Husband begs for 50/50 ownership of new house; wife says, 'No, I got this.' AITA? UPDATED
"AITA for pushing a 50% ownership on the house that me and my wife want to buy?"
Me and my wife are looking to buy a house to live in. Her savings are 4x mine and we will contribute all our savings to buy the house with a 30-year mortgage. We are looking to spend around $1.3m.
My wife wants the property to be divided in accordance to what each of us paid and I feel that this is completely unfair for me because of the following reasons:
For context, we've been married for 8 years and we both had no savings when we started dating in 2013. we also have 2 kids together.
Her salary was always higher than mine by about 30% but we both paid equally for everything. I also have to support my mom and dad in retirement which means she was able to accumulate much more than I did.
She knew that was the case since day 1. Having said that, I tend to spend a bit on my hobbies whereas she was focused on savings as much as possible.
My wife also wants to buy in a more affluent area which is her preference. She's like, 'I got this. I worked for this.' While I don't really mind getting a lower mortgage and paying less interest instead.
I feel like we should be thinking about this as a family but she thinks I am being extremely selfish and that she isn't being treated fairly for all the hard work and sacrifices that she did. So please tell me, AITA?
Then, OP provides the following updates:
UPDATE 1: I will pay around 100k of the house and my wife will pay approx. 400k. Our monthly mortgage payment will be around $6,500. I have to support my parents because they have made some bad decisions in their life and live in a third-world country with no pension.
The alternative is for them to starve to death. I am not sure why my hobbies are important, but I play video games, learning guitar and play golf once a month. I also do 100% of the cooking and grocery shopping, 90% of daycare and school drop offs and pickups and help clean around the house.
UPDATE 2: We live in Australia. I feel that o have to clarify that my wife has definitely sacrificed a lot for the family and she also contributes massively to child care and keeping the house clean. We do equal amount of chores, but more focused on where we are more efficient.
I also make about 165k a year and my wife makes about 225k a year. After rent, childcare, bills and groceries (plus parents for me) she gets to save considerably more each month. I also don't think I have expensive hobbies and I am not sure why that was the assumption.
Edit 4: We never had a joint account because my wife insisted to be independent from day 1 and to have her own finances separate which made sense when we were dating but we never discussed the arrangement again when we got married.
I tried to talk to her about a joint account when our eldest was born but she had more savings by then and didn't want to, so I dropped it.
Edit 5: The base mortgage will be paid equally but because my wife will have additional disposable income post mortgage payment, she will probably end up contributing mote to close out the mortgage earlier.
Let's see what readers thought.
elouspit writes:
NTA. I’m so confused on how this matters at all. It sounds like you’re both planning to get divorced and will be forced to answer this question of who owns more? If so why take this next step.
You’re either married 100% or not. So just buy the house together and stay married or get divorced and go your separate ways. I’m interested to hear how other big purchases have been decided? Cars, vacations, etc.. has this percentage conversation happened before?
dracogu7 writes:
I'm kind of the fence in this one, since marriages are supposed to share their savings (or atleast it's a thing in Spain). However, it does make sense that if you both had separate savings all along, it wouldn't make sense to her to put most of the money and only get 50% of the ownership. So I'm going to say YTA.
inseffum writes:
NTA. Everything you earn during the marrige shouldnt be "your money and my money" It should only be "our money". Previous assets, savings and inheritence are ofcourse not included.
If one spouse makes less than the other, so what? it makes up for itself somewhere else. You are a team against the world, it is not a FFA.
You want it to be 50/50 and she wants it to be based on relative income. The solution is that you dont buy anything that costs more then what you can pay half of.
bugaboo8 writes:
ESH. Splitting all the bills 50/50 isn't fair to you. Splitting the house 50/50 isn't fair to her. You spending your leisure money on your parents and hobbies while she saved hers to get a home isn't fair to her.
It also sounds like the work around the home is not 50/50, and you do the majority of it. Since you have money, I'll assume you work outside the home along with being the main homemaker.
That isn't fair to you. So....it's 2 unfairs to her, and 2 unfairs to you. I would suggest both of you sit down and figure out a better way to split your finances and household duties before you buy a home.
skaj7 writes:
Issue here is. Your finances werent combined. I dont think who makes more should matter as it is unfair and not always the other parties foult. But you didnt combine the finances.
No those are our house savinga those are out fun money ( that you would use for hobbies/parents ). You guys did not save for a house as a team, nor share expenses as a team, so why should it be a team purchase now. It is now too late for joined finances ( for this purchase ).
What you can do is trying to talk her more into getting a house you can both contribute more equally to. And maybe working out a plan for an even pay for the house besides the innitial cost.
Which would make ownership in % closer. But your wife did not get to enjoy hobbies nor support her own parents. YTA ( rly i dont get why so many people dont combine finances with alloted budgets for those kind of stuffs, this type of problem is so freakin common with seperate finances.)