Poly 2.0 - forming a household

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DaisyFay

New member
I am about to form a household with several kids and more than two adults.

I would like some advice on how to build a shared economy and divide the housework. Does anyone have experience with this?

I have been married for more than ten years. We pretty much put all the money we make into one account. Each person gets to spend a certain amount on clothes, hobbies and whatever they feel like. The rest of the money we use for expenses like the house, food, health care, common vacations, activities with the kids and so on. We have insurance, so if one of us dies, the other person would be able to keep the house. We also have an agreement on how to divide money and belongings if we ever were to part. We used a model from a book about everyday feminism for this.

Are there any books (or other exhaustive resources) on this subject and how to solve it, if there are more than two adults? In my country more than two people can not have a home mortgage. Is there any way to reduce the financial risk and lack of legal acknowledgement to the people who are not part of my first marriage?

How do you divide housework fairly when each one of us has different abilities, health and working hours?

(As English not my first language, please be patient with my grammar and spelling and stuff.)
 
You might want to go over to the blog of Bluebird here (in our Journal section). Somewhere in the last three years or so, she included a second male partner in her living arrangements and they bought a large house. Her way of doing it might not work for you, but it's a good example of how one nesting V did it.

She also just legally divorced her long-time husband (but didn't break up), and married her boyfriend, because she needs some expensive medical care and her bf (new husband) has better health insurance.

She doesn't have young kids, but she does financially help her adult kids in one way or another.

I don't share my home full time with both my partners. My gf goes to her bf's house on the weekends, and my bf comes here. My gf and I share the rent on this place. Her bf has a mortgage on his home. My bf pays rent in a home belonging to his aunt (where his brother and a couple cousins also live).

Bank account arrangements are easier. Many poly people might have a group account for rent/mortgage, home maintenance, utilities, maybe car payments. Then they each have a personal account for their own stuff, clothing, personal items, food, entertainment, dating, maybe their own personal car's gas and maintenance. If there are children involved, the money for their care would be in an account owned by their actual parents.

And yes, who pays or does what depends on the finances and health/abilities/talents/skills of each person. Simply put, here are our arrangements. My bf is younger than me and has less money, but he's physically strong and motivated, and contributes greatly to the heavy yard work, housework, home maintenance and laundry. I do most of the cooking and general cleaning and basic regular gardening (watering, weeding, harvesting, canning). I keep on top of people's medical appointments and I guess I am our social secretary. My gf manages our finances/bills and everything electronic. She also does small repairs/upgrades around the house.

A lot of these arrangements do not differ from how you'd do things in a two-adult household. The main thing our society isn't set up for is legal stuff like insurance, home ownership, hospital visiting rights, child custody. I think most of us wing all that and tailor it as best as we can to our individual needs.
 
Magdlyn said:
The main thing our society isn't set up for is legal stuff like insurance, home ownership, hospital visiting rights, child custody.
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OP could always move to Somerville, Arlington, or Cambridge, lol, but they would need a collective high six-figure income to afford a house there...
 
Hello DaisyFay,

One thing to keep in mind is, that each person is unique, with their own strengths, needs, and weaknesses. When forming a poly household, you have to capitalize on these unique strengths and make room for the unique weaknesses. It's not a one-size-fits-all situation. I live in a shared household with two poly companions. We have worked out a unique system that works for us. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to answer.

Regards,
Kevin T.
 
I have talked about that sort of thing a fair amount in my Journey Blog here.
Reading through older blogs may give you some ideas of what we have discussed over the years.

Glad to have you in the conversations!
JaneQ
 
I went poking around to find some threads where I remember we had some lively conversations about this. If you use the search feature, you can find discussions about housing, economics, etc. I know we have had some good ones.

If you find something that you would like to talk about further you can open up an old discussion OR link to the old discussion and discuss here.

(... JaneQ wanders off to go collect some old threads and put them in a vase for you...)

Family Style Living In Poly (thread from 2015)

finances-and-the-mundane-details-of-being-a-poly-family (thread with links to other threads)

family-style-living-in-poly

... Three little twigs to get you started.

I used the Search tab Keyword: cohabitating (set everywhere) and told it it look for posts by me: JaneQSmythe. I got two pages of results of threads that I have participated in on that topic (maybe 15 ? results per page - can't see what it is set at) and picked a few for you that seemed relevant. (Not trying to limit you to only threads that I participated in!!!)

LovingRadiance used to post a lot about her domestic set up, as did RedPepper.

Also, there is a website that does look at poly legal issues state by state (will find). I don't know which country you live but ... only two people can be on a home mortgage? Three siblings can't buy a vacation home together? (My two sisters and I own our family's old hunting shack and outhouse - no mortgage required, it's basically worthless). Multiple people go in to buy property for all sorts of reasons-- business, rentals, etc. You form a business or partnership LLC or S-corp, like if you and two friends were buying a duplex to live in one side and rent the other. IANAL and laws vary by country and state.

As to division of labor, yeah, that gets ironed out by the people involved, just like any family or roommate situation. In my world, I work, earn money and do finance stuff, MrS does household stuff, when Dude was here he did car/house maintenance stuff. For stuff no one wants to do, you either split it, it doesn't get done, or you pay someone else to do it. For legal/finance stuff, you treat it like a business and do power-of-attorney documents for healthcare, etc.

I am a firm believer that every person needs some amount of time, space, and money to do with what they want and don't need to account to ANYONE else for. If you want to spend your fun money on makeup and shoes and I want to save for my Mars tourism ticket, fine. If you want to decorate your room with rainbows and unicorns and throw sparkle-parties and I want to live in my room like a hermit and not let anyone in, also, okay Respect that people have different desires, needs, preferences. Respect boundaries. Respect privacy. Don't micromanage, and remember that fair and equal are not the same thing.
equal+v+fair.jpg

JaneQ

P.S. Apparently I am in some weird posting mood today -Harvard Law Review article about Poly Ordinances
 
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ref2018 said:
And both of those imploded with dysfunction, so maybe they're some good lessons on how *not* to do certain things.
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Hells yes! Mine as well!

See, we can talk and type and set things up just so right..check every box...do this/don't do that....

And then life......HAPPENS!!!! And we are talking about people, individuals, unique and beautiful - and messy and not-perfect and frustrated. Because that is what life is like, you figure some stuff out, you glop it together and make it work (or not or whatever). And what looks good on paper turns out to be ugly, and what you thought was just a "nice touch" turned out to be the linchpin that held it all together...

We aren't writing a screenplay - we are living our lives, we are sharing our experiences, and maybe someone somewhere will learn something from our mistakes so they don't have actually make the EXACT same mistake in exactly the same way. Don't worry tho @ref2018 - Mistakes Will Be Made.

The brilliant bit is...what was someone elses's Biggest Mistake Ever Made just might be someone else's answer to life the universe and everything, so...you never really know how that is going to go down.

Jane("Forty-Two")Q

PS. think we'll learn anything earth-shattering in the Root Cause Analysis?
 
Hey There,

My journal definitely focuses on my shared living situation a lot, and we are in the middle of switching things around right now.

I too, would love to see a book about this stuff, but I honestly have not found any resources to be very helpful. I think this is because a lot of it is location dependent. Laws differ depending on where people live, and insurance varies by company/government involvement. I'm sorry I can't recommend anything to read!

Right now, my legal husband is 100% responsible for the mortgage on our shared home. He added me to the deed as a 50% owner when purchasing the house last year. This was before I was married to him. At that time, I was married to my now ex-husband. (We're still together.)

We left my now ex-husband out of that arrangement, as he had 100% ownership of his own house. Now he's sold that house, we've legally decoupled, and are juggling ideas right at this very moment to try and make things equitable between us, since we all live in the new house. As it stands, if my new husband and I were to pass away at the same time (car accident, meteor strike) my ex-husband would be homeless, as in Maryland where we live, ownership would fall to my new husband's parents, who don't even know my ex-husband/other current partner exists.

Life insurance is also a mess at the moment. My new hubby has two adult stepchildren, with a granddaughter from each. I have three adult children, and only one of them also belongs to my other partner (my ex-husband).

Ahhhhh!

I wish I could be helpful to your situation, but that only thing I am doing now is making spreadsheets and having lots of discussions. I am looking at a major surgical procedure happening this month, so I HAVE to get some of this stuff nailed down. Feel free to follow along in my journal and see what happens. I'm interested to discover this myself! I'm hoping to get the insurance stuff posted about tonight or tomorrow, as we're having a big talk together tonight.
 
We are newly stepping into this, but have agreed to keep our finances separate. I learned that lesson the hard way with a past partner who overspent and was not honest about it.

All but one of the children are grown and flown. All know about, and are supportive of, our family structure.

In the current situation, Sir and Meow, who are legally married, take care of each other's financial needs. The house is theirs, in their name.
I have moved to the property in a tiny home. I pay 1/3 of the utilities.
Meow and I go grocery shopping together, but we each buy our own groceries. We take turns hosting meals.
I offered to pay them rent, but they refuse to accept. If they did, I would.

We talked about what if something happened to one or both of them. I don't want to lose my home on the homestead. They are going to make a will that states that if something happens to them, I can live on the land for the rest of my natural life, paying property taxes. (The land is paid off.) And then, after I pass away, their children will get the land. That is fair. I have my own resources for my own children.

As far as chores, we help each other as needed. No need to complicate things. We have homestead animals and we have each agreed to take charge of one set of them. (I have the chickens.) :)
 
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