Why you’d have to be MAD to marry in later life
Many will disagree. But LIZ HODGKINSON says it’s a recipe for financial chaos and bitter family rifts
FOR 13 years, my partner John never ‘put a ring on it’, as the saying goes. he never proposed, he never even suggested marriage.
We never lived together, never owned anything jointly. We lived three miles apart and ‘dated’ for more than a decade, sometimes staying at mine, sometimes at his. I paid my way, he paid his.
Was I frustrated at his apparent obstinacy and lack of commitment? Absolutely not. John knew that I loved him dearly, but I didn’t want to marry him. If he wanted to marry me, he wisely kept quiet about it.
The reason? We were both divorced and I had two teenage boys when we met. If I had married John, I would have been worried about causing a gigantic mess by sharing our finances.
Could I be sure who would get what from my estate when I died? even if I’d made a will stating my boys should get everything, there could have been disputes over my expensive flat in Notting hill, and all the other shrewd property investments I’d accumulated over the years.
In all likelihood, my pension would have gone to John, too. Would my boys have been comfortable with that? I didn’t want to take the risk.
To be frank, if I’d died first and something had gone wrong with our plans, I would not have wanted my money, as I saw it, to go to his relatives — and he felt the same. By keeping everything separate, we could just enjoy a fun, romantic relationship unsullied by the corrupting influence of eventual inheritance problems.
As it turned out, John died first. Thirteen years ago, suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 72. Despite my shock and grief, I was comforted by how clean and clear everything was. his will was totally undisputed, which means I remained firm friends with his former wife, niece and nephews.
No bitter wrangling and expensive exchanges of terse solicitors’ letters. John and I definitely did the right thing. I believe no divorcee should remarry if she has children and a few assets of her own.
But it seems I am in the minority, as middleage remarriages are booming. The latest figures show that in 2014, there was a record number of 6,638 weddings where the bride was aged 55 to 60.
And cold, hard cash, it seems, rather than overwhelming passion is driving this trend.
According to the research by Investec Wealth & Investment, the majority of remarriages were between divorced people, and almost half those women admitted that a key reason for their nuptials was to get their hands on their partner’s money and pension pot.
THIS has disaster written all over it. I know, from watching it happen with worrying regularity among my friends, how utterly wretched these will wrangles can be.
how different my situation was from a male friend’s, who had remarried in middleage soon after his first wife died leaving three young children. A few years later, he died, too, leaving everything to his second wife, whose own children were the beneficiaries when she then died about five years ago.
Meanwhile, his children, by now middle-aged, got absolutely nothing — not even a picture. This may have been perfectly legal, but it was hardly fair.
Another friend, whose deceased father had married again, went to visit his elderly stepmother recently and was told pointblank that he would get nothing when she died.
he wondered whether he could contest this, certain that his father would have liked him to be remembered, but was told there was nothing he could do.
This was a case of the stepmother being deliberately wicked, but I have many remarried friends currently tying themselves up in knots trying to be fair to offspring from their first marriages, and it is not easy.
For in many cases, remarriage confers an automatic right to the new spouse’s pension income after they die. There may be ways to stop this by putting clear instructions in your will, but the rules are complex.
Another important reason for the sudden rise in remarriages is that husbands and wives can inherit without paying inheritance tax, as nothing passed between spouses is included when the estate is tallied up. The matter becomes complicated when children from earlier relationships are beneficiaries, as then inheritance tax can kick in.
This is a situation currently facing a friend, now in his 70s, who has a daughter from his first marriage and grandchildren.
he remarried aged 50 and bought a house jointly with his new, younger wife. They have mirror wills, which mean they both intend to leave everything to one another, and as the much older spouse no longer in good health, he is likely to die first. Will his daughter ever get anything? Probably not, because the only way she would benefit is if his eventual widow sold the house and out of the goodness of her heart passed on some of the money to her stepdaughter.
he has decided against leaving any money to his daughter because the inheritance tax rules he would have to follow are so complicated. There are no children from his second marriage.
‘It’s only money,’ he says, not very convincingly, adding that her mother will probably leave her something and she will have to be content with that. his daughter, though, is not too thrilled about being cut out of his will, and her relationship with her father has become cold and distant. They are practically estranged, and he now hardly ever sees his grandchildren.
All thrown away for late-life lunacy! And, as with so many people remarrying, none of this occurred to him at the time.
In another case, two middleaged friends remarried and, at first, sensibly decided to retain their separate homes. In time, though, this didn’t feel like a real marriage and they put their resources together to buy a lovely old manor house, ‘in a moment of madness’ the husband said.
Indeed, especially as there are three adult children from the first marriages who also have their own children. Who will inherit? They have yet to work that out.
None of these strictures applies with young, first marriages, but the financial and inheritance implications with second marriages can be so problematic that surely nobody in their right mind would go down that road.
WHEN I first married, my husband and I had nothing at all. By the time we divorced, though, it was a different story. We had a valuable joint home, future pensions and children.
We divided the assets 50:50 and that was that, a fair division of the spoils. The pensions were too small to come into it.
By then I was in my early 40s, a grown-up, independent woman earning my own income. I’d have considered it beneath my dignity to remarry for money.
But if you must remarry when you are old enough to know better, at least make a decision about what will happen to your finances before you tie the knot, says helen Medhurst-Jackson of Investec Wealth & Investment.
‘It’s important to agree on an inheritance plan if there are children from previous relationships,’ she adds.
It doesn’t often occur to remarrying couples to do this, but one female friend did think things out beforehand — she decided to give her daughter an advance inheritance in the form of a mortgage-free flat. This ensured two vital things: one, that her daughter would not be left high and dry when her mother died; and two, that she would not harbour any resentment about a new relationship her mother might have. In order for her to avoid paying inheritance tax, her mother had to live for seven years after making the gift, which, thankfully, she has now done. There are no simple answers. If you want your own children to inherit, you must write that explicitly into your will. And if you don’t want to run the risk of complications and disputes, never be lured into a second marriage at all — especially if you have the kind of financial assets that could cause permanent family rifts.
It is some comfort to know for a certainty that when I die, the most important people in my life will inherit whatever I have to leave, even though my sons believe they will have a long wait yet. ‘You’re guaranteed to live until you’re 98,’ they sigh.
But at least they know they won’t be losing out to a ghastly stepfather — or his family.