“Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”[1]
This piece of Scripture located in Matthew 19:4-6 explains the immediate and substantial change that occurs when man and woman marry and become one, thereby leaving their old families to begin their own. It took me a while to understand the importance of truly leaving [my] father and mother to be united to [my husband.] All I had ever known was the reliance I had on my mother and father to protect me, take care of me, and provide for me. While I had relied on my now-husband in some ways through our dating and engaged life, I never relied on him in the ways I relied on my parents. However, the second we got married, that shifted. My sole familial priority is now my husband. That transition was difficult for me because I felt like I was wronging my parents, when I was actually just doing exactly what Scripture has instructed me to do. I did not realize, however, that my husband was also going through this transition. When we began discussing the difficulty we’d both been silently struggling with, we found a commonality that bound us as opposed to separating us, as we both feared would have happened. It is biblical to rely on your spouse. It is biblical to prioritize your marriage above anything else, coming second only to God himself.
Leaving your father and mother to prioritize your marriage absolutely requires planning your future together. This means considering how one another’s finances impact one another, discussing what you want in your will, talking about children, and numerous other things.
In layman’s terms, the freedom of disposition says someone can pass on their property to whoever they want to. Legally in Virginia, a decedent’s property will pass in its entirety to the decedent’s spouse by default.[2] This means, even if you have been married for 30 seconds, everything you own will pass to your spouse as a matter of law should something happen to you. This certainly falls in line with the latter portion of the scripture listed above: “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” including finances. However, that does not take away the importance of early estate planning. Planning early and discussing what you have, where you want it to go, and who you want to oversee it is an incredibly important discussion to have. These discussions should begin as early as possible. There are countless, tragic examples of newlyweds passing away in horrific accidents, or even one spouse passing away and the other remaining alive. Prioritizing every second with your spouse is incredibly important, and sometimes that looks like planning for a tragic event.
While it may feel morbid to plan for your death as a newly married couple, there are few things more important than prioritizing your marriage by making sure that your wills, advance directives, and trusts are in order, so your spouse is taken care of.
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