Marriages could be proposed by God but are kept together by banks and financial lawyers.
Mel Gibson aside, that must be cursing his chance of being captured on camera while having a little fun on both sides and will now have to pay his angry wife through his nose, for most couples, it’s the buck which often prevents them from walking out of a relationship.
This is especially true for mature relationships; in simpler terms, marriages which are past the seven-year-hitch and possess the cross EMIs to carry.
Money, honey
With most high-earning young couples spending freely, loans run high on credit cards, houses, vehicles and even exotic holidays. And many couples prefer to apply for loans together to get the maximum sum. And when one of them decides to end the connection, repaying the loan by one spouse or dividing liabilities and resources between two people can be challenging and may take weeks to be exercised.
“Most working professionals may think twice before ending a marriage in case a joint loan is involved, especially a mortgage on a house. Reworking loan documents and untangling themselves financially may appear nightmarish. This gives couples the crucial time needed to work out a relationship,” states Prateek Kumar, a loan-management attorney attached with a dominant nationalised bank.
Agrees Janki Singh, a marriage counselor, “Often couples quit a relationship after a bad fight. Sometimes, a little time can save a marriage. If time is the variable, working out monetary liabilities can provide them that buffer.”
Better to stay on
Anxiety as a result of debts can break a marriage but on the flip side, it may also keep two people together. “My husband and I had obtained long loans for home and car at the start of our marriage. But after about 10 years we realised work pressure had shot us apart. We started having ugly struggles and one evening we decided to terminate the relationship.
My husband moved from our residence. After three days we met back to sort out the financial technicalities and recognized we had difficult loans that had to be repaid by just two earning people. And we weren’t sure when our new partners would share the burden and the strain with us.
That made us take a look at our union again,” states Pinki Arora, functioning with a media home. Today, after a year, Pinki and her husband Ashok are back as a couple and are reworking their relationship. They vouch that the loans stored their union!
