Ben’s individual position statement, written privately with Mediator.ai. See the full example for context.
What’s happening
Priya and I have been together four years. We’ve been living in my rented apartment for the last two. We decided to buy a house six months ago, started seriously looking three months ago, put in an offer two weeks ago, and it got accepted. Closing is set for May 29, six weeks out. We’re past the point of “let’s think about it.” We have to decide how we’re owning this house.
Purchase price $720,000. Down payment $180,000 (25%). Of that $180k:
- $126,000 is mine: $100k from an account I’ve been building since my twenties, plus $26k I got when my dad passed.
- $54,000 is Priya’s: all of her savings.
So the down payment is 70/30 by contribution.
Where I’m at
I love Priya. I’m not trying to protect myself from her. But I am trying to be honest about a few things that keep going unsaid, and I think writing them down is the only way we get an ownership structure that doesn’t feel like a betrayal later.
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I’ve made more money than her for the last four years. That gap is going to continue: she’s in a field she loves that pays what it pays; I’m in a field that pays more. If we split the mortgage 50/50, it’s a bigger share of her take-home than mine. If we split it proportional to income (65/35 right now), I’m fine with that.
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The down payment gap is going to feel like “his money and her money” for a long time, and I don’t know how to make that feel different without either (a) doing something that’s financially foolish (pretending it’s 50/50 when it isn’t) or (b) doing something that feels transactional.
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We’re not married. We’ve talked about it, neither of us is in a hurry. If we break up (I don’t want to), we need a way out of this house that doesn’t leave either of us destroyed.
What I want
- Equity reflects what each of us put in and continues to put in. Start at 70/30 (down payment), and adjust over time based on mortgage contributions. If she pays 35% of each mortgage payment going forward, her equity share grows. I can sketch the math.
- A buyout mechanism if we split. Either of us can buy the other out at a current market valuation; we use a set method for picking an appraiser. Neither of us can force a sale if the other wants to stay. If neither of us wants to stay, we sell and split equity pro rata.
- Clarity about what happens if we have kids. We don’t have any yet. We want kids. If one of us takes time off to parent and the mortgage payments get unbalanced during that period, that’s not penalized: the absent partner keeps accruing their share as if they’d been paying proportionally. I don’t want Priya to feel like staying home with a baby is a financial move against her.
- We both sign a document that says all of this, ideally before we close, and we keep updating it as things change.
What I’m not willing to do
- Put the house in 50/50 when the down payment is 70/30. I don’t want to pretend our contributions are symmetric when they’re not. It will breed resentment.
- Not write anything down. Every couple I know who did this “informally” ended up with a fight either at the break-up or the sale.
What I’m afraid of
- That asking for a formal document will make Priya feel like I’m hedging against her.
- That I’ll ask for a “fair” structure, she’ll agree, and then resent me in three years for it.
- That we’ll kick the can down the road because the conversation is awkward, close with some vague understanding, and regret it.
What a good outcome looks like
A written agreement both of us can point to, that says what each of us owns, how it changes with mortgage payments, what happens if we break up, what happens if we have kids, and what happens if one of us dies. Something I can read back in five years and still think: yes, that was fair. Something Priya can read back in five years and think the same.