…but only as long as she has her own income, doesn’t it?
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True, but as long as she does, I save money because of her, even though I pay 50% more of our shared costs (we split them 60:40, because I earn 50% more than her).
Should we ever have kids, she wants to be a stay-at-home mom and start working 20-40% again after a while. So it’s a no-brainer for me, and IMO the morally correct thing to do, that she’s entitled to half of what I make.
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Seems to me 60:40 would be more fair. 1:1 replacing her old income potential.
I might be old school (not old) but I think it’s not worth sharing life together if it’s not worth sharing money together.
Everything earned during a marriage (or for that matter a relationship) belongs to both parties equally. It’s very easy to say one person earns more so they should take more, but one needs to think like a team.
For example if there is a doubles tennis team (or mixed doubles) and they win, the reward is equally shared between the two team members. It doesn’t depend on who had more shots.
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Same if they lose. Both get nothing.
I’ll see myself out.
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I mean, if you earn 50% more than she, and she’s entitled to half of what you make (and you, to keep it fair, to half of what she makes, I suppose), shouldn’t you split your expenses differently then? 
Let’s take this example:
- Your yearly income: 150’000
- She is entitled to half of what you make: 75’000
- You wife’s yearly income: 100’000
- You, vice versa, are entitled to half of what she makes: 50’000
- Your spousal financial equalisation would make for a net transfer of 25’000 from you to her
I mean, really fair under that premise would seem a 50-50 split of costs/expenses post-transfer?!
Put differently: If you want to compensate the income difference between the two of - while entitling her to 50% of what you make and vice versa - through the payment of shared expenses…
Rather than sharing by a fixed 60-40 percentage split of shared expenses, shouldn’t you just pay a fixed yearly amount of 25’000 more than she?
- Your yearly expenses: 100’000
- Your share: 62’500
- Her share: 37’500
Or, with lower expenses:
- Your yearly expenses: 75’000
- Your share: 50’000
- Her share: 25’000
Both would compensate the income difference through sharing of expenses and give her the 50% of what you make (that you said she’s entitled to).
TL;DR: What I’m trying to say: If you want to share your income and shared expenses equally (“half of mine is yours”), isn’t it a fallacy to apply the same percentage ratio to expenses as you do to income?
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That’s actually a smart comment, seen how many don’t like what happen in a divorce.
“Entitled to half” was under the condition that we would have kids. I can’t and don’t want to calculate how much her time spent raising the kid(s) is worth. So what we’d earn would be distributed equally. We’d need to agree on how much we want to put away and what we get as monthly allowance.
Marriage without kids? Separated assets would be the most logical thing to do.
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For married couples, I understand legally no one is entitled to 50% of income, but if you should divorce to 50% of assets accumulated during marriage.
If you exclude this split via contract or are not married, I agree a single-income, all but married couple with kids should make sure both are taken care of financially in case of separation.
Just to provide a different perspective: I had fully combined finances even before kids. So there’s no single understanding about what is fair or most logical 
Actually no contract will protect you against alimony, it only works for your savings. Alimony to ensure that everyone in the family has enough resources to live on after divorce will be reviewed / decided by a judge.
Can’t stress this enough. Firstly because IMHO the time spent with the kids should matter more than the time one give to a corporation not matter the $$$ it brings. Especially since there’s big diminishing return on this because in the end, kids won’t give a damn if we earned 250K instead of 120K. What they want and need is love and quality time with their parents. They need this to build a strong foundation for their future. And you can’t put a number on this.
Then, keep in mind that kids are really funny in the sense that you don’t know what kind of package you’ll get. You may raise them with the same rules, you could still get different outcomes on the level of difficulty you’ll face. Some are easy to take care of and some other will give you a very hard time and suck out all the life from you either because of their strong personality or/and because they will sleep-deprived you to death for a few years. 
I may be a bit out of topic, but please, be sure to be 100% aligned with your fiancée on what it means for both of you to become a parent and the expectation you may have from each others.
Because a mis-match on this topic could really be a one-way ticket to divorce city.
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Immediately thought of this thread after starting to watch the video (Prenup topic).
The Divorce Expert: 86% Of People Who Divorce Remarry! Why Sex Is Causing Divorces! - YouTube
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Wow. Thanks for the video link. The guy had me bawling my eyes out by the end of the interview.
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