Joint Accounts
My Partner’s Inheritance Is Making Us Fight All the Time
He received a lot of money when his father died, and now it feels like the power balance in our relationship is skewed
Dear Joint Accounts,
I’ve been with my partner for more than a decade, and while he’s been in debt the whole time I’ve known him, it has never really been an issue between us. I paid the lion’s share of our expenses, he made regular payments toward his debt, and we never really felt the need to discuss it.
About six months ago, his father died, and my partner came into a lot of money, enough to clear his debt and significantly change his life. Since then, our relationship shifted along with the balance of funds. We’ve been fighting all the time — not about money, but I can’t shake the feeling he became less tolerant of me once he got his inheritance. Since he’s still grieving, is there a way I can bring this up sensitively, while still letting him know that things have to change?
Sincerely,
Thrown off by a Windfall
It might be tempting to assume the worst here: that the sudden influx of money has changed your partner into a different person. But the likeliest cause of this new…
