Saturday, March 17, 2012

Marrying someone with baggage


By Carolyn Makana

Anyone who has seriously contemplated marriage or entered into one knows one thing; nobody comes without baggage.
But that baggage isn’t always just emotional. It’s also financial. There are many couples who will enter into matrimony not only with high hopes but with big obligations to ex-spouses and children from a former marriage.
Those obligations can have a significant impact on the couple’s bottom line and on their relationship. That’s why it important for couples to have a clear-eyed view of what they’re getting themselves into, preferably before they walk down the aisle.
Involved costs
There are potential costs involved in marriage to someone with financial ties elsewhere. Among them:
1) Reduced income: Whether you’re talking alimony, child support or both, it can be no different than having two mortgages.
2) Divided loyalty: When you marry someone with family and financial obligations from a past marriage, you may sometimes feel like a second-class citizen who takes a backseat to the first family.
3) Cash-flow creep: Between your ex’s maintenance payments and child support, most people are more understanding about the latter. But no matter how reasonable new spouses are about child support for their spouse’s children, it’s unrealistic to think that’s where the cash outlay will stop. Child-support payments typically don’t include the time and money spent when non-custodial parents visit with their children or take them on trips. And that can push some buttons, particularly when step-parents don’t feel they have any say or influence over such matters.
4) Anger and resentment: Sometimes, the spouse who is making the maintenance or child-support payments feels unfairly bound to his or her past. And that anger can be an emotional drag on the current spouse.
Make friends with reality
There is the notion that marriage after divorce is a fresh start. And it can be, except that it’s more complicated than other fresh starts when you carry into it obligations from the past.
Since there’s only so much money to go around, the person with the obligations needs to be frank with any potential partner and make clear that "first families come first. You have to take me on these terms."
If you’re deciding whether to marry, watch how your partner handles the situation while you’re dating. See how they’re dealing with it emotionally, because you’ll have to deal with it. Then, make the best of it.

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