Published: May 10, 2018

Collaborative research by Leeds and the University of Texas at Austin shows the pros and cons for couples of unequal division of responsibility for money matters.听When couples begin their relationships, they naturally divide up tasks and give one partner more responsibility than the other for finances. The person who gets the job as the household鈥檚听鈥渃hief financial officer鈥 is often just a partner who is doing less in other shared tasks. 听At the beginning of the relationship the 鈥渉ousehold CFO鈥 and the 鈥渘on-CFO鈥 do not differ in how much they know about money or in how good they are with money. But the longer the couple stays together, the more different the household CFO and non-CFO become in financial knowledge and their ability to make financial decisions on their own.

The authors conclude that these role divisions are not a problem as long as the couple stays together. As long as the couple stays together, it is the expertise of the CFO that matters to household financial outcomes. However, the hidden risk is that the non-CFO becomes increasingly vulnerable if he or she were forced to start making money decisions on his or her own. And since every relationship ends in either divorce or death of one of the partners, if one has been relying on one鈥檚 partner for a really long period of time, the transition is going to be rough.

Read more听about the impact of the research on evaluating a couples financial competency over time.