How money affects relationships

I have been noticing how many ways that differences about money can derail a relationship. Stories about inheritances going to one person instead of being split equally, how to split the cost of dates or rent or group dinners, whether to let someone live in your house rent free, the cost of participating in a wedding, all become issues that can derail a relationship. There are various permutations of these stories, all of which have their basis in different beliefs about what is fair. I’ve written about fairness before, (link) but I will summarize here what I have learned about the different types of fairness that we humans hold:

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• Equality

• Merit based fairness

• Equity based fairness

Equality is when we cut a cake into equal sized pieces. This might apply to group dinners when everyone agrees to pay an equal amount. But what if one person deliberately chose to order less food because they couldn’t afford to pay more than that amount? Then we might choose to split it by who ordered what – a more complicated way to split a bill but one that reflects what each person ordered - an application of merit based fairness.

This clearly comes up in inheritances which reflect on what the beneficiary is perceived to have contributed. A person who visited the deceased and took them to doctors’ appointments while other ignored the person might be favored in a will – is that fair? The others might not think so if they are using an equality-based form of fairness, but using a merit-based form of fairness, the person who did the work has earned more. And an inheritance which goes to someone who is disabled because they can’t support themselves is an equity flavor of fairness.

So, the squabble about money comes down to different perceptions of fairness. What if, instead of talking about the money itself, we talked about our different perceptions of fairness first? Would that help?