How Unmarried Couples Can Protect Their Finances

Listen & follow The Money with Katie Show: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

In this week’s Rich Girl Roundup, Cassie asks what financial considerations she should discuss with her long-term partner and co-parent. Katie and Henah review the financial advantages of legally marrying, and how to potentially work those benefits into a different type of legal agreement.

We are not certified financial or legal professionals; please do your own due diligence.

RICH GIRL NATION IS HERE. GRAB YOUR COPY.

THE 2025 MONEY WITH KATIE WEALTH PLANNER IS LIVE—GET YOURS NOW.

Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is President of Morning Brew content and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.

—

Mentioned in the Episode

• Marriage more common in the US (Our World in Data)

• Poverty rates higher in the US (Time Mag)

• Study: Couples that live together before marriage have higher rate of divorce

• 59% of adults between 18-44 have lived with a romantic partner (Pew Research Center)

• Differences between marriage vs. cohabitation (Keygreer.net)

• Cohabitation agreement (US News)

• Watch outs to consider if unmarried (FlowFP)

Subscribe to the Money with Katie newsletter

Katie:

Welcome back to the Rich Girl Roundup weekly discussion of the Money with Katie Show. I’m Katie Gatti Tassin, and on Mondays my executive producer Henah and I use this segment to talk through listener questions, money stories, and more. More because I want the freedom to shoehorn whatever the hell I want into this segment. So we will do that right after a quick break.

Before we get into it, this week’s upcoming main episode is about the type of insurance that we think all high earners should probably consider. It’s not whole life, you already know that, but it’s also probably something that you haven’t really given much thought to. Alright, onto the roundup. Henah, what is our question today?

Henah:

That was such a teaser. I wonder what it could be.

This week’s question came from Rich Girl Cassie. It’s a bit long, so bear with me. She said quote, “With a one-year-old and another little one on the way. (Congratulations.) We’ve reigned in our spending and are prepared to accommodate an additional $1,800 in monthly daycare expenses for thing two starting next spring.

Katie:

U-S-A U-S-A.

Henah:

“I am genuinely relieved to share that through my intimate new budgeting process coupled with your financial wisdom, I have a solid plan to pay down most of our debts in the next three years while supporting two kids in daycare. Wow. I feel empowered and excited for our family’s future.” As you should. That’s amazing.

Katie:

Beautiful.

Henah:

They said, “I have been listening to old episodes including those on financial considerations for single folks versus married couples. My partner and I are together but unmarried. I love them to pieces. But having gone through a breakup after a nine year relationship and helping my parents through a divorce after 30 years of marriage, it’s safe to say I’m a bit jaded, but this puts us in a gray area. What considerations are there when navigating finances in our situation? While it’s not the norm, I do see more and more couples opting to start families and either delaying or entirely foregoing officially tying the knot. I manage the household budget and all bills and most expenditures and he gives me a big chunk of each paycheck to work with. I bought the condo we live in before we got together and he’s books the mortgage with me.

Legally, we are still two separate single people and for 2023 taxes I claimed our son and my partner filed as a separate individual. In listening to one of your episodes where you discuss the importance of prenups and to cover what happens if someone stops working, it occurred to me that we don’t have any as such arrangements or protections. We both love our careers and can’t imagine not working, but of course life happens. And similarly, while I hope we go the distance of blissful harmony, relationships can take a turn and I want to ensure that neither of us is in a position to get screwed over.”

Katie:

Amazing

Henah:

Long question, but I feel like it gave us a lot of information to work with and something specifically that we don’t or haven’t often covered in this show, which is cohabitating and also cohabitating with children.

Katie:

What’s funny is, I think I keep doing this too, I think it’s cohabiting. But doesn’t that sound wrong? Doesn’t it sound like it should be cohabitating?

Henah:

Yeah, because isn’t the word cohabitation?

Katie:

Yeah, but every time I tried to look up cohabitating, it was like, do you mean cohabiting? I was like, no bitch. I mean I cohabitating. Anyway.

Henah:

I’m going to still keep saying it.

Katie:

Both are going to fly today. Okay, so I’m going to adjust my typical disclaimer to say I’m not a lawyer, but I do want to give you the general lay of the land and I will tell you which type of lawyer you should probably talk to.

Henah:

Do you guys like that she said, I’m not a lawyer and I’m going to do this, but that puts me under the bus.

Katie:

Please direct all legal liability to Henah.

Henah:

Neither of us are certified professionals. Please contact a lawyer. Continue.

Katie:

Okay. So I find the idea of long-term cohabitation intriguing. I think it is also worth noting that it is way more common in other countries than it is in the United States. The United States has far higher rates of marriage than pretty much all of our peer nations, but it also has higher rates of child poverty. So I want to call that out explicitly because I think there is typically a moral panic argument that comes in here where people will be like, you need to get married for the stability of your children. And I think in the US we kind of associate unmarried people who have children with instability irresponsibility. But really I guess my point is it’s a financial thing.

The fact that we have in, I looked up 10 peer nations, every single one of them, lower rates of marriage, lower rates of child poverty. So I would just throw that out there that it’s important that we do not conflate or feed into the moral panic of every person that has kids needs to be married to the person that they have kids with. The financial stability part and the financial responsibility part are separate considerations here. So I think that’s what we want to dig into today.

Henah:

Yeah, I actually, I fell down a rabbit hole on the history of cohabiting. Did I say it right this time? And one thing that I saw that was interesting was there was actually a study that said that couples that cohabit before—

Katie:

This is going to be a thing, the whole episode, we’re just going to keep saying it either way.

Henah:

Couples that live together before marriage actually have a higher rate of divorce than couples who stay unmarried and live together, which I thought was so fascinating.

Katie:

So wait, let me make sure I’m understanding. If you live together before you get married and then you get married, you have a higher rate of splitting up, obviously you’re going to have a higher rate of divorce because cohabiting people can’t get divorced, but you have a higher rate of splitting up than people who just cohabit the entire time.

Henah:

I read it five times, I was like, surely they put a typo and they’re missing a word. But no, I checked the source that it came from. It was so fascinating and I think it’s because people who tend to cohabit in their eventual plan for marriage is that they end up sliding into it such that it wasn’t something that they intentionally meant to do or that it was a financial decision of, oh, it’s just cheaper for me to live together, but it’s not really the match made in heaven that they think it should be. But then they’re kind of stuck so then people who are in marriages are also scared to divorce.

Katie:

Fascinating.

Henah:

Yeah, it was really interesting. But Cassie’s disillusionment in marriage is actually pretty common. So I found a study from a Pew Research Center analysis that said 59% of adults between 18 and 44 have lived with a romantic partner compared to just 50 who’ve never been married.

And I feel like that probably increased in the pandemic, at least anecdotally from what I heard, where a lot of people that I knew were just like, we couldn’t go anywhere anyway. We had to be in our little pod. We might as well be together in that pod. Basically. I just think that this is a more common trend that we’re seeing that people are choosing to go down this route. And I was reading actually about the history of this as well from the 19th and 20th centuries because interracial and gay marriages weren’t legal. So people actually cohabited to begin with and it just wasn’t tracked in the same way. And that in the 1970s when women had more access to birth control and legalized abortion, it meant women could pursue higher education, they could pursue those higher incomes and so they could kind of choose what they wanted to do for themselves rather than—

Katie:

Versus being just like, I have to get married because I need money.

Henah:

Have someone for resources or for my child. So anyway, I say all of this to say that I think I’m really impressed with the thoughtfulness of Cassie’s question and I think that it’s something that a lot of couples are exploring as well. I don’t think that that’s an echo chamber she’s in. I think we’re hearing it a lot too.

Katie:

Yeah, I agree. I’m also impressed with just the consideration to your point about sliding. I do think that it’s just one of those things that we do because we feel like we’re supposed to or it’s just the next step. And so I give her a lot of credit for being extremely intentional about these decisions that she’s making and not allowing pressure from society or the latest moral panic to make her feel as though that that’s what she needs to do.

This is also such an interesting Reverse Uno of the situation that we usually discuss on this show, which is how married people can protect themselves and understand how marriage changes their financial situation. Because obviously in this case, you’re really protecting yourself from the opposite, which is that the upsides financially and legally of marriage you no longer have access to, so you kind of have to create them in a different way for yourself.

Henah:

So I guess if someone’s married, obviously there’s a lot of legal defaults that it just defaults to your partner. So what happens to someone that’s cohabiting with someone? How would someone protect themselves?

Katie:

I would say that the primary difference before I get into how to protect yourself, who to talk to, I think the primary difference that I can see and the thing that surprised me the most frankly about the difference between these two situations. Obviously there are going to be a ton of details, some of which are going to vary dramatically by state.

But the biggest shift to me with regard to marriage is that because you are legally considered one entity, financially speaking, any income either one of you earn becomes marital property. Any assets you buy after you get married are technically marital property unless otherwise prescribed in a prenuptial agreement with specific carve outs. And even then I think that that can be kind of hard to enforce later. You kind of have to have good reasons for that. And so we know that prenups also allow you to write terms about spousal support.

If one parent becomes a full-time caretaker, this is kind of what Cassie’s alluding to in her question, which is the primary reason that I find them to be valuable, especially for women who are statistically more likely to find themselves in that position. But when you’re cohabiting, none of that really happens. Your income is legally yours, their income is legally theirs, your assets remain separate. And if you break up, you aren’t in my understanding going to go through the process of splitting things up. However, there is something called a cohabitation agreement, and in it, I believe you can specify terms. It’s a little bit like a prenup for people who are not married. You can specify terms about partner support in the same way that if one person becomes a full-time caretaker to this child and leaves the workforce for an extended period of time, you can outline the amount that they would receive if you were to split up and you’re relying on this person’s income, the duration, the conditions of receiving the income and more.

The other thing that I think is quite different from where I’m sitting is the treatment of debt. So married people can be found liable for one another’s debts. This typically is not true for unmarried people. So all that to say that feels like the biggest high level distinction, but that major protection that Cassie is outlining or that she’s kind of concerned with, we don’t really have anything to rely on If one of us leaves our jobs and to protect us in the future, if we split up, you can achieve that with a cohabitation agreement. You just want to make sure that you work with a lawyer, a family law attorney to make sure that it is enforceable where you live.

And you can also contractually define things like property ownership, your wills, custody arrangements, child support. I think the wills piece is also very important because married couples default inherit one another’s assets. The same is not true for people that are just living together. So I think you can achieve the lion’s, share the protections that you’re concerned about with the cohabitation agreement.

Henah:

Can I add a couple other wrenches to consider? So one of the things that I saw when I was reading about this is that in unmarried couples who break up the child’s paternity has to be established via DNA or genetic testing. So in a marriage, the legal father is assumed to be the man in the marriage, but in a unmarried couple they have to establish that this is—in Maury’s voice, this is the father, but that also means that the woman parent will not receive any child support until that paternity is acknowledged or proven. So that is something to keep in mind and this kind of varies by state from what I saw. And I think that we can add that caveat to almost all of this, which is that a lot of this will vary by state and where you live.

A couple other things that I saw was if your partner becomes incapacitated when you’re married, usually your spouse or partner can be the person who makes those decisions for you. If you’re unmarried, you may not have that option unless it’s written in that cohabitation agreement or that there’s a power of attorney that’s been given to you and healthcare power of attorney.

So it’s just something again to think about. And I read something about 529 accounts. I know a lot of parents who listen to the show look into 529 accounts, so I just wanted to mention it so each parent can establish their own 529 account, but for example, in New York State, you can get tax benefits for contributing to that, but you don’t get tax benefits if you’re unmarried partner opens a 529 and contributes to it. You need to have your own. So I again would encourage you to Katie’s point to talk to a family lawyer who would know more of this stuff, but I do think that there’s some smaller things that people need to consider if they’re not planning to ever get married.

Katie:

It kind of strikes me almost as like you’re trying to build all a la carte.

I want some of the protections of marriage. I don’t want to assume some of the downside risks of marriage because there are financial downside risks, just like there are potential benefits that you stand to gain. There are also risks. And so if you decide that taking on those legal risks and taking on that downside is not for you, but you do want to make an effort to put those legal protections in place, I think this is what’s going to get you closest. And again, a family law attorney is the type of person that you would consult to write a contract like this.

Henah:

I saw one family lawyer say you could also get married and carve out the parts you don’t want in a prenup so that you’re protected the other way around so you got options, which is good news.

Katie:

Yeah, I think the thing to me is that the income and asset splitting part feels extremely difficult to get around. If ultimately your concern is that you will be with this person for a long time, but maybe not forever and 30 years down the road, you are really trying to avoid the painful process of having to split up your life’s property with them. Somebody could come to the rational decision that it makes more sense for them and their relationship and their personality type that it is better for us to just keep it all separate to begin with and choose to be together in the ways that we want to be.

As far as I understand it, there are certain things that marriage does in making you legally one entity that you cannot carve out with a prenup, to my understanding, at least in a way that is reliably enforceable, that well, all of my income is going to stay mine and all their income is going to stay there is, and all the growth in our assets that happen after we get married, maybe there are some lawyers that would do that. My understanding is that that’s actually pretty tough to do and judges typically would not enforce that because it kind of is so in opposition with the institution of legal marriage to begin with that it’s like, well, at that point, why are you just get ceremonially married, have a ceremony, but don’t legally join yourselves together if you want nothing to be together. You know what I mean?

Henah:

Yeah, it’s a good point though.

Katie:

Yeah, I just think everyone is, I don’t think anyone should feel pressure to get married if they don’t want to. I feel very strongly about that, particularly women cough, cough to my Indian parents. But yeah, I mean, I made a joke that I would not recommend getting divorced for tax purposes in a previous ritual roundup. I stand by that theme of I would not support, actually, I will joke that I got married for married filing jointly tax status, but obviously I’m kidding. That was not the reason why I got married. It’s a nice bur, it’s a nice bonus. But I think that the other obvious upside to marriage that cohabiting doesn’t give you is that overall lowering of tax liability. And that’s another thing that is different in the US than in other countries. You don’t get a legal taxation benefit in most other countries for getting married,

Henah:

Which could be why we have such a high rate of marriage is that people feel like there are benefits to it. Yeah.

Katie:

One last thing on the stuff that I think people should be aware of when they’re weighing this decision and deciding what’s best for them, married people get survivor benefits of social security income that cohabiting people do not get. So if you end up living together for the rest of your lives and your partner dies, if you are married, you can be entitled to some of their social security benefit. And if you aren’t married, you are not. For some people that is like enough of an incentive to roll the dice, risk it, get the prenup, go ahead and do it. But again, this is like you are really weighing a lot of considerations about what is best for you and what you feel good about.

Henah:

Ask me if I considered social security when I got married. Nope. I don’t think anybody thinks about this half the time.

Katie:

I was like, yeah, well you’re like, in my seventies, I really want to make sure I get that extra benefit. But I mean, I know it does make a difference. There are a lot of American adults that only live on social security, and so it totally is worth considering. But I have a feeling if you’re listening to this show and thinking this hard about your financial future, you’re probably making other plans for yourself and you’re probably being pretty comprehensive in your financial planning. So yeah, just want to throw that out there.

Henah:

I love it. Do you want to share some really important feedback that we got recently?

Katie:

Yes. So this is really hard, but we received some really necessary feedback about our statements about… lawns a few weeks ago. I was insensitively joking about how dumb lawns are those big water sponges that you have to take care of. And Rich Girls Christine and Karilyn weighed in from different sides of the landscaping spectrum. Henah, please do the honors.

Henah:

Christine S said, lawns are a man’s version of the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel.

Katie:

Amen.

Henah:

Which true, but an alternative POV from Karilyn she said, “Women especially moms should claim them. Hear me out.” She said, “As a mom mowing the lawn has become sacred me time. My yard is my personal sanctuary, a place I can retreat to and ride a mower tractor for four beautiful uninterrupted hours with a sweet sound of not being asked for snacks. The great feeling of not having my legs endlessly tugged or hugged the liberating sensation of solitude, which I never get at home even in the bathroom. It’s just me, the mower, and usually your voice or Taylor Swift’s.” What a nice comparison. “Plus I emerged with a lovely glow after a sunny mow and the fringe benefit of forcing my partner into active parenting for several consecutive hours. I know that whole situation is a bigger discussion and problem, but for another time. So back to my lawn, it’s paradise with a side of empowerment. Any takers or just me?”

Katie:

So I don’t ever want to hear that I don’t show you both sides on the Money with Katie Show, we are demonstrating opinions from all over. And I have to say, Karilyn, I think you convinced me. I think I’m going to retract my strongly worded statements about loans being dumb because I did fail to recognize that if you are constantly being tugs and hugged that you might really relish your time on that riding mower.

Henah:

Remember when I told you my story about the riding mower and you said to cut it because it wasn’t funny enough?

Katie:

Henah was like, one time I was on a riding mower and I ran into a tree and I was like, okay and? I was, you got to build up to the punchline a little bit more. I’m like, build the suspense. We need more tension. You can keep it in this time. How about that?

Henah:

Okay, I feel like I have the right this time, but I was riding a mower at like 12 years old. I had to go in circles, I got dizzy and I ran into a tree.

Katie:

I don’t think you included the part about getting dizzy the first time. That does make it funnier. I will say.

Okay, well that is all for this week’s Rich Girl Roundup. We will see you on Wednesday to talk about some important insurance that you probably want to get if you are a higher earner.