Partner doesn’t want to marry me/share finances

[MinaJ]

Hello all, I am hoping for some advice please :).

My partner of 1 year wants me to move in with him but only wants me to pay bills for the future onwards. He is building his own house and wants to ensure sole ownership of it which includes paying the mortgage himself. He said to me that “it’s his house but our home”. He wants me to have an opinion on designs etc. but no financial input whatsoever (except bills). He is determined to keep our finances clean cut and said that himself.

He won’t marry me or even negotiate a civil partnership with a prenup as he says prenups are not legal, just highly persuasive. But he wants children (now - even though we aren’t even living together yet!). I’ve said I need time.

I love him, and I know he loves me. He said he is fully committed to me and by wanting to start a family with me is him showing that commitment - but I can’t tell if I’m being naive entering this future with him without any offer of other security. Inevitably I’m going to invest in the house in some ways - and our children, and as a result I’m losing the opportunity to invest in my own assets. Should the worst happen and things go wrong, I would have little rights and could even end up homeless, surely? I don’t even want to think like that but I’m feeling forced to because he is obviously being cautious himself.

He earns a lot more than me and has a lot of assets (land), so I understand he is being protecting his investments. I’m not on a terrible wage (£40,000) so it’s not like I’m financially dependent. What can I do to protect my own self and security in this scenario? Has anyone been in a similar situation? I’d be grateful for any sharing of experiences.

When it’s just the two of you this sounds fine. However, when you are going to be having children with someone, the home should be jointly owned.

I think you need to try and see it from his perspective. He has a lot that he could lose if he marries you and you divorce.
I wonder whether you could sit together with a lawyer and come up with an agreement which protected his premarital/living together/ children life assets and which recognised from a certain point onwards your joint contribution to a shared life.
You could protect any assets that you bring to the relationship as well, so that if you do break up, you are both left in the same position as you were to begin with.
It could have a time limit on it, say 10 years after marriage, or after 1 child, after which time you could agree that all individual assets become joint. Or not
You can write a contract for anything that both parties agree to. That is all a marriage is anyway, a contract.

I’m not really aligned with the responses. You will not be contributing to the house so living rent free. So save what you would on rent and then buy a property, rent it out, do whatever you would do if you needed to house yourself.

Bloody hell, no! No, no and no again.

I hope so many of the same responses have opened your eyes to what this man is offering (I use that term loosely!)

No, no, no, no and NO!

I say this as someone who is currently separated and about to divorce -

DO NOT MOVE IN WITH THIS MAN
DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN WITH THIS MAN

He wants to protect your own financial interests. That's fine. But you need to do the same by living alone and not taking the financial hit of children.

Hahahahah OP

Next you’ll tell us he is kindly offering to give the DC his surname too.

In fairness to him, if I owned significant assets I wouldn’t marry someone who owned none either.
BUT I wouldn’t agree to be an insecure lodger in my partner’s house with no prospect of any long-term security either. Once children arrive, the power dynamic would shift irrevocably and the lodger would be in a desperately vulnerable position.
You would be very foolish & very naive to agree to this arrangement, OP.

Yeah definitely run

Cheeky fucking bar-steward. Tell him if he wants to impregnate you he can bloody well marry you.

And dont ever believe a man who tells you that having a baby with him is proof of his commitment - it isn't. Marriage is the commitment.

Jesus no.

The reality is, for most women, having kids sets you back financially and career-wise that it doesn’t for men. You’ll be earning less/no money during mat leave, and then a lot of companies make you pay back mat pay if you leave earlier than 6 months or a year, so you’re trapped.

How would your finances work when you have kids, mat leave, nursery costs etc.

I have got married and had children. My husband and I have joint ownership of our house and split other costs like childcare. But i did need his help when I was on mat leave and i may need his help when we have to pay 2 sets of nursery fees for a year, because again, i’m trapped in my current job if i don’t want to pay back mat pay, and i’m the one that’s gone part time because i earn less.

Also a year is not long enough

I have significant assets and absolutely wouldn’t marry someone who had far less.

However, I already have kids. I don’t want more. I am not expecting someone to take a financial hit to have kids with me, with no security at all.

He is right, prenups aren’t legally water tight.

However, it’s not just splitting you have to worry about What if he dies first? What happens if he dies when the kids are young and you are left raising the children alone? How is childcare going to work? You absolutely can’t be a sahp or go part time so the kids will require childcare. How is he proposing that is financed?

There absolutely needs to be some security for you, especially as he wants kids.

So basically, he wants you to move in and pay half the bills? So romantic.

Know your worth. It’s a negotiation, he wants a ‘wife’ but not the commitment. He’s only going to get more stubborn further down the line past the first years of romance. Hold out for marriage before moving in, you are in the best bargaining position now, but have to sell it as a business proposition.

Ask him in the interests of fairness to carry the baby for 4 and half months.

This!

Also in answer to your various questions:

He said he is fully committed to me and by wanting to start a family with me is him showing that commitment - but I can’t tell if I’m being naive entering this future with him without any offer of other security.

He isn't committed to you without a legal contract (marriage).
He wants you to be stuck with him (starting a family without any financial protection), so no, it's not showing commitment at all.
He isn't offering you any security at all - how is that being committed or even being in love with you?

Don't agree to move in with him or have children. You can keep dating him and referring to him as your BF, but no marriage means you need to get your own place/build your own savings/pay into your own pension/ work on building up your career. You are not going to refer to him as your Fiancée and should you ever decide to have kids with him, they will live with you and have your surname as a single parent. Stay financially independent from him.

It is perfectly possible to get a place together and to ring-fence what you each put into it when purchasing it. Prenups are also possible and are usually taken into account by the courts in the UK even if not legally binding. I expect he does know this since you can look it up.

He just wants a housekeeper to raise his kids and do everything in the house with zero career prospects and tied to him financially for support. Please look at some of the threads on here of women who have gone along with this and are either trapped in an unhappy relationship or leave with nothing. Don't join them! Refuse to move in. Tell him that you will only do this with someone you are married to and stick to this line. (He may dump you for that in which case you have dodged a bullet).

Don’t do it ffs

He wouldn’t be U to want to retain the property as his sole asset if it were just you two living there. You could protect yourself financially by only paying bills.

But if you lived there and have DC but not marry you and your DC would have no housing security.

As PPs say having DC isn’t a commitment to the other person.

No way would I ttc before marriage given the negative impact of motherhood on career, earnings and pension.

Fatherhood isn’t even a commitment to the DC, in legal terms!

What do YOU want OP? There's a lot here about what he wants and how he sees the future. What about you?

I haven’t read any of the thread apart from the first few responses and this poster has summed it up perfectly!!!

DO NOT have children with this man.

Your body is not there to incubate the heirs to his fortunes whilst offering you absolutely no security or commitment in return!

Just wanted to add he doesn't love you and the sheer effrontary of the man is staggering! He's not even pretending not to use you.

The amount of men who see woman as a resource to be used for their benefit is staggering!

He said he is fully committed to me

He's not though, is he? He won't get married, he won't share finances and he wants to ensure he retains sole ownership of property. So basically, you provide the sex, and the housekeeping, and the children, and he gets half his bills paid by you, and all the benefits of marriage without any of the commitment.

Sorry, but you would be crackers to consider it.

Excellently put

One last thing - men who are married and are at risk of losing half of everything probably aren't so quick to shag around as men who've got absolutely nothing to lose by doing so.