How Marriage and Divorce Shape Financial Futures
Two Ivy League grads. One was born into wealth. The other had a chance to marry into it but didn’t. Guess who struggles now? Part 6 of Poverty and Privilege
Editor’s note: This is the story of Richard, a man with generational wealth, and Lauren, a single mom struggling to keep her household afloat. The twist is they both have Ivy League educations but life has turned out very different for each of them. The story is true but names and certain identifying details have been changed.
Look for it at 10 a.m. Central every Saturday here on Untrickled.
If you’re new to Poverty and Privilege, you’ll want to start with Part I here.
It's a truth universally acknowledged — at least if you read much 18th-century literature — that people once married first and foremost for money.
The young ladies of those days, guided by their mothers, sought to trade in their youth, beauty, childbearing potential and social status by marrying men who could support them and their future children and reinforce or improve their place in society.
The young men, guided by their fathers, sought to engage the life-long services of an attractive and competent woman to provide and rear several heirs and to oversee running the household and their social life.
Beauty and charm were almost never enough. Brides often needed to bring money and social status to the table, too. A plain young woman in possession of a fortune of her own could be the belle of every ball.
Love could be a bonus but was not really the point; rich husbands could take mistresses for that and good women were understood to engage in their “wifely duties” only in service to their husband and to bear children, not for their own personal satisfaction.
That’s probably why couples so often married on relatively short acquaintance. Best to get the deed done before they had a chance to find out how dreary the other actually was.
Should you marry for love or money?
Fast-forward to the 1960s, when “love is all you need” became a wildly popular cultural watchword. But in today’s world of staggering housing costs and student loans, marrying purely for love can feel like a luxury. Your beloved probably does not have a country estate that’s been in the family since the Middle Ages. You’re going to need to scrape together a small fortune together just for the down payment.
So the next time you’re having a glass of sherry at a soirée, best to discreetly inquire how much income each potential suitor has before you make your choice.
Lauren married for love
She’s an Ivy League-educated attorney, and her husband and the father of her children owned a small business that he later sold. He developed a mental illness at about that time and has not worked for years.
When she had to raise three children and handle everything with no meaningful help from him, she had to let go of a high-stress law career and lean increasingly on her family of origin, particularly her mother, Carol. (Read Part 5 for more on how Carol’s divorce still affects Lauren’s finances today.)
In contrast, one of Lauren’s law school boyfriends is a highly successful attorney who owns multiple homes. In retrospect, does she think she should have married him?
“He still doesn't have children, so maybe I’d be wealthy but feel empty inside because being a mom is a huge part of my identity. I would feel unfulfilled without children. I certainly would have financial peace of mind and fewer worries. But, given the choice, I'd still choose my modest and often hectic life with my children, even with the marital problems and financial difficulties my relationship choice caused.”
Lauren still believes in love, but with a caveat
“I married for love this time. In my next life, I should probably try marrying for money to see how that works out,” she joked.
“My serious answer is that people who say money can't buy happiness are people who’ve never been poor. Money absolutely can assuage all kinds of difficulties. But at the end of the day, I would say marry for love but be judicious in your choice.”
She missed several red flags before she married her husband.
“Very early on he said to me that he didn’t need any material possessions to be happy, and he would be more content living in a tiny little house somewhere than a mansion. I thought it was an expression of humility and it was endearing at the time, but in retrospect, it was probably a red flag in the sense that he just didn’t have long term drive or motivation to provide a future for me and his future children or to build generational wealth like Richard has.”
The man she married, who seemingly didn’t care about money, nevertheless expected Lauren, a full-time law student at the time, to contribute half the cost of all their house payments. She could only do this by taking out more student loans. He never shared his earnings or his financial information with Lauren, so she often had to turn to her parents for financial help.
Growing up, her family didn’t push her toward financial security through marriage. But looking back, she can see how money shaped her marriage anyway.
“I think people probably were surprised about our pairing, not so much on a class-basis (he never attended college, and remains cynical about education in general), but because we were (and are) very different — our approaches to education being only one of the ways.”
Still, she believes “a supportive, empathetic, caring and forgiving partnership is really all people need to be happy with one another.”
Richard says he married up
Even though he brought intergenerational wealth to the table and his wife did not, “I always say that I married ‘up’ because I admire and adore my partner for too many reasons to name.
“She is a brilliant thinker, a gifted musician, a gourmet chef, a respected teacher and writer, and the funniest person I know. We met in college and have been together ever since. I’m a decent catch, but she is extraordinary. I do believe she was looking for more financial stability than she had been accustomed to. My family is also much nicer and less judgmental than her family of origin. And when you are in the top 1 or 2 percent of people in terms of wealth, what are the odds that you will find the love of your life in your own little country club circle?”
When asked whether he believes in marrying for love or money, he replied, “Love absolutely. You can always earn the money.”
Some of the one-liners about marriage that Richard grew up with include:
It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich person as a poor person. Also: rich or poor, it’s nice to have money. (Both meant to be taken lightly, he said.)
You can marry more money in five minutes than you can earn in a lifetime.
But … when you marry for money, you earn every penny.
His family, he said, discouraged its members from looking at wealth as being all-important. “We were always told that we should make our own way in the world, but we also enjoyed a safety net should we need it.”
Enter assortative mating
Socio-economically, more people today seek to marry someone they see as their equals.
The doctor doesn’t marry the nurse in his office; he marries another doctor. But the woman who a generation ago might have set her sights on a nursing degree with the hope of being able to marry a doctor can now go to medical school herself.
Women no longer feel they must choose a wealthy man in order to live a financially comfortable life; they can earn money themselves. This has led to a panic among traditional men who want to be the breadwinner and to marry a woman whose primary ambition is to keep house and raise his children.
These so-called “manosphere” and “trad wife” discussions dominate some corners of the internet favored by incels, religious fundamentalists and the political right.
People’s financial expectations for marriage are often wildly different; some couples throw all their money into a common pot and others Venmo each other their share of the groceries every week.
Some men expect their wives to handle all the tasks that traditionally fell to women, even if she’s working just as many hours and earning just as much money as he is; such men — if they are introspective enough — should ask themselves why any woman with earning potential would willingly yoke herself to such a man.
On the other hand, some educated and highly paid women still expect their husbands to lead by making more money than she does.
No two marriages are alike
When someone proposes marriage, maybe the answer shouldn’t be a simple “yes” or “no.”
Maybe the response should be: What kind of marriage are you proposing, exactly?
Will we pool our money or keep separate accounts? Will we split childcare evenly, or will one of us actually carry that load? Will we both strive for growth — in love, in careers, in life — or will one of us stand still while the other stretches to cover the gaps?
Because the marriage itself — its terms, its shape, its happiness — will determine not just whether a couple stays together, but whether either or both people thrive.
Lauren questions her decisions and works hard to make the best of things. Richard considers himself the luckiest guy in the world.
Read the continuing series:
Part 1, Unlikely Allies in an Unequal America
Part 2, The Country Club Lunch
Part 3, One Family’s Fall From the Middle Class
Part 4, Billable Hours Don’t Pause for Birth
Part 6, How Marriage and Divorce Shape Financial Futures
About Michelle Teheux
I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.
All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park
For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.
Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.
When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.
Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.
My marriage proposal wasn’t very romantic, but was perhaps wiser than I realized. After 3 1/2 weeks of dating, while eating at a pizza restaurant, I said, “We should look for reasons not to get married.” Over the next five weeks, we did just that, talking through a lot of things and testing whether we could drive four hours without running out of things to talk about. We missed some issues that caused arguments later, but at least we’d covered topics beyond romance. Only then did we tell our families that we were going to get married. We’ve made it 38 years so far.
I'm incredibly lucky. My husband takes care of the house (and the cooking!) while also working as a writer (he has three new books out this year). I think what I do for a living is incredibly easy, but I've always been a good manager.