by Pay Dirt is Slate’s cash recommendation column. Have a query? Send it to Lillian, Athena, and Elizabeth here. (It’s nameless!)
Dear Pay Dirt,
Since the latest demise of my mom, I’ve been questioning if I should preserve my inheritance separate property or commingle it with the joint accounts I share with my husband.
We don’t have any debt, personal actual property, and have money/shares/401(okay)s that complete to round $1.25 million. My inheritance is about $100,000 from my mother, however the bulk of her property is in a belief that I will obtain after the demise of my father. My share of that will probably be about $1 million. Mom believed strongly that I should preserve it separate property if that makes any distinction. Should I even let my husband know of the inheritance if I received’t be commingling?
—Missing My Mom
Dear Missing My Mom,
I’m sorry on your loss. You should observe your mom’s needs and preserve your inheritance separate from marital belongings—don’t put it right into a joint account and even use it to keep up shared property. Your mom might have been express about conserving it separate property as a result of she understands the power of having your own money in a marriage. This is particularly true if you’re a heterosexual couple. Remember, it wasn’t that way back that married women weren’t allowed to have their very own financial institution accounts. Even although we’ve come a great distance with gender equality, some statistics show that women’s household income fell by 41 percent following a divorce after age 50, whereas males’s fell by solely 23 %. Other researchers have discovered that the poverty rate for separated women was 27 percent, practically 3 times that for divorced males.
Keeping the cash separate is a type of insurance coverage for you. Relationships (and folks) change and inheritances are handled otherwise beneath divorce legislation in most states so long as it’s not commingled. For instance, if you happen to put your inheritance right into a joint checking account, it could be thought-about a shared asset and divided equally in case of a divorce. In addition to defending your belongings within the case of a divorce, it could additionally assist to guard the cash out of your husband’s collectors. I would converse privately with an lawyer licensed in your state, so that you perceive methods to preserve the cash separate within the eyes of the legislation.
As for telling your husband, I would point out that you simply’re inheriting some cash and that your mom needed you to maintain it as a separate nest egg. No want to supply actual numbers. I would solely talk about the million {dollars} within the belief as soon as your father passes—there’s no motive to carry up cash that isn’t yours but (and relying on the kind of belief, you might by no means see the cash in case your father wants it for residing bills).
—Lillian
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