility, both financially and physically, and have to ask their partners for help. Along with the first way being easier logistically, it also splits the responsibility without the woman having to sit down and figure out how much they have financially suffered this month and ask for support.

For the record, I have friends who I have absolutely no doubt that they are in loving, happy relationships. But if I ask them to do something, they will be skint, as they work part time, so they have to ask partners for money.

@Fairpay Most people I know in real life do as you do - pay an agreed set amount into a joint account and keep the rest of their earnings themselves. I only know one couple (aside from my parents' generation) that pool everything and that's because it's a joint UC claim.

Even the couples I know with children have just adjusted the amounts paid by each of them into the join account while one is on maternity leave, and continued this if hours changed when they returned to work (ie, person working/paid more pays a greater percentage into the joint). Nobody is left skint but equally I don't think they ensure they both have the same spends if one earns more - that's just seen as natural because that person has a higher paid job.

That said though, I can see the advantage of pooling the majority of income when a child is in the picture because inevitably the person who's actually with the child the most does end up saddled with the majority of the expenses for them, especially incidental things picked up day-to-day. But I guess you could remedy that by only ever using joint funds to buy anything to do with the baby?

Thank you @anon2022anon for recognising that, and for keeping it light! I just wanted to hear others’ approaches as I try to navigate my first mat leave in my first year of marriage, and was instead largely met with a barrage of “Don’t be ridiculous - why did you even bother getting married if you didn’t want to promptly empty your current account?!” 🙄

DH and I have just had a chat about this and decided going forwards we’ll make pool our salaries and decide on an equal amount that we each get, outside of the joint account, to spend however we wish without needing to discuss with the other. Most of the time, and probably for the next few years, that spending money will be “funded” by us both equally. But while I’m on unpaid leave, it technically would be more funded by his salary, and when I am a higher earner than him, as we anticipate will be the case, it will be more funded by my salary. So if one of us gets a pay increase, our family will be better off in the first instance because we’ll have more money for children, then we will both be better off in terms of our “frivolity” spending!

I’m still not much clearer on what the heck we’ll do in practical terms in the short term to implement that during my unpaid leave, given how we’ve done things with our accounts so far, which is what I came on here hoping to work out 😂But maybe with a little break from debating on MN I will work that out!

Thanks @GlitteryGreen - yes in real life I’m not aware of anyone pooling everything either, but perhaps I need to pry a bit more! From
some googling, it looks like in the US at least (I’m in the UK), “28 percent of millennial couples keep their finances separate compared to 11 percent of Gen Xers and 13 percent of baby boomers”.

But in theory I’m happy to pool everything I guess, on the basis that most of what we buy these days is joint anyway, as it’s for the baby, and I don’t really begrudge him spending “my” money on golf or whatever.

Interestingly, I think what is behind a lot of the “pool everything” posts here is a concern that the woman will otherwise lose out because she traditionally will earn less and be the primary caregiver and could get screwed over on the divorce. But if my career plans proceed as hoped/expected, I may be earning x3 what my DH earns..

So when he runs off with his secretary in a few years time and asks me for his 50%, I wonder if the same posters will turn up to urge me to separate my finances from his as soon as possible…?!

@Fairpay Yes I agree, I am the higher earner too, and I guess it does give you a different mindset when you have your own financial stability.

I am going off on maternity in September and will be covering the majority with savings. My DP doesn't earn enough to pick up the slack while I'm off so pooling just wouldn't work for us. It would essentially just be giving him a load of extra money!

Are all your bills already set up from your JA? My salary is automatically paid into the JA, his is transferred manually from his account to the JA (must change that, but it involves writing to payroll). We then have a standing order with our personal money transferred to our personal accounts every month.

Another thing to be aware of while doing things on mat leave is not to fritter your personal money on baby things/ activities, and to have a little cash float. The amount of baby groups that need cash, so it just comes out of your purse, or you go to Costa with the other mums so you pay yourself. Entertaining the baby costs, and it's not just your cost to bear!
That might sound tight, but we only allocate £150 each month at the minute, and £10-15 a week soon takes a chunk of that.

I don't think it matters who is the higher earner in your situation. You want him to be as financially well off as you are anyway, so its either split it now or keep on juggling. I actually think it's more important for kids to see parents as equal, so money, responsibilty and childcare.

@anon2022anon Yes all bills and the mortgage come out of the JA, as well as the food shop and everything we buy for baby and house. Big items we’ll discuss just in the usual course of things “shall we buy a BBQ?!” rather than in a formal way, but we don’t bother for smaller things - we trust each other to be using the JA for things we / baby / house need.

The point about cash and those odds and ends is a really good one. I’ll keep an eye on it. Atm we don’t really have rules - I decide whether to use the joint card or my current account based on a bit of a vague idea of what feels right…! So does he. A baby class would always be joint, but if I go for lots of coffees and lunches with a mum pal and it feels like it’s more for me than for baby, I’d use my card! If I were at work in the office rather than looking after the baby, I’d be buying my own lunches and coffees rather than using the JA, so that feels fair.

One time pre baby he used the JA for an Uber home after a boozy night out that was v expensive and felt bad about that so replenished it from his current account!

@GlitteryGreen Congrats on the near arrival of your little one!