Remarrying later can mean tricky money talks

Marriage inevitably involves financial compromises, both small and large. Joint or individual current accounts? How much is too much to spend on a car? Name-brand or store-brand groceries?

- Martha C. White

When a couple remarry late in life, the stakes get higher. How should the expenses for those bucket-list retirement trips be divided? Whose name goes on the deed to the new condo? Who inherits the house or stock portfolio: the surviving spouse or the deceased's children from a prior marriage?

Many newlywed retirees find that the answers to these questions evolve. For a retired director of a non-profit and a retired IT professional in upstate New York, that meant revisiting their expectations of who would pay for what.

"We just kind of talked about what we were both bringing to the marriage financially," said Ms. Elaina Clapper, a retired director for an agency supporting domestic violence victims. Ms. Clapper, 76, said she had been divorced for roughly 40 years before marrying Mr. David Clapper in 2018.

"For a while, David was paying me a certain amount of money each month" towards household expenses, she said. But in time, the couple, who live in Watertown, New York, decided it would be easier for each partner to be responsible for certain monthly expenses.

"There are certain bills she pays; there are certain bills that I pay," said Mr. Clapper, 67. "We adjust it in a way that we both feel is equitable."

It's a trend that forces couples to consider potentially complicated scenarios regarding how, or if, to merge their finances.

"The later in life you come to a relationship, depending on the complexity of your prior life, the more complicated merging tends to be," said Ms. Jean Chatzky, founder of HerMoney, a multimedia platform for women's financial empowerment.

Older couples are more likely to have retirement accounts, real estate and other assets that could be tricky to mingle and even more difficult to unmingle in the future. One or both partners might have children from a previous relationship, complicating questions of who inherits what.