Biggest and most common problem in all relationships: communication. It seems unattainable

Marriage is a civil contract. It's about money. If you aren't willing to take on her debt and her spending, don't get married.

You need to talk about adopting the child. If you divorce it will take adoption to assure you have some right to be involved in the child's life.

Best way to do that is to suggest you make the daughter's adoption part of your wedding...a three-way ceremony/celebration.

I like you're style, always suggesting a 3-way as the solution to a problem.

It's always worked for me

What a terrible situation, hope you can figure it out.

I mean, quibbling about peanuts just before throwing $5K on a credit card for a worthless trip. Good luck getting reality to rear its head.

Your relationship won’t work. If you get married, you’ll end up divorced. She either needs to mature really quick and learn how to manage money (not going to happen) or you should cut your losses now. The worst part is the kid is caught in the middle but that’s on her, not you.

While your situation sucks, dont forget a lot of 2+2 posters tend to be fatalististic and wrong about this stuff, dont let it get you down.

This sounds awful

The birth father would have to agree to this, which also would mean that the child support payments would stop---and that OP would be on the hook for support if he and her mother later divorced.

This.

I have a friend who handled a similar situation by not adopting and allowing the birth father to continue paying child support to the mother. When my buddy divorced the woman a few years later, he agreed to pay child support himself as part of the divorce settlement. The mother must have been a genius.

I'm a little curious if she had been short on the dance lessons and this trip hadn't been planned if Dale would have had the same reaction?

You’re getting a lot of undue flack over the whole 60/40 split thing. My wife and I have never had a joint bank account, and split most major things 50/50.

There’s been points in the relationship where each of us have made more money than each other. For the last few years I’ve been making a decent amount more, I tend to pick up a lot more dinners and nights out. It’s never really been an issue for us at all.

That being said, we don’t have kids, and neither of us are bad with our money.

After ten years of a happy marriage you'll dream of a week by yourself (if it's unhappy, you won't make it ten years).

Maybe the kid is weirded out by having a new stepfather, and mom wants to spend time alone with her to reassure her that she is still priority number one.

For all intents and purposes, they are already married. They are engaged, have lived together, her kid sees him as Dad, they own a house together, etc. Getting married will make it messier legally if they split up and provide tax advantages in the immediate. Their behavior towards each other shouldn’t change much.

Your first paragraph has already been explicitly addressed by OP. He is good with money and they devised a system of how the bills would be paid. It doesn’t matter too much what the exact system is, I glanced over it - but it seems reasonable, and all bases were covered. The fiancé has breached OP’s trust by not only making this trip decision unilaterally but by now wanting to amend the financial agreement they previously made by wanting him to pay for more things now that she put herself in debt by frivolously planning a trip 5x her liquid net worth before a wedding (another big expense). So the fiancé has:

-planned an XMas trip abroad without OP’s input at all
-put herself in big CC debt that will take at a minimum, 6+ months of pinching pennies (this means OP has to live super frugally and eat/live cheaply if he wants to spend time with his future wife)
-now wants OP to subsidize her trip by paying for her agreed upon separate expenses because she’s realizing her cash flow won’t work out with this new massive expense
-wedding will now have to be funded more by OP or delayed as a result of trip

None of this is acceptable, imo.

67% of 2nd marriages fail. I do not envy you. It must suck to be in love and be going through this.

you guys are all being ridiculous about this financial stuff. His money is gonna slowly become her money. It is the way of things. In exchange he'll get some sweet, 10-year younger p***y and a family. This is completely standard stuff.

This is likely true, and I don't really disagree, but it depends on the person. Some people have very different viewpoints and behaviors before marriage vs after marriage. The main point is that what matters is how Dale and fiancee view things, particularly his fiancee, i.e. will she still act like this after marriage or not. They need to communicate about that and get on the same page, or it is a recipe for disaster like some have been predicting.

No, it wasn't addressed at all. His pre-marriage system was addressed, and not a post-marriage one. We don't even know if he's had conversations with his fiancee about how things will be after they're married. The money isn't even the biggest part (although it's big), the decision-making and communication processes are.

If you are assuming that the post-marriage system will be exactly the same, as well as both of their viewpoints, then yes, there is likely to be future conflict.


Kinda this. His current money is slowly gonna become her money, but after marriage, all his money from that point forward will immediately be her money and vice-versa. Unless there's some detailed pre-nup that hasn't been mentioned, even though I think one was asked about.

OP is still with this girl. WTF man.

Personally, I could never date let alone get into a relationship with a person that bad with money. Sure maybe it's $175 for dance lessons or some **** now but you think that's really going to stop? You think she's just going to go, "Okay, my boyfriend paid for that. I won't ask him to get me out of financial jams I put myself in anymore"?

She has a cash register. All she has to ring the bell to get out of the jam. And when you don't have the cash or refuse to bail her out for the umpteenth time, she's gonna turn on you and make you seem like the bad guy when it's really the other way around. Then it's divorce time for the two of you if you ever get married.

Man, the narrative that people can't become more responsible with money later in life, especially with the aid of a partner, is just demonstrably wrong. With good communication and a desire to do so, it ain't guaranteed but it happens plenty.

That’s true re:marriage but I would have hoped OP would have mentioned that.

Either way, she’s in her early 30s - she’s likely not going to get any better with money and if she won’t defer to Dale’s expertise on the matter now it’s unlikely she ever will, married or not. If Dale’s OK with that, then that’s fine, but it doesn’t sound like he is.




They aren’t married yet and already own a home together - yet she is trying to amend their pre-marriage spending agreement now. Surely Dale would have mentioned if their arrangement is changing upon marriage. Plus, if she wants to break from this agreement now, who’s to say she won’t break a future agreement?

You should discuss it with her, if you're going to be financially and emotionally supporting the child, you guys are a family and should act as one. If you're not going to be doing that, then these trips are fine imo

Dale, how did the conversation to arrive at your current 60/40 financial plan go down?

Was it her idea or your idea? Was there a lot of negotiations or was it agreed upon vwry amicably?