Legacy Marriages: When Staying Married For The Money Makes Sense

Modern wisdom tells us that we should marry for love, not money. But what happens once you ARE married and the love dries up? Do you stay for the money?

It’s not a popular opinion.

Most married couples (even wildly unhappy ones!) would be insulted if you suggested that the reason they’re staying married is because they don’t want to lose a significant part of their wealth, status, or lifestyle. Yet, once you dig a little deeper, you find that what’s holding many couples together is – in one way or another – money.

·?????? They don’t want to spend a significant portion of their assets on getting a divorce;

·?????? They don’t want to divide the wealth they’ve built, leaving one of them to potentially squander it while the other has less to invest;

·?????? They don’t want to be tied together financially by having to pay support (or having the insecurity of needing to depend on support) for years or decades into the future.

Staying married for the money may not be a popular idea, but it happens more often than most people care to admit.

A Brief History of Marriage

The truth is that before marriage had anything to do with love, it had everything to do with money. For thousands of years, marriages were arranged to secure the economic, political, and social welfare of the family. Divorce was often difficult or impossible. So people stayed married, thereby maintaining the wealth, status, and lifestyle of their family.

But that doesn’t mean that, just because they couldn’t get divorced, they were happily married.

In fact, many couples, especially wealthier ones, were married in name only. They each lived separate lives, often in separate homes. They shared finances and children but little else. When they needed to, they attended social gatherings together and publicly appeared as “a couple,” but for all practical purposes, under the radar, they lived as free agents.

While living in that kind of marriage might not be your first choice of relationship arrangement, it may also has it’s benefits.

You stay married and get all the financial benefits that come with that. You don’t have to live through a potentially messy and expensive divorce. And, you continue to operate as a family unit for your kids and grandkids.

So, the question is, what’s better?

·?????? Getting a divorce, blowing up your family and dividing up the wealth it’s taken you a lifetime to build BUT being able to be totally free, take control of your life and living situation, and openly pursue the love you truly desire; OR

·?????? Staying married and renegotiating the terms of your marriage so that you and your spouse can have more freedom and can pursue other love interests BUT never being totally free to go “all in” on a new relationship, or to get married again.

Neither option is perfect. But that doesn’t mean those aren’t questions worth asking.

The Legacy Marriage

A legacy marriage is a potential way to “have your cake and eat it too.”

Like a parenting marriage (where parents stay married for the sake of the children) in a legacy marriage parents will stay married to preserve their wealth and leave a legacy for their children. They stay married to be companions to each other, to keep their social status intact, and to maintain the family unit for the sake of their adult children.

In a legacy marriage, a couple would negotiate the “rules” they would live by in their marriage. They would negotiate what actions and behaviors would or would not be okay. For example, a couple could (and should!) negotiate:

·?????? Where they would each live;

·?????? How they would pay their expenses going forward;

·?????? Who and how their money would be managed;

·?????? Whether they could date outside the marriage and what the “rules” of their dating would be;

·?????? What they would/would not tell other people about their arrangement;

·?????? … and more.

Creating and maintaining a Legacy Marriage would definitely be a different kind of marriage than the one most of us are used to seeing. It may not be the kind of marriage you would want for yourself. At the same time, though, what’s the most different about it is that it’s honest, thoughtful and intentional.

Instead of simply doing “what they’ve always done” and pretending everything is fine when it’s not, a couple would have real conversations about what each of them wants in a marriage and they would negotiate what is and is not okay

Is Legacy Marriage the Wave of the Future?

A legacy marriage is definitely not for everyone. It requires a level of trust and respect that many spouses no longer share by the time their traditional marriage is in a shambles. What’s more, if a marriage is toxic or abusive, it’s better to end it than change it.

But if a couple shares children, shares a common goal, and shares a long history together, creating a legacy marriage may be a better option than simply living a lie while pretending everything is “fine.”

What do you think?