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How Debt Can Destroy a Budding Relationship
Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman's fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days.
Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But, she said, even she didn't know what the true balance was; like a car buyer who focuses on only the monthly payment, she wrote 12 checks a year for about $1,100 each, the minimum possible. She didn't focus on the bottom line, she said,because it was so profoundly depressing.
But as the couple got closer to their wedding day, she took out all the paperwork and it became clear that her total debt was actually about $170,000. "He accused me of lying," said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor's degree in photography. "But if I was lying, I was lying to myself, not to him. I didn't really want to know the full amount."
At a time when even people with no graduate degrees, like Ms. Eastman, often end up six figures in the hole and people getting married for the second time have loads of debt from their earlier lives, it should come as no surprise that debt can bust up engagements. Even when couples disclose their debt in detail, it poses a series of challenges.
Tami Chappell for The New York Times |
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When, exactly, are you supposed to reveal a debt of this size during the courtship? Earlier than you'd disclose, say, a chronic illness?
[See When It's OK to Carry Debt]
Even if disclosure doesn't render you unmarriageable, tricky questions linger. If one person brings a huge debt to a relationship, who is ultimately responsible for making good on the obligation? And if it's$170,000, isn't the more solvent partner going to resent that debt overtime no matter how early the disclosure comes? After all, it will profoundly affect every financial decision, from buying a home to how many children to have.
[此帖子已被 focus 在 2010-9-12 0:08:55 编辑过]