Brought to you by the EveryDollar app, start budgeting for free today. Well, I am a divorced man, I'm 69, I have a relationship with a widow who's 68, she's in another state, we're talking and we like to get together, but I'm trying to be a righteous Godly man, I don't want to just live together, I want to get married, but if I get married to her, then she will lose her pension from her deceased husband, which is quite substantial. So what I was thinking is just having a church wedding, doing everything the same, except not filing for a state license, so I just want to just thoughts on that. What is the nature of the pension, I'm confused why she loses it if she remarries, that sounds more like alimony of the pension? No, her husband was a police officer for the state of New Jersey, which they have very, very generous pensions, and so it's between $3,000 to $4,000 a month and she would lose that if she remarries. And what most people do in these situations is they just live together, they don't even think about it, but I can't do that, it's a deal breaker for me, I would want to have some kind of ceremonies, try to be a righteous man, try to do the right thing, but it's, and this woman has had been to a lot, she's lost her mother, her sister, and her husband in the span of three years, and insecure most of her life, and she finally has financial security. And so for me to come and say, "Hey, well, you know, we're going to get married," what is your net worth? Well, I'm a chiropractor, so I make about 90,000 a year, but I get some Social Security too. My net worth is not much of 20,000 right now, I don't have anything saved, I lost everything a couple of years ago through divorce. Yep. And how long have you been seeing this life? We've been talking for several months. Mm-hmm. Okay. Have you met her? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's what you said, talking. I didn't know if you were talking on the phone. Like long distance. No, I saw her. I saw her last year. I saw her. You met and you talked. And she's an old, years ago was a girlfriend in high school, so I know her from back then, I know all about her from back then. Okay. All right. Well, it's a difficult one, I'm not going to argue with you there. I'm with you though. There's no question. I'm not living with someone I'm not married to. I can't do that as a personal faith, okay, as a Christian. My book tells me not to do that, so I don't do with the things the book tells me not to do because they don't prosper me and they're not good for the people in my life and people around me and so forth. So I just try to, even though it doesn't make sense, sometimes I just do what the book says. And so I'm not doing that. I'm not like a Pharisee, it just worked good for me, you know, so I'm a follower of the book. There's a lot of people that do do that. They just live together. Yeah, I know. I know. They do. And they see, it seems like it's okay, but you and I know that there's other issues. So, so then the only question, if you go to the church wedding and you don't file with the state is just, it's not a no longer a theological or doctrinal or religious question. You've solved that. The only question on the table is you are intentionally lying, it's an integrity issue, just to keep this in place. And that's a, that's also a potential deal breaker. I've got to work through that in my head if I'm in your shoes. I'm not saying you're doing that, but I'm, you know, this is basically a maneuver to manipulate and not tell these people you're married. And you are married. So that's deception. You know, there's no question about that. And there's good reasons for it here, but it is that. Who gets back to who instituted marriage was marriage instituted by the government or was it instituted by the government? No, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. You and I know when you go get married, you're married. Okay. And you know that the state of New Jersey did not want this pension going to her when she remarried and you're not telling them is what you're doing. And so, you know, that, that, I've just got to work through that. I'm not accusing you of something bad here, but I can't get, I'm 63, so you and I could be in the same boat someday. I'm not, but I'm not today, but I, I'm trying to relate and think through, well, I'm not trying to gain, you know, the other thing is I would investigate if there are any things that you can file with the pension board for individual exceptions, like the, the particular nature. I did hire an attorney. Yeah. I did hire an attorney. I looked into it and they said, there's nothing much you can do and it's just kind of crazy to me because the state is actually promoting, you know, a fornication lifestyle. It's okay. It's okay. Well, they, they do. They do with a lot of things. I mean, they do, they do with a lot of things with that they do with the tax code. They do with a lot of other things. So that's not, that's not new. That doesn't change your stance or my stance. We have to do our thing regardless of what the stupid state does. There's a lot of things that are legal that aren't right. So, um, that's what I'm saying. If I'm doing this right in my eyes before I'm going to have to say, okay, then, then, I mean, I'm just talking it through with you, you, you, you're more than welcome to do whatever you want to do. I'm not saying you're a bad guy. I'm just talking it through with you. If I'm in your shoes, I've got to work through the fact that I am intentionally deceiving the state and is that okay? And I'll give you a parallel example in my life is that I hate so much so that just talking about it right now, my heart rate is changing. I hate the federal income tax. It is absolutely immoral out of control, pitiful. The money that I send to the federal government makes me want to throw up every time I think about it. I hate it. It's pitiful. How bad they run this country and I keep and they keep milking me even more, taking my money at the point of a gun. I hate it. But you know what, I pay a hundred percent to the penny that I owe. I take every legal regulation and loophole they allow me to take and I'm a student of it. And I hire people with expensive checks that are students of it so that I can give them as little as possible with a hundred percent of integrity. But I hate it that I mentioned that I hate it, that I bring that up. And so, you know, but it's not about them. It's about me. Am I doing the right thing? So if I'm in your shoes, I've got to get, I'm not going to accept your lawyer's answer. I'm going to get with this. We'll get with these people. I'm going to talk to the governor, crap, call the governor and talk to him. I mean, talk to the whoever runs the police commission in the state of New Jersey and say, "Look, this guy died on the job and you're denying his widow the right to move forward with her life with this, this ridiculous. You're asking her to shack up at 69 years old like she's some kind of 19-year-old that can't keep their pants on. This is ridiculous and you guys need to give us an exception on this. I'm going to bust them if I'm you. I understand why they do it, by the way, but to keep somebody from, keep the widows from being a target later with the juicy pension, but I'm not saying he's targeting her at all. If they get married, you know, he makes $90,000, that would effectively replace her income as long as they're married, but it still puts her at a precarious situation. She's not going to do that. She's been through hell and this money means a lot to her. And so I understand the predicament and I'm not unsympathetic to it, but you asked and so I got to tell you, the way we answer questions in the show is what do we do if we woke up in your shoes, right? I mean, put your shoes on and walk in them. I hope I'm not ever in those shoes. Those are difficult shoes. But the first thing I got to solve for the doctrinal part, the faith issue, you've solved for that one. Now one's done. And then I'll fight the bureaucracy after that. That's like a couple of kids getting married in their 20s or something and they want to have a big fabulous wedding, but they want to go ahead and get married. They want to go and live together now. So they go to the church and they get married. And then six or eight months later, they have a wedding for all their friends. And that's okay because they're married, that's, you know, financially, legally, spiritually all in line. It's, you know, that it's in that kind of same bucket for me as far as that goes. But I don't care if you're ready to serve this state, but I do care about deception in my life. I just want to be the God that's doing that. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.
