(no subject)

[bolson]

my recent poll, while full of other fascinating info, primarily fascinates me around the issues of live-in special others. I drew up the poll after thinking, 'What if I buy a house/condo, and then find a girlfriend who wants to move in?'

It was once the situation where my girlfriend wrote me a medium check and I wrote the landlord a big check. "Splitting rent with a live-in SO is fine"
Maybe it'll be OK if I remember that for the most part I won't really (right away) own the place and it's really the same sequence: she writes me a check, I write the bank a big check.

Maybe some of the potential for weirdness comes from the 'sweetheart deal'. How much discount do I give my theoretical SO-renter? Somewhere between 0 and 100%, most likely. I guess that is just another one of those relationship things that would have to be negotiated and there isn't so much a general purpose right answer. Why is everything one of those things?

Comments

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

This is kinda along the lines of what I was thinking.

I was also thinking "Hey, if its really long term, and she pays what effectively amounts to part of the mortgage, why shouldn't she own part of the house"?

[flexagon]

I agree. But the answer, of course, would be "because her name's not on the mortgage; she's been paying rent to soong instead of interest and capital on the loan to the bank." That said, if they then marry the house would probably become joint property anyway (it would in MA).

There are plenty of loving couples who would be willing to do the formal things to protect each other from each other. I'm in one... we split everything 50/50 because neither of us ever got over the typical 5-year-old's idea of what "fair" is. It works for us. ^_^

Anyway, I don't think soong should refrain from buying a house just because he might want to live with a SO someday. Houses can be sold, rented out to others (maybe he'll like her house better), or refinanced to put both names on the mortgage. There are a million ways "out" if the situation becomes weird-but-not-fine.