Financial challenges for couples in a second marriages
Historical article – pre-1 November 2025 aged care changes
Second marriages may present additional financial challenges when balancing day-to-day expenses with implications for aged care funding. You may not share finances equally, but Centrelink/DVA will assess your obligations as if you do.
A second relationship can bring companionship and support but may also bring financial challenges, especially with funding aged care and estate plans.
Some couples may be willing to share a life but may prefer to keep finances separate so inheritances can pass to their own children and family. You also need to decide whose home to live in or whether to buy a new home.
These decisions need to balance your life plans and your estate plans. You may wish to consider how to ensure your partner is looked after if something happens to you, while also protecting the estate for your own children. These might be conflicting objectives.
From a Centrelink and aged care view, two people living together in a relationship are assessed as a couple. Assets and income are combined and then split equally – regardless of who owns what or how you want to divide your finances.
What defines a couple
If you receive a Centrelink/Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) benefit and your relationship status changes, you need to notify Centrelink/DVA and update your records.
Whether two people are considered to be a couple depends on five aspects, including:
Financial aspects
Nature of the household and how household chores are shared
Social aspects and how the two people present to family and friends
Any intimate relationship
Commitment to a permanent and ongoing relationship on an intimate level.
No single factor is definitive in determining status as a couple. An assessor may look at the facts of the case and interview the people involved as well as friends and family to determine whether the two people live separate or shared lives.
The impact on aged care
If you or your spouse need to access aged care services, assessment of your financial capacity (and contribution towards the costs) will use the same relationship status rules that apply for Centrelink/DVA.
If you are a couple, fees are based on half of the combined assets and income. This may see a person moving into care needing to pay fees greater than their individual affordability and needing the other spouse to help with the costs.
How this help is provided should be decided with financial advice to fully understand the implications. For example, if the person staying at home uses some of their assets to pay accommodation costs as a lump sum for a spouse moving into residential care, this money will eventually be returned to the estate of the care recipient. This means the money may find its way into the other family’s hands, rather than back to the spouse who made the payment.
As an Accredited Aged Care ProfessionalTM, I can provide advice to help you navigate the rules and consider strategies that are as fair as possible to both members of the couple. This may help to minimise family conflicts.
Call me on 0431 414 799 or email jason@burleyagedcareadvice.com.au to find out how I might help.
This advice is general in nature and everyone’s circumstances are different. So it’s important to speak to someone like myself who is a licenced financial adviser (I am an Authorised Representative of Count Financial Limited AFSL 227232).
