|
|
 |
|
| Features |
For Richer, For Poorer - Marriages of Fiscal Unequals
Dwight Cass
07/01/2004
|
Susan kept her family’s affluence a secret from Philip* all through their
two-year courtship. The granddaughter of a successful oil magnate, Susan had met
the self-described “poor kid with a scholarship,” in college. “I thought they
were a middle-class family, struggling to send their daughter to college, like
most Americans,” Philip recalls. Susan revealed the extent of her family fortune
only after he proposed. The news did not sit well with Philip; his displeasure
with Susan’s lack of candor reveals itself in his telling of the tale even now, decades
later. “I would never have dated her if I had known about the wealth,” he
asserts, “because I knew a marriage like that would never work out. And, of
course, it didn’t.”
 Philip lays the blame for the couple’s eventual divorce
on their inability to reconcile divergent personal and family values, a problem
he believes is endemic to relationships between individuals whom wealth advisors
and counselors have dubbed “fiscal unequals.” Like many couples in similar
straits, they did not develop early on in their life together the trust and
candor required to discuss their values and attitudes toward wealth in order to
prevent their potentially different views from overwhelming their relationship.
This is a common problem, and because of it, marriages between fiscal
unequals are often at risk. While no agency collects statistics on the success
or failure of marriages between fiscal unequals, the prevalence of second and
third marriages among our friends, families and colleagues testifies to the
fragility of these relationships.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
