The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.
Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But, she said, even she didn’t know what the true balance was; like a car buyer who focuses on only the monthly payment, she wrote 12 checks a year for about $1,100 each, the minimum possible. She didn’t focus on the bottom line, she said, because it was so profoundly depressing.
But as the couple got closer to their wedding day, she took out all the paperwork and it became clear that her total debt was actually about $170,000. “He accused me of lying,” said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor’s degree in photography. “But if I was lying, I was lying to myself, not to him. I didn’t really want to know the full amount.”
At a time when even people with no graduate degrees, like Ms. Eastman, often end up six figures in the hole and people getting married for the second time have loads of debt from their earlier lives, it should come as no surprise that debt can bust up engagements. Even when couples disclose their debt in detail, it poses a series of challenges.
When, exactly, are you supposed to reveal a debt of this size during the courtship? Earlier than you’d disclose, say, a chronic illness?
Even if disclosure doesn’t render you unmarriageable, tricky questions linger. If one person brings a huge debt to a relationship, who is ultimately responsible for making good on the obligation? And if it’s $170,000, isn’t the more solvent partner going to resent that debt over time no matter how early the disclosure comes? After all, it will profoundly affect every financial decision, from buying a home to how many children to have.
These were the questions that weighed on Kerrie Tidwell. A third-year student at the Medical College of Georgia and an aspiring emergency room doctor, she doesn’t worry so much about her ability to pay back her loans.
Ms. Tidwell, 26, is involved in a serious relationship with Stefan Kogler, an architect who is a native of Austria and living in Vienna. To Europeans, who often pay little or nothing toward their university studies, the idea of going deeply into debt to get educated is, well, foreign.
Ms. Tidwell feels no guilt about the $250,000 in debt she will probably run up, including some from a master’s degree program she completed in London, where she and Mr. Kogler met. “I didn’t acquire it because I go out and shop a lot,” she said. “It’s because I’m doing something that I’ll love for the rest of my life.”
Still, if she and Mr. Kogler are going to move in together and get engaged, she wants their financial arrangements to be clear and fair. But how do you define fair when you’re bringing a quarter of a million dollars in debt to a relationship?
Mr. Kogler, 30, said he’s not so worried about it. “In the long run, it will equal out,” he said. “In the short run, you have to support each other, and I will support her as much as I can.”
His stoicism is admirable. It’s all the more so, given that if he moves to the United States permanently, he’ll probably lose the chance to run his family’s business in Austria. Supporting Ms. Tidwell as she begins to pay back her loans also means he doesn’t have the freedom to, say, make a career change that involves a big pay cut. “I know he has his own dreams, and they will require money,” Ms. Tidwell said. “Will my debt take away from that?”
Lisa J. B. Peterson, a financial planner with Lantern Financial in Boston, specializes in counseling young couples and has heard this story before. About half the people she sees are both bringing significant debt to the relationship, and about a quarter of the others have one person who has a pile of student loans.
When I told her about Ms. Tidwell and Mr. Kogler, one of her first suggestions was for them to make sure that Mr. Kogler did not have to make all the compromises when they prepared a joint household budget. “They can make some kind of sacrifice so that a goal of his is achieved, too,” she said.
Then there’s the question of how to plan for the unknowns. “What would happen if I got hurt and couldn’t practice or got sued for malpractice?” Ms. Tidwell asked.
While insurance (which is itself expensive, alas) can reduce this anxiety, it can’t cover the desire to stay home with children. Ms. Tidwell is resolute about having children and working full time, but Sheila G. Riesel, a matrimonial lawyer and partner with Blank Rome in Manhattan, said Ms. Tidwell ought to consider potential extreme circumstances as well. “It could happen that she wants to be a stay-at-home spouse for a while. What if she has triplets?” Ms. Riesel asked. “All of this is worthy of discussion.”
View the original article here
No comments:
Post a Comment