‘All My Worldly Goods I Share with you’? Managing Money at the Transition to Heterosexual Marriage

Abstract

Studies in the 1980s and 1990s revealed that financial arrangements in marriage tended to disadvantage women, especially those with young children. However, much of that research focused upon relatively well-established married (or remarried) couples, and we have little insight into the choices that today's newly-weds are making, or what influences their choices. To address this gap in our understanding, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty-two heterosexual couples on the brink of their first marriage. We explored their monetary practices and the way that they thought about money in the relationship. The results of a grounded theory analysis showed that six couples were pooling all or most of their money, fifteen were using a partial-pooling system, twenty were using an independent management system (with separate accounts), and one couple had an arrangement where all the money was controlled and managed by one partner. A key factor was perceived ownership of money, and this influenced the extent to which finances were being merged and treated as a collective resource. Other factors included the couple's current living arrangements and beliefs about the importance of sharing and independence within the relationship.