Before You Say “I Do” - Part 2
Show Notes
In part one of this two-part episode titled “Before You Say I Do,” we grappled with how to have nuanced conversations around lifestyle choices and goals, family and in-laws, and religion preferences, all before you get married. In part two, we dig a little deeper, starting with children and money.
In this episode we cover:
Intentions for having children
Parenting styles & Child rearing goals
Blended families
Prenuptial Agreements
Finances & money goals as a couple
Transcript
Meredith Shirey (00:00):
If you're in New York city, you're going to pay 40 K a year to have your kid do macaroni paintings. When they're three.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (00:05):
Easy.
Meredith Shirey (00:05):
Like, no joke.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (00:06):
That's probably a bargain rate,
Meredith Shirey (00:09):
which is insane.
[Theme Music]
[inaudible]
Meredith Shirey (00:19):
Hey everyone, I'm Meredith tiring. I'm a licensed psychotherapist specializing in relationship issues.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (00:25):
And I'm Isaiah Vallejo-Juste, a divorce attorney.
Meredith Shirey (00:28):
This is a podcast about filling in the gaps of our relationships, the deeply personal choices we make for our families and ourselves,
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (00:34):
And the impact that our actions have on the rest of our lives. This is love me or leave.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (00:45):
Hey, welcome back, everyone. You know, in our last episode, we spoke about a lot of the kind of nuanced things that you can talk about before you get married. Now, you know, I know for myself in particular I learned quite a bit from that, because there are some things I didn't even think about, um, that you can talk about before you get married or before you commit. But you know, now there were two things that we left out. We did that on purpose. Two of the most complex issues that you can speak about before you really commit or get married. And we did that on purpose for this whole complex, right? Most of the things, are children and money, I can't tell you the number of times people come into my office with extreme conflicts in those areas.
Meredith Shirey (01:20):
And especially when it comes to money. I think that one of the things people have a problem with is not necessarily the amount, it's not this dollar amount in our bank account. It's usually the much more complex and more ethereal issues of what are values that are attached to money. So for some people it's like, if I'm a spender and you're a saver for me, having money might mean, you know, freedom or flexibility where you might think it means security. And so it can be really, really complicated in that way. And especially with gender differences. And then of course with children, it's equally complex in a very different way. But I think for us, we have these interesting careers where they're complex in both of our offices, but for very different reasons.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (02:04):
And in particular, when it comes to children, common source of conflict would be whether or not to have them. Sometimes I see couples who maybe didn't have a discussion about whether or not they wanted to have children. And what happens if they find out after they get married, that they disagree or I've seen it, where what happens if a lie was told and somebody says they want to have children and they didn't,
Meredith Shirey (02:28):
I think you can probably test to this better than I could, but for the love of God, if you're going to lie to someone, you know, it's all going to come out when you get married. So no one benefits by being dishonest about that. And I think that that is so true though. Even if it's not someone being dishonest, but don't be idealistic where it's like, well maybe in some sphere of life, I would want the five children that you want. But if you know, you don't want that, you're going to have to be honest before you get married, because otherwise you're setting yourself up for so much heartbreak once you get married. And to your point, I think that one of the other points is don't think you're going to change your partner's mind thinking, Oh, well, they don't want children now, but once we get married, they'll want them, no, you need to take them at their word as it stands now.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (03:12):
It certainly it does happen. Right? You certainly do see people who, before they get married and say, you know, they don't want to have kids. And then they get older. There are times when, um, people, men and women, not just women will say, you know what? I want to have a child, even though I said, I didn't want to have a child. And then that can cause conflict. But at least in that case, if you've spoken about beforehand, you at least had that sort of faith and kind of discussion so that, you know, you can say, wow, this is something we should have really sort of discussed. Right? Like we discussed it. So things happen and that happens and that's okay. But yeah, having these discussions regarding children are tremendously important. How to have those discussions, I think are just as important
Meredith Shirey (03:50):
Adding context to the why is so important. This is important to me because, because even if you disagree, like you were saying, and listen, we're humans, we're, we're going to change and it's okay to change your mind. But I think when you have the context to why you're changing your mind or why you feel a certain way that you do, and you understand that from your spouse, right? And you're coming at this from a place of, you're both wanting to lean in and understand that, then what happens most of the time is most people are so invested in preserving the relationship that they might actually be willing to budge on. That, that I think is what's more important here is, is being willing to be vulnerable. And to be honest with yourself and with your partner where you can be one thing with your partner, you have to be honest.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (04:32):
Another thing that you have to take into account is that, you know, we can certainly make all the plans that we want those plans. Don't always come to fruition. You know, sometimes people struggle to have children. You know, sometimes they have miscarriages. Sometimes, you know, you find out that somebody can't have a child, be it the husband or the wife, or, or a partner or spouse. And what are you doing that situation? So it might be instructive to have that type of conversation before you get married. Now I'll say that you never know what it's like, not to be able to have children until you're in that situation. For example, there has been a series of miscarriages, or you find out that you need to do over here, or the husband cannot have a child, low sperm count things of that nature. Those are things you can sometimes prepare for, but you don't know how you're going to react to it until you're in that situation. But by having these conversations kind of beforehand, you would have at least laid the groundwork that it's okay to have those types of compensations and they can build upon that foundation. And then use that to have these new conversations that you now need to have
Meredith Shirey (05:32):
It's about, like you said, laying the groundwork and have any idea of each person's values and their backgrounds, then what's important because you're right. I think more and more the conversations about infertility are becoming a little more socially acceptable, which is wonderful because it's certainly not talked about enough. And this is actually something I've seen quite a bit in couples work. Is that what happens a lot of times is we have this romantic view, right? Okay. We had the conversation around children we both want to have them. Wonderful, great. Let's do this. We get married. And then we start trying to have a child, right. And then we start facing disappointment because it's not happening. And then we find out, you know, there's maybe there's some fertility issues. And if we haven't had the conversations about, okay, what is our plan B, we need to have some contingency plans.
Meredith Shirey (06:17):
Is someone open to adoption, right? So if one person's fertile, but another person's not do we want to consider having either an egg or a sperm donor or a surrogate. And not only just the ethics of that, because for some people, there are some real serious, moral and ethical obligations. For some people, they think that IVF for going that route might be a little too much like playing God. And for other people, they might really want to have a biological child through any means via IVF or whatever, but they really don't want to have it option as an option. So if one of you says, I want a child, no matter what, whether it's my child or not. And the other one says, I only want to have a child. If it's biological, that is something that you really need to know because it's going to impact how you see the future of the relationship. And to your point, nothing prepares you for those unknowns. And trauma has a huge impact on us. We never know entirely how we're going to deal with something like grief. It is very possible that you went into this marriage happy and connected and through series of miscarriages. And again, through no one's fault, it's very possible that that could deteriorate the connection in the marriage and lead to two people, maybe falling out of love. And again, that's not either person's fault. It's just a product of layers.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (07:30):
That's true. I mean, it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to lead to deterioration of the marriage. If the couple has come together and have that layer of communication, that foundation to build upon, it could just be something else and other conversations, other things to have dealt with. I think a lot of what we're talking about in this episode and the previous episodes, and probably those to come as well as laying the foundation for communication. We had two communication episodes were really be a communication podcast because marriage is so much about communication and open communication and continuously talking. And Hey, you know what, sometimes you're going to disagree. There truth is that some disagreements are going to be insurmountable, but a lot aren't and it's going to depend upon the marriage, but you'll have a better chance at there not being an insurmountable disagreement if you've had these conversations beforehand. So certainly we're not saying, you know, plan out your entire life, but don't be deaf. Don't be deaf either. Don't go into this completely blind and all let's just figure it out what we're going to do and how we're going. Now, another thing that I think when it comes to children that you should speak about is parenting styles and what kind of parent you see yourself being and how involved are you thinking you're going to be? And you foresee parental relationships looking like.
Meredith Shirey (08:47):
Absolutely. And that includes relationships with families schooling. There are so many things we could talk about. And I think we are going to have some episodes on children so we can dive a lot more into parenting styles, those kinds of things, to your point, that's entirely right now, I see this happening around discipline and values quite a bit. So, you know, if a kid brings home, what is quote unquote, bad grade, well, how do you determine what's a good grade versus a bad grade? And how do you decide if there's punishment, if there's some kind of, you know, redirection, or if we just give praise, those things get so complicated so quickly, and even around schooling and academics, do we value academics over sports or over extracurriculars? Do we want our child to go to private school versus public school? Who's going to pay for that because if you're in New York city, you're going to pay 40 K a year to have your kid do macaroni paintings when they're three.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (09:36):
Easy.
Meredith Shirey (09:37):
Like no joke
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (09:38):
That's probably a bargain, a bargain rate,
Meredith Shirey (09:41):
Which is insane, you know,
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (09:43):
Seriously. And I think a good predictor of that, of the education stuff is to find out what the experience of your actual partner was. Right? If your partner went to private school, well guess what he or she doesn't want the kids to go to primary school, probably. If your partner went to public school, you know, he or she is going to want the kids to make, maybe to go to public school. And a lot of times that transcends money. So, you know, just looking at each other experiences and probably foretell what this will look like in the future, if your partner was obsessed about the grades and still talk about the C plus, they got an economics at NYU talking about myself. Yeah. Maybe there'll be a little strict when it comes to the grades. Those are all things to kind of consider when it comes to these things, you know, and then there's a, you know, there's the other thing of children from previous relationships as well. That's a big one that I've seen because it takes the partner that's not the parent. Who's going to be the step parent to be a really big person, because what happens then is there's three people in a relationship and not two.
Meredith Shirey (10:41):
I know that you're a child of divorce. I am too. And I was at an interesting age. So my parents got divorced when I was 16. One of my parents got remarried when I was about 17. And the other one when I had just turned 18, it was an interesting thing. And seeing their different versions of incorporating step parents being a blended family. And I've actually seen this quite a bit too. And some of the families that I see. Blended families that is a complicated pattern to weave the step parent coming in. They have to have the patience of a Saint because they're probably going to be taking a lot of hits from the child and a lot of boundary testing. And so they're trying to figure out their romantic relationship with a romantic partner. And they're also going to have to have a ton of flexibility with this child because the thing is, that's not their child and the child and the other parent will remind them of that in a second.
Meredith Shirey (11:32):
But the other part of it, that's also very, very hard is that for the biological parent, they cannot force a relationship with a step parent that needs to happen organically. And the child really ended up being the one who has a lot of control in that, not in terms of discipline. Now, if your child is acting out and trying to set fire to the new parents clothes, like okay, you need to address, you know, we're not talking about safety issues, but we're talking more about the relational connection. You cannot force the child to have a relationship there. And the best thing that the parent, the step parent can do is to just invite it rather than demand that relationship.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (12:06):
And there's also legal considerations as well. You know, for example, you know, are there child support payments going out, right? That's money, that's going to be going out on a monthly basis. What's the custody schedule like? So maybe the other parent has 50% of the time or every other weekend, or a couple of times a week. You know, those are the times that are going to be set in stone as a step parent probably should encourage that. You need to encourage those things and encourage the relationships, you know, that makes a big difference to the child. And it makes the relationship easier with the spouse as well.
Meredith Shirey (12:38):
I think our takeaway here is that blended families are very complicated. Can we get agree on that?
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (12:44):
They're beautiful things. And they also very complicated.
Meredith Shirey (12:47):
You know, I'm curious then how prenuptial agreements factor into all of this, because we're talking about trying to make sure that we are being protective. And that seems like a fairly obvious or very, very direct way to try to protect yourself.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (13:02):
Well, when it comes to children, at least in New York, can't really provide for that in the prenup it's against public policy to touch upon things like child support in the prenup. But prenups are generally in the news with respect to marital assets or rather really not marital assets, but assets that you have before the marriage, but that you may be receiving during the marriage that you want to protect. You know, some of the more popular things are businesses, real estate investments, other type of investments or inheritance. So what you want to do in your prenup is that it gives you a certain amount of certainty as to what's going to happen with those assets. Another thing that you can touch upon is maintenance or alimony and have waivers in a prenup. You can have it that there's a certain amount of maintenance pay depending upon the length of the marriage. And you can waive inheritance rights as well in prenup. So they are very important tools.
Meredith Shirey (13:51):
At least I've seen this happen a few times where I've had couples who actually ended up in my office because they were trying to get a prenuptial agreement. And it became really, really contentious because from what I understand, it's almost like they set it up like a divorce. You're sitting on opposite sides of the table. You each have your own lawyer. And I think that for a lot of couples, that, that becomes so contrary to what they think they're doing. So we're supposed to be looking forward to our future and getting married and joining. And yet it's as though we're already breaking up and it can put such a sour taste in people's mouths. Do you think that they're helpful or do you think they just set people up for conflict?
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (14:30):
They're definitely helpful. Any conversation that you have can set you up for conflict. So prenups can absolutely set you conflict. It depends upon how you're going to get this done and really depends upon what you both want. If what the couple wants are two completely divergent things, then it's not the prenups fault, but there's a conflict. It's the couple have different things that they want to accomplish in the prenup. If the couple is on the same page as to what they wanted in the prenup, that's another situation. There's no reason why prenups have to be high conflict, unless there's real disagreement between the parties. And even then, there's usually ways to resolve these things, you guys do love each other, and you're going to get married and you want to get married. So you should find a way if we want to get married to resolve these issues.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (15:17):
And sometimes there's almost an existential issue with respect to the prenup is that one party wants it and the other party doesn't, and that's probably more difficult. I would say that usually that's not the case of what you see. Usually the case of what you see in the high conflict thing is more something along the lines of the people don't see eye to eye on the terms they want in the prenup. So that requires you to be really open and honest with your communications, with your fiance and be open and honest with your communications, with the attorneys, and then having attorneys and meets together in the meeting with both parties can also resolve them good sums.
Meredith Shirey (15:51):
As a couples therapist. I actually love the idea of prenups because in my view, it's not about preparing for the end, but it's almost the analogy I like to think about is almost thinking about like shorter long-term disability. You sign up for it with the hope that you don't have to use it, but if you have it wonderful, it's probably saved you a lot of stress and headache, because the thing is when you're getting married, you're thinking about the positive things, about a relationship, and hopefully you're in a place where you're connected and you're happy. You're also probably going to be willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt versus when you're on the other side of it. And we'd even talked about this, that this is one of the main points of contention in a divorce where people get really, really angry and become very, very rigid and get really upset.
Meredith Shirey (16:36):
So when you're upset and when you're in an emotional space, you're not going to give each other the benefit of the doubt. You're not going to be making decisions with overall wellbeing in mind. You're just going to be thinking about this, what I want to hear and now, or I'm angry in this hour. I want to hurt this person. So my thought with prenups, from doing couples therapy is that this is going to allow you to make some future decisions while you still are actually going to be nice. And like each other, versus when you're going to be angry and potentially vindictive,
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (17:03):
It's really part of a larger conversation and really with respect to finances overall, and there's so much that can happen within finance and how you spend your money and what money is are you earning? And what are you going to do? There's kind of three models out there. There's like one model where everything is combined. Another model where everything is separate and then like kind of one that's kind of in between. Maybe you want to have that discussion as well as part of this, all overall conversation as to how you're going to run your, your household. How are you going to run your, your finances? Maybe that's even something you start doing before you get married. So you can get a flavor for it. Maybe have conversations about what type of assets you have, what types of debts you have right now, you know, student loans can be very high. So that's, maybe you want to have a discussion around those types of things as well.
Meredith Shirey (17:47):
I think it's so much deeper than again, just this arbitrary number in your bank account. It's about your values and it's about the future you see. If you want to buy property with this person and they have a credit score of, you know, 500, that's something you're going to need to know about. Now, that's not saying first date, you go in and saying, Hey, can you give me, um, a summary of your assets, your, your credit score and maybe your mom's maiden name and your social. You know, you're not going to do that, but you do need to, at least at some point in dating and that kind of thing, start getting an idea of if this person is at a maybe lower paying job that has 200,000 student debt, that's something you want to know about. It might not change your decision to commit to them, but it might have an impact on how you want to divide assets and what you want to do in your marriage, where you want to live, how much you want to allocate towards travel, or if you want to have children retire, all those other things. And I think that those are the things that people probably don't want to think about because it's not as sexy conversation to say, Hey, what's your credit score, but at the same time, and I'm sure you could speak to this horror stories of people not realizing that after you get married things like debt or shared, if one person accrues death, the other person could potentially be liable for it. And so you need to know if your partner is someone who is maybe a wreckless spender.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (19:03):
Debt that's incurred during a marriage could be marital debt. Absolutely. So if somebody is more inclined to incur than the person, that can be a problem. You know, on this, on the other side of things, assets that are accrued during the marriage are generally considered marital property as well. And those are usually split. So if you have one person that's incurring all the debt and the other person that's incurring all the assets, then if there's a divorce, then the person who's incurring all the assets may be upset about the result of that. But really you're talking about living together and just experiencing life together. So not having these conversations, aren't going to have impacts or can have impacts the minute you get married. Like not even if you get a divorce, if you're during the marriage and you want to go get an apartment in the city and you need 40 times rent, well, you should figure out whether you can live, where you want to live, or a shop where you want to shop or eat, where you want to eat or live the lifestyle that you think you want to live.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (19:59):
Now, song has also, things are kind of together and in alignment then it's fine. Maybe you guys want to build together. If you don't have a lot, or maybe you guys are one spouse says, Hey, I recognize that you don't have as much as me and that's okay. I'm more than willing to like support you. And that's great. And that's a beautiful thing, but not knowing that. And then realizing, wait a minute, I can't afford to move into the apartment that I wanted to move into or I can't live, the life that I, that I thought I wanted to live, is not a good realization after you get married.
Meredith Shirey (20:28):
I think that that's when people incur the most resentments and build those scars that are a lot harder to get over. Because at that point, you feel in some ways like you've been misled, betrayed, even you could use that word, right? And so that's why I think one of the big take-homes that we're saying in this is you really need to be honest and forthcoming, hiding things is only going to hurt both of you in the longterm. And you're right. I think it's about choosing, honest about like what your lifestyle is. If you're dating and you know that this person likes to be a lavish spender, but you are someone who feels very uncomfortable with that. You need to talk about if you expect that to change, once you get married, because if they want to get 17 cups of Starbucks a day, and that gives you anxiety and it's making your blood pressure go up again, you need to have a plan for that in some form of a compromise and knowing how you want to address those things.
Meredith Shirey (21:20):
Because again, it's not about this, this arbitrary number, it's about your values attached to it. For me personally, I know that money is a lot of times tied to autonomy. So I would not want a partner. Who's going to tell me I can't buy this Louis Vuitton purse that I want. Whereas someone else might be like that as a silly thing to spend money on, or like, you've, you've traveled twice this year. Why do you need to go out of the country again? And I wouldn't want to be told what to do with that, because again, for me, the value is autonomy. Whereas the other person might see it as scary. And that I'm being reckless and hurting them. If their value is security. And again, I'm not like a reckless spender here, but point is here, you can see how quickly this can create a conflict, because each person could interpret this as you were hurting me. Right. Or you're taking something from me and that's why money gets so, so heated so quickly. And it's really just about being honest with yourself and with your partner and finding ways to be flexible. Again, you know, if we stay at once, we'll say it a thousand times, we're trying to figure out how to move from I, to we.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (22:21):
Well, if we think that let's say like the average person gets married at like 32 and the average person's eyes, and let's say like 85. So that's like 53 years and everybody who's getting married says, Hey, you know, I want to be married to this person for the rest of my life. That's the commitment I'm making, well you're trying to make a 53 year commitment. There's not much you can hide over the course of 53 years. So at some point it's coming out. So it might as well come up beforehand so that you can have the long marriage that you want after.
Meredith Shirey (22:51):
I love that if you want to have a long marriage talk about this stuff beforehand, because otherwise that's going to be a long miserable 53 years. Well, Isaiah, we have given people so much to chew on. So maybe we should give them some time to digest. See what I did there.
Isaiah Vallejo-Juste (23:07):
I see what you did.
Meredith Shirey (23:09):
So we're so excited. Our next episode, we're going to do something a little bit different and we're actually going to have our very first guest. This is one of Isaiah's friends. We're so excited. This is a nutritionist named Susan Greeley, and we are going to be so excited to talk to her about what it's like to do some self care, talk about nutrition and how to keep it sexy and fun in 2021.
Rich Hackman [Producer] (23:42):
Love me or leave me is a podcast production. The Bored Brand. This podcast is for informational purposes. Only. It does not constitute medical or legal advice and is not a substitute for professional consultation, diagnosis or treatment. Always follow up with a licensed attorney or healthcare professional who can address your specific needs. Thanks for listening.
