Marriage inevitably involves financial compromises both small and large. Joint or individual checking accounts? How much is too much to spend on a car? Name-brand or store-brand groceries?
When a couple remarries late in life, the stakes get higher. How should the expenses for those bucket-list retirement trips be divided? Whose name goes on the deed to the new condo? Who inherits the house or stock portfolio: the surviving spouse or that person’s children from a prior marriage?
Many newlywed retirees find that the answers to these questions evolve. For a retired director of a nonprofit and a retired I.T. professional in upstate New York, that meant revisiting their expectations of who would pay for what.
“We just kind of talked about what we were both bringing to the marriage financially,” said Elaina Clapper, a retired director for an agency supporting domestic violence victims. Ms. Clapper, 76, said she had been divorced for roughly 40 years before marrying David Clapper in 2018.
“For a while, David was paying me a certain amount of money each month” toward household expenses, Ms. Clapper said. But in time, the couple, who live in Watertown, N.Y., decided it would be easier for each partner to be responsible for certain monthly expenses.
“There are certain bills she pays. There are certain bills that I pay,” said Mr. Clapper, 67. “We adjust it in a way that we both feel is equitable.”