For Richer or... Honesty, openness about money issues are a positive for marriage, experts say

Justin Dux and Elizabeth Mills had been dating for six years in 2006 when they began talking about marriage. Something big stood between them and a walk down the aisle: Dux's stack of credit-card bills.

The debt started to accumulate a few years earlier. While Mills was away at college, Dux bought into a rental home with a partner -- an investment that didn't work out quite as planned. Meanwhile, he hopped through a series of jobs, from painting houses to working for a cable company to a few business ventures. His income fluctuated wildly -- from $55,000 in his best year to $24,000 two years later.

The result was about $12,000 in debt that he was at first afraid to reveal to Mills.

When she learned how much he owed, she was not judgmental, despite having just $6,000 in college loans and no credit-card debt. She was, however, reluctant to start a life together with such a burden.

"I knew what his income was, and I realized how long it would take to pay that back," Mills recalled. "Experience was showing that he wasn't going to be able to make the money that he needed to overcome that debt."

Their story has a happy ending. Dux was able to pay most of what he owed by selling off his share of the rental house, and the St. Paul, Minn., couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary last month.

And learning to talk about their feelings and viewpoints regarding spending and debt bodes well for their future. Experts say that couples who deal openly and honestly with money issues early on have tackled one of the toughest topics in a relationship.

"I don't know that I would say that finances are the No. 1 cause of divorce, but they're right up there with the top causes," said Gary Nickelson, the president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, who has practiced family law in Fort Worth for 27 years.

There are many reasons why money issues can come into play in a relationship -- from uncontrollable factors, such as job loss during the recession, to secret spending.

Such spending -- and the resultant hefty debt, in particular, -- are surprisingly common. A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry estimated that 5.8 percent of the adults in the U.S. are compulsive shoppers.

Often, spouses looking for help bare their souls in anonymous places such as the forums of money-management Web site Wesabe.com. "My wife has a long history with overspending," one recent post began. "Twice in the past, she has run up over $10,000 in credit card debt without my knowledge." Another came from a woman who admitted that she ran up $30,000 on her cards. "If my husband finds out, he will divorce me."

"As the Wesabe community has grown, it's gotten to be fairly frequent that this comes up," said Gabriel Griego, a vice president of the site, which is based in San Francisco. "It is revealing that this probably goes on more than any of us realize."

Indeed, Nickelson sees this a lot in his practice. "I see a lot of folks who have huge credit- card debt," he said. "There are people out there who have absolutely destroyed their relationships based upon their spending."

People posting such stories on such sites as Wesabe typically want advice on how to deal with the situation, which other members offer enthusiastically. Typically, two avenues are suggested for dealing with such issues: an honest accounting between spouses, and counseling in cases where the spending habits hint at deeper problems.

Dux said that revealing the size of his debt meant first getting past his feelings of shame and embarrassment, even though most of it didn't arise from frivolous spending. "I didn't get the judgment that I thought I would," he said. "It was kind of a relief."

Dealing with the debt was a learning experience for Mills as well. "It was really a gateway to talk about what we wanted in life and our future," she said. "I was able to firmly state my belief that I don't want to be in debt, that is something that is not comfortable for me and our life together."

That type of talk is healthy, said Linda Schwallie, the president of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, who practices in Green Bay, Wis. "It's more than simply communicating and negotiating about financial issues," she said. "At a deeper level, we're talking about issues of trust and intimacy and attachment."

For many couples, money in a relationship can come to symbolize a host of other factors such as love, power, control or success, said Scott Johnson, a therapist and the director of the doctoral program at the Family Therapy Center of Virginia Tech. Even more important than creating a budget or meeting with a financial planner, a key to handling money issues for couples is reaching an understanding about how each person views money and finances, he said.

The recession, particularly the spike in unemployment, has accentuated financial issues for many families.

"If you lost a job, and you have commitments to kids, then the issue is money," said Johnson. "But how you handle it is an issue in the relationship."

Getting things out in the open has worked, so far, for Dux and Mills.

"I'm not saying I have all the answers, but usually when we talk it out, it seems to make sense," she said.

That hard part, her husband, said, is not taking the conversation personally. "It's easy to look at your balance sheet and say, ‘That's me, it's my fault and my mistakes.'" He said owning up to those mistakes and learning from them has helped strengthen their relationship.

Couples trying to work out financial issues may want to start with these steps:

□ Set aside time to talk about your finances when there are no distractions -- no children, no television or other outside interruptions.

□ Be honest about spending habits, credit-card debt and other things that you may be inclined to gloss over. Take out the credit-card bills and bank statements so that you can accurately assess where you stand.

□ Discuss whether you want to maintain some separate accounts and credit cards or merge all of your finances. There are pros and cons to each. Joint accounts make it easier to pay collective bills such as mortgage and utilities. Separate accounts allow each person to maintain their own credit history, but they can also make it easier to hide problems such as overspending.

□ Try to plan strategies to meet short-, medium- and long-term goals -- from paying off debt to taking a vacation to saving for retirement.

□ Get help from a financial planner or other professional if you are having trouble figuring out how to meet your goals.

□ Revisit your plans to mark progress and readjust strategies a few times a year