On paper, and in private
The offer was accepted two weeks ago: $720,000, 25% down. Of that $180k, Ben is putting in $126k. He’s been saving since his twenties, and his dad left him $26k when he passed. Priya is putting in $54k, which is every dollar she has.
The split on paper is 70/30. The private version, put another way: if the question is “what would it cost you to walk away,” Ben would still have a cushion. Priya would have almost none.
Ben wants the split to reflect what each of them actually put in, not pretend it’s even when it isn’t, and he doesn’t want to spend the next five years watching that pretense quietly harden into resentment. Priya wants the agreement to say out loud what she’s actually risking. She isn’t contributing 30%: for her, it’s 100% of what she has. And she wants protection against the things that scare her: a breakup, maternity leave, an emergency with no safety net.
They both want a written agreement. They’ve both been avoiding bringing it up because each of them was afraid the other would read “I want to write this down” as “I’m hedging against you.”
What Mediator surfaced
Ben and Priya each wrote their side privately; neither saw what the other wrote. What Mediator returned was something neither of them had proposed, and something both could sign:
Initial equity 70/30, matching the down payment. But before any of the equity math starts, Ben puts $10,000 into Priya’s savings account.
That $10,000 is the part that makes the rest work. It isn’t equity. It isn’t a loan. Priya keeps it whatever happens with the house. It’s a one-time payment that acknowledges what the 70/30 split would otherwise quietly erase: that Priya is walking into this house with no cash left, while Ben still has $200,000. The split itself stays simple: 70/30, defensible, honest. But the 70/30 math only starts after Priya has enough savings to survive an emergency.
The rest of the agreement is what makes 70/30 work over time:
Mortgage payments split by income, not equally. Currently 65/35. Recalculated every January. Priya’s equity grows as she pays her share.
Caregiving protection. If one of them cuts back on work to stay home with a child, they keep earning equity as if they’d been paying their full share. The working partner covers the stay-at-home partner’s portion of the mortgage, and that money counts toward the stay-at-home partner’s equity, not theirs. The maternity-leave scenario Priya was afraid of (frozen share, unpaid months, quiet penalty for being home with the baby) doesn’t happen.
If they split up. Either of them has 30 days to decide whether they want to buy the other out. Valuation uses two appraisers; if they disagree by more than 5%, a third appraiser’s number is final. Whoever is buying has 90 days from the valuation to actually fund it. If they can’t, the house goes on the market and the proceeds split by equity. Priya’s fear of being stuck as Ben’s co-owner while he decides is handled by the deadlines. There’s no “I’ll figure it out when I get around to it.”
If one of them dies. The surviving partner has 180 days to buy out the other’s equity at market value. If they choose not to, the equity passes according to the will, and the new owner becomes a co-owner under the same terms.
Why this worked
It kept ownership and risk separate. The 70/30 split is defensible because it reflects what each of them put in. But Priya’s thin savings were a different problem, and the agreement gave them a different answer: a one-time $10,000 reserve. If you try to fix both problems with one number, you either pretend the contributions were equal (which breeds resentment) or treat Priya’s lower savings as if they didn’t matter (which is the thing she was afraid of). The agreement needed two answers, not one.
It put the parenting rule in writing before anyone needed it. “Ben said he’s on board with this” was not enough for Priya. The agreement writes it as Priya’s share keeps growing, not “Ben will do the right thing.” Promises corrode under financial pressure. Writing it down doesn’t.
It made the buyout something you can actually do, not just an idea. “Either of us can buy the other out” means nothing without a way to agree on a price, a time limit, and a plan B. The agreement has all three. If they break up, they won’t be fighting over any of this from scratch; it’s already written.
It let them talk about the worst case without making the house feel like a bet against the relationship. Both of them had been avoiding this because it sounded like one of them didn’t trust the other. The written agreement turns that around: it’s each of them saying I want to know what happens if things fall apart, so I can stop thinking about it and enjoy the house. Protection for both of them, rather than one against the other, is what made it easy to sign.
The agreement above was generated by the live Mediator.ai engine from Ben's and Priya's private statements. See them here: Ben's · Priya's