Money before marriage: the numbers both families should exchange

Pakistani families are not shy about money. They are shy about specifics. A great deal is said about standing, about the family's position, about what sort of people they are — and almost nothing about income, debt, dependants or who will pay the rent in March.

What follows is not a demand for bank statements. It is the short list of things that, left unstated, cause arguments in the first year.

Five numbers worth establishing

1. Income, as a range

Not to the rupee. A band is enough, and a band is exactly what our profiles carry as an open field — six of them, from below Rs 80,000 to above Rs 600,000. The point is to know roughly what household the couple will be running, so that neither side is planning a life the other cannot fund.

Ask about stability alongside the number. A government salary, a private-sector job, a family business and self-employment carry very different risk, and employer type is on the profile for that reason.

2. Debt

The question almost nobody asks. A committee obligation, a plot bought on instalments, a loan taken for a sibling's wedding, money owed to a relative. None of these are shameful and all of them are a claim on the household's income from day one.

A family that will not answer a direct question about outstanding obligations has answered it.

3. Dependants

Who else does this income support, and is that expected to continue? A groom supporting a widowed mother and two unmarried sisters is doing something admirable, and his bride should know the shape of it before the nikah rather than discovering it from the monthly arithmetic.

The same question runs the other way. A working bride who has been contributing to her own parents should say whether she intends to continue. It is the single most common unspoken assumption on the bride's side, and it surfaces badly in month three.

4. Housing

• Owned or rented? If owned, by whom — the groom, or his father?
• If the couple are in a joint house, is there any rent or contribution expected?
• If they move out later, who funds that?

“Our own house” frequently means the father's house, which is a different fact with different consequences. Our piece on living with in-laws runs through what else that changes.

5. Who holds the household purse

In many Pakistani households a married son's salary goes to his mother and the household is run from there. This is normal, it works well in a great many families, and it is almost never mentioned at the rishta stage. A bride who expects to run her own household budget and finds she has no budget at all has had a shock that was entirely preventable by one sentence.

The things that are hers in law

Worth both families knowing clearly, because confusion here causes more disputes than any shortage of money.

• Mehr is hers, personally. Not her family's, not the household's. How it is fixed, and what happens when it is not paid.
• Jahez — the goods her family send — are hers. What the law says about demanding it.
• Her salary is hers.
• Gifts given to her are hers.

Keep a list and photograph the gold. It is unromantic and it is the difference between a straightforward claim and an impossible one if things ever go wrong.

How to ask without sounding mercenary

Make it mutual. Offer your own figures in the same breath as you ask for theirs. A conversation where both sides disclose is an arrangement; one where one side interrogates is an inspection.

Ask about the household, not the person. “How do you see the couple managing the first year?” opens the whole subject without anybody having to name a salary first.

Let the profile do the first pass. This is exactly why income band, employer type, family status and profession are open fields here rather than questions somebody has to ask over tea. By the time two families speak, the broad financial shape is already known on both sides and the conversation can be about specifics. The full field list is on what a profile shows.

Separate the wedding from the marriage. Most money conversations in a Pakistani rishta are actually about the wedding — hall, functions, jahez, who pays for what. Those are a one-week problem. The household budget is a thirty-year problem, and it gets a fraction of the attention. Our piece on planning nikah and walima without the debt deals with the week; this one is about the thirty years.

The sentence worth saying out loud

“What will the two of them actually live on, and who decides how it is spent?”

If both families can answer that in specifics before the nikah, most of the rest sorts itself out.