Comments on: How to use Quicken if you're an unmarried couple

Question: How to use Quicken if you're an unmarried couple

mollymolo — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:07:50 -0800

Quicken: If you're unmarried but living together, how should you answer the "are you married question" when setting up Quicken?

My fiance and I are setting up Quicken on my computer. We'd like to use it with both of our various accounts (right now everything's separate, though soon, I'll be added onto his checking account/joint). The wedding isn't until 2007 (and hence not in this tax year).

When you go to set up Quicken, it asks if you're married or not. If you answer yes, it lets you enter in information for your spouse. If you answer no, it only seems to be able to accept the one person.

Should we just go ahead and answer yes? Or is this going to cause undo confusion when it comes to (turbo)tax time?

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:11:58 -0800

Have you been living together long enough to be considered legally common-law?

By: rokusan

rokusan — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:26:20 -0800

The point of the question is to establish whether you'll be filing joint tax returns (common-law) or not. That's all that is impacted.

By: mollymolo

mollymolo — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:36:47 -0800

That's what I thought (about the joint tax returns, which we're not filing this year, but will next year) so we answered no. But, now that we've done that, there doesn't seem to be any way to add in information re: the second person (i.e., me)

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 21:16:16 -0800

That's because you don't get to do your stuff together. You don't add in information about the second person; you start completely from scratch for the second person.

By: Joh

Joh — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 22:16:13 -0800

I don't know which state you live in, but according to Unmarried.org, only a few recognise it in any useful way (the page lists them). So, unless you live in one of those states, you should file seperately until you get married.