Reply to Daughter married a doctor, he’s pressuring her to pay off his student debt

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They are married. Their money is combined regardless. [/quote]

unless they don't have a joint bank account, don't have kids together that would necessitate a split of expenses, i don't see how they keep their finances completely separate.[/quote]

Plenty of millennial DINKs keep their finances separate.[/quote]

point is that even if you have separate financial accounts, it's not totally separate from the family.  If one partner puts 25% of each paycheck towards loan payoff, that means they have 25% less to contribute to the overall family. [/quote]

This is what I was thinking.  If he's going to have to keep making debt payments, that's going to affect her.  An obvious example is a house purchase.  She may be comfortable with, say, $3k a month of her income going to a mortgage payment.  But if he's putting 25% of his income toward debt payments, he may say he can only afford $2k a month instead of $3k.  So that's going to mean she'll have to settle for less house.  I really don't know how couples can realistically keep finances separate.  [/quote]

It's better to settle with less income coming in than to rush to payoff a debt that isn't actually a marital debt.  The student loan debt is attached to an income that only he can earn.  His debt/his income.   This isn't my opinion.  It's the law.  If he dies, his debt and his income go away.  If they get divorced, his debt is still his debt, and his employer is going to keep paying him his income as they always have.  I don't know why that is so hard for folks to grasp.  Just mentally deduct student loan payments from what you think your spouse is earning and go forward with a household budget from there.   [/quote]

The law is contingent. *IF* they divorce, it is treated as separate debt. *IF* he dies, it is treated as separate debt. You’re acting as if the contingency has already occurred. I don’t understand why it is so hard for you to grasp the contingency has not occurred.

But for many purposes the law treats it as marital debt as it stands. For example, mortgage regs promulgated by the federal government don’t treat his student debt as a separate debt when they go apply for a mortgage. If they file joint taxes some of that debt interest may be a tax deduction. It is considered a household debt legally in many ways.

If one spouse doesn’t want to risk their pre marital assets in paying off the other’s debt, that signals things to the indebted spouse. This scenario is just the mirror to a pre-nuptial agreement. Of course, many people find pre-nups to be offensive while others do not. It could hardly be a surprise that an indebted spouse would be hurt in this situation.

Tough position all around. One of those things where if the spouses don’t agree it changes things going forward and there is no right answer. [/quote]

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