Background: I'm 55, she's 54, both previously divorced once, she has 3 teenagers, I have no kids, we've been married a little over a year. We love each other bunches.

We did a pre-nup in which we each kept our separate property from before the marriage. Her only property was her house, which has significant value, but she agreed in her divorce to give the house to her kids. We have a living trust to that effect, her executor. I have a house as well, and some cash and retirement investments. We should be OK for retirement, and we have no debt (although 3 kids are going to college soon).

The issue: when it comes time to manage keeping our assets separate (we recently went to a financial counselor to get our finances in order), she gets upset - not at me, but she doesn't like the idea that we have to make plans for the possibility that we'd split up (which is the real reason, at least in our situation, for having separate property). To her, it seems to spoil the idea of our marriage, in which we pledged that we would always be married, and something which we both believe in.

My attitude is that the future is uncertain, and I'd be arguing for keeping separate property separate for both of us. However, in her case, her separate asset is just her house, which is locked into being for her kids no matter what because of her divorce agreement. It's my assets that are liquid and can be merged in separate property.

The problem is: how do I discuss this with her when doing so is so decidedly anti-romantic for her? For her, it eats away at the idea that we'll be together forever, which is what we pledged at our wedding, both doing so sincerely.

Yes, it is very easy for a situation like this to become a Love Buster. I should know as we have the same thing having done a post nup after the last round of lies as I made this a boundary.

I know that we have problems because he is not transparent about his activities with his separate property. He does this because we were warned that using marital time to work on his investments would make some portion of the asset become marital. So he pretends to do something else.

More Love Busters.

Oh and then he likes to take the administrative costs out of marital income to increase the value of his separate property.

I think the only way to keep separate property without it being a Love Buster is to have it professionally managed by someone paid out of the assets to do this.

I also suspect that this is the only way you will keep the assets truly separate in a legal fight.

I don't understand what it is that you have to do to keep your finances separate. You said your prenuptial agreement provides that each of you retains separate interest in what you owned prior to the marriage. What more do you need to do?

If you are continuing to contribute your current income to build up the value of the separate, pre-marital assets, that's a different issue, isn't it?

Have you each had new wills prepared in which you leave your remaining assets to each other? Or do you contemplate a different arrangement?

Hi Charynne

I can answer this. If Gus and his wife co-mingle their separate property with marital assets in any way, it will cease being separate.

To give you an example; say you have a separate property IRA coming into the marriage. Now you put new IRA contributions into this IRA out of marital income. Suddenly you have the problem of what is the portion of the increase in value is attributable to the marital part of the retirement fund. So you are always advised to keep separate property totally separate.

And if she uses marital income to do repairs on her separate property house, that becomes a problem but she may have no other source of income so now what?

Pre and postnups are awash with LBs. The whole idea goes against the philosophy of a MB marriage but sometimes you do not have a choice.