Marriage & partner’s financial history

[elzbellz186]

Hi all,

I’ve been with my partner for nearly 4 years, and we’ve started to talk about next steps I.e. engagement.

My partner is wonderful and I have no doubts whatsoever about marrying him.

For some background my partner is a British army veteran who was discharged after being seriously injured in active combat. He developed PTSD and subsequently a bad drug addiction. He ran himself into a lot of debt.

He has since completely turned his life around & for the last 4+ years is drug free, responsible with money, has a good job and has dealt with his MH issues, and I could not be prouder of him for that. He has been honest with me from the beginning about his finances. However, to get out of his debt at the time, he entered an IVA.

During our relationship we have always kept our finances separate for that reason. I have a good credit score & I don’t want this to be affected by his score. We’ve had some issues because of this over the years eg needing a guarantor for renting.

If we get married, do our finances become tied in any way? We’d obviously like to open a joint bank account at some point and save for things - house, kids - but I don’t feel that we can do this until his score is back on track without it negatively impacting my own financial history.

The IVA will be fully paid off in less than 2 years but I understand it will still take him some time to build up his score after that.

I don’t have any doubts about marrying him and I trust him completely, but I do have worries that this will delay us working towards financial goals together, particularly if we have children.

My DH paid off his IVA around the time we got married; we didn’t have joint bank accounts due to the way our finances would be tied but being married doesn’t seem to impact my score. After his IVA was paid off he spent a year focusing on his credit score and we got a mortgage using a broker who had experience with IVAs and lower credit scores.

It’s not the marriage, it’s a joint financial product like a mortgage, joint account etc that would affect your credit rating and link you financially.

However, with a recovered addict of any kind I’d not get married or do anything jointly financial that wasn’t completely watertight to protect you and your money. I’ve been there, he nearly cost me my home and we (me and my two very young children) were very nearly homeless. And, despite him being the one who’d pissed all our joint money up the wall, meaning we’d had to use credit cards and loans for essentials, he then had the audacity to request 50% of the remaining matrimonial assets, to keep his pension, expensive car, and for the (his) debts, to be paid for first!
Now I’m financially independent with equity in my home I’d never risk that by marrying.

What benefit to you is getting married?

Thanks Owjbvr this is really helpful!

HippeePrincess I’m sorry for your bad experience, sounds like a nightmare.
Personally marriage is important to me, and I have trust that he’s well over his issues. I think he deserves benefit of the doubt. But I get that probably sounds naive when you’ve been through it.