Money talk isn't mushy, but it's good for marriage

HERE'S the scene:

A candlelit table, a plate of ice-cold oysters. A pair of tall, slim glasses filled with something fizzy. Crimson rose petals sprinkled on the tablecloth.

And the finishing touch: a copy of this month's bank statement and this year's W-2 forms.

It's not exactly a recipe for romance.

However, San Mateo resident Helga Hayse says talking honestly about money is more important to a marriage or partnership than all the lovey-dovey trappings that traditionally go along with Valentine's Day.

"People don't think it's romantic to talk about money," Hayse says. "I'm a great fan of romance, but romance isn't going to keep a marriage going. Communication is."

To help women become full participants in their marriage, Hayse has been holding "Financial Intimacy" seminars on the peninsula for the past 21/2 years.

She stumbled upon the idea for the seminar eight years ago when she answered an ad for a nearly new navy blue Cadillac for a ridiculously cheap $5,000. The woman selling her car was in tears. Her husband had just died; his will was in probate, and she

needed to make payments on his car.

So she was selling anything she could liquidate.

"That was my wake-up call," Hayse says. "She lived not far from me. She looked like me. It was like I had a visitation."

The woman's situation, Hayse says, wasn't unique. Widowhood is surprisingly common today. Widows outnumber widowers 5 to 1, and the average age at which a woman is widowed is 56.

The situation of the widow with the Cadillac made Hayse look more critically at her own.

In 1996, at age 55, Hayse was in a happy second marriage to Chuck, an entrepreneur.

"We had no estate plan, no wills, nothing," she says. "He was an optimist."

When they said "I do," they became an official legal unit. Because California is a community property state, her assets and debts became his, and vice versa.

But she realized she didn't even have a working knowledge of all his business ventures.

On top of that, when he needed to get a loan, the bank demanded collateral, which was the house -- the house that had belonged to her alone when she married him.

"He would come home and say, 'Sign here, dear,'" Hayse says. "He was so handsome and so loving -- how could I say no?"

After she bought the Cadillac, she and Chuck began to have honest discussions about their finances and worked out an estate plan. Hayse began to prepare to teach "Financial Intimacy" seminars as part of the Institute for Vital Aging, a nonprofit she founded a few years earlier.

She never expected that their preparation would be so necessary so soon.

That same year, just as she was getting ready to teach her first "Financial Intimacy" seminar, Chuck died in an accident.

Her adult daughters came to the house as soon as they heard the news. Hayse printed out the two pages of her seminar handbook about what to do when there's a death and gave them to the girls.

Then she went to bed.

Hayse speaks from experience when she says that a woman who has not prepared for her husband's death cannot worry about her finances after such a loss.

"When you are hit by grief, when you are slammed, you can't learn this," she says. "Women can't learn what they need to know after the fact."

Even in this generation of two-income families, women are not as aware of their marital finances as they should be.

"The modern-woman-in-the-workplace model goes smack against the traditional-wife model," she says. "Women are earning a lot of money, but they're not often the sole support in the family. My research shows me that women are more at risk."

Who's at fault? Blame some combination of women who want to be taken care of and men who think it's their job to be the caretaker.

"I'm not saying husbands are deceptive," she says. "You'd be amazed how many men are thrilled when he can say, 'Here's where this is, here's how it works,' and she says, 'Show me.'"

Beginning an honest conversation about finances benefits all couples, she says.

"A lot of disagreements get played out as (fights about) money," Hayse says.

She suggests that women approach their husbands (or vice versa) in a casual setting, like over the kitchen table.

"Don't make a reservation at your favorite restaurant on a special occasion," Hayse says.

Also, realize that if one partner is the only one who ever deals with money, "this is not something you can bite off in one chunk," she says. "There's an initiation part where you just focus on opening the conversation."

Hayse says that starting out with "I" sentences, not "you" ones, will be the most effective.

She suggests something like this: "I've watched my parents dicker around about money, and I decided that when I got married I wanted to be really clear about it. This is really important to me."

Notice the lack of blaming statements in her suggestion. That helps limit defensive behavior.

Hayse also says she's not a counselor and not a financial planner.