There is no right or wrong way to handle finances in a senior relationship; different arrangements work for different people. Sometimes both people in a senior partnership have fairly similar financial resources. However, sometimes when two people meet late in life, they are each in a very different financial position, and sometimes one person has children and the other does not. These kinds of differences may require more creative ways of blending or not blending financial resources.

EXAMPLE ONE
[For couples with very different financial assets.]

Woman:
We would like to share with you, our families and friends, the arrangements we have made regarding finances, now that we will be living together. We come to this partnership with very different pasts. I have spent my life as a “change the world” activist with a “live for the day” philosophy, and I would not re-do it any differently. _______ settled into a well paying career early in life and like a hard-working squirrel, was able to bury a lot of extra nuts for his future and the future of his children. Given our very different financial positions at this point in our lives, we each would like to maintain a lot of autonomy in terms of how our financial estates are intertwined while we are alive, and how our financial resources are allocated after we die. We desire that all of the resources we each enter this partnership with shall remain separate and pass to our respective children when we die. However, since I am giving up my condo so that we can live together and moving into ____’s house, he is granting me a life long lease to reside in the house, in case he precedes me. But after I die, the house shall be sold, and the proceeds divided among _____’s children. We each believe this arrangement is the most fair, as we are creating a partnership late in life and a total merging of financial resources seems inappropriate. If I die before _____ he is free to do whatever he wants with the house, as he will be maintaining sole ownership of it.

Man:

We feel this arrangement, of mostly separate finances, will enable each of us to continue to be the “captain of our own ship” in terms of financial decisions that really do not significantly impact our relationship. We are kind of both set in our ways and at this stage in life, and each want to be able to continue to spend twenty dollars or a thousand dollars whenever we want to, without feeling we have to consult one another. We think that carving out areas of separateness, enables us to continue to be who we are. We treasure the sense of partnership we have found together, but also need to preserve some areas of individuality. We have drawn up a pre-nuptial agreement which outlines how we want to deal with our finances during our marriage, and after our death.

EXAMPLE TWO
[For couples with similar financial assets.]

Man:
As most of you know, neither _____ nor I have any children. Before meeting one another we had each prepared a will designating what charitable organizations we wished our estate to be divided among. Now that we are joining our lives in marriage, we have decided to combine our financial estates. We have designated that our joint estate will go first to the care of each of us in case of serious, long-term illness.

Woman:
If we are lucky enough that neither of us needs to tap into much of our financial resources because of serious long-term illness, we have jointly prepared a list of the charitable organizations that we wish to leave our estate to. Since we have such strong political and spiritual value compatibility, we found that who we each planned to leave our money to before we met, is very similar to we have decided upon as a couple. We have named: Hospice, Planned Parenthood, the City of Ann Arbor Parks Acquisitions Department, the Humane Society of Huron Valley, Amnesty International, and the Union of Concerned Scientists as the benefactors of our estate.

Woman:
I hope that we are both blessed with many more years of life to come, but of course none of us know how the roulette wheel of life will spin. I do know that I intend to enjoy each week, month and year that I share with you to the fullest extent possible. Sharing my life with you adds a vibrancy to my life that I am incredibly grateful for.

Man:
I share those sentiments. I think love adds a special excitement to life whether you are twenty or eighty. I continue to discover new things about myself through our stimulating interactions. My life is made richer by having you to celebrate my triumphs, and sooth my disappointments. Woman: I have only known you for a short part of my life. However, due to the depth of our connection, you have a profound sense of who I am and what led me to become the person I am today. You weren’t there for those decades, but when I share my stories, the good ones and the bad ones, you always get the punch lines!