Six weeks from closing
The offer was accepted two weeks ago: $720,000, 25% down. Ben is putting $126,000 of the down payment on the table — his twenties of saving plus the $26,000 his dad left him. Priya is putting $54,000, which is every dollar she has. When the transfer clears, Ben will still have $200,000 in the bank. Priya will have $2,000.
They’ve both been putting off the conversation about what that means. Each time one of them started, the other could feel it coming, and both of them, separately, decided not to push — because “I want to write something down” sounded, in each of their heads, like “I’m hedging against you.”
Ben doesn’t want to pretend the split is even when it isn’t. He doesn’t want to spend five years watching that pretense harden into resentment. Priya doesn’t want the agreement to describe her as contributing 30% — for her, it’s 100% of what she has. She wants protection against the specific things she’s afraid of: a breakup, maternity leave, an emergency with no savings.
They both want to write it down. Neither of them has been able to start.
What Mediator surfaced
Ben and Priya each worked through their side privately with their own AI assistant; neither saw what the other produced. What came back was an agreement neither of them had proposed. Both said yes.
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 what the 70/30 split on its own doesn’t say: 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 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 has 30 days to decide whether to buy the other out. Valuation uses two appraisers; a third settles any disagreement greater than 5%. The buyer has 90 days to actually fund it, or the house goes on the market and proceeds split by equity. Priya’s fear of being stuck as Ben’s co-owner while he decides is handled by the deadlines.
If one of them dies. The surviving partner has 180 days to buy out the other’s equity at market value; otherwise the share passes according to the will.
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. Trying to fix both with one number either pretends the contributions were equal (which breeds resentment) or treats Priya’s lower savings as if they didn’t matter (which is the thing she was afraid of). 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 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 agreement turns that around: 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.
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