#relationships-money

We ran two versions of the same combined-income household through the qualifying math, changing only one partner's monthly debt by $2,000 — the back-end DTI moves from 41% (qualifies) to 61% (likely doesn't).

We ran a 10-year marriage with a $120K and a $40K earner through Illinois's actual statutory maintenance formula — the raw guideline comes to $30K/year, capped down to $24K/year, for an estimated 4.4 years.

We ran $200K of premarital business equity through the expected-value math: 50% likely split without a prenup, times a 41% divorce probability, comes to $41,000 of expected risk against a $4,000 attorney bill.