The Art of Breaking Up When You Live Together – Blogged By @SirRatchettness

So you decided to shack up before marriage and sadly it didn’t work out. Your relationship has run its course and not only do you have to deal with emotional baggage, but you also have potential physical baggage too. This isn’t like a divorce where the house and other belongings are distributed through prenups and court documents. This is two adults deciding how mature to handle an awkward situation.

I look at it this way, if my name is on the lease then you have a couple of weeks to completely move your belonging out of my house. Even if I was the one who caused the breakup, you have got to go. If we have a joint lease, whoever decided to step away from the relationship needs to be the one to step into the leasing office and buy themselves out.

I want to give this as a lesson to any readers who are looking for a baller to provide them a lavish lifestyle. You need to make sure everything is in your name even if he is paying for it. If the baller is married  (not that we condone it but let’s not act like it doesn’t happen), you can explain to them that if they get the place in your name but he pays the bills in cash it will be a lot harder for his wife to find paper trail. If he is single, it shows that you don’t mind him doing for you, but also isn’t only using him for that because if its over the place still in your name and affects your credit. Don’t give any man that much power to decide when you are homeless or not because he will use it to his advantage.

For others in more realistic situations, any gifts or furniture that you purchased as gifts or decoration will remain mine until I sell them to pay for your portion of the rent. You can leave me with a broken heart, but you aren’t going to leave me with your portion of the rent and utilities. Any real man should be comfortable with allowing the woman to have things they went 50/50 on because it’s should be a man’s first priority to always be a go getter and do for himself. If you foresee the relationship ending and you are in a relationship with a man who has petty and messy tendencies, I suggest making an escape plan. Anything of value that you could see him sneaking off and taking – hide it to avoid future confrontation.

And if your partner needs some motivation to get to stepping you can politely point out that getting a storage unit and sleeping on a friends house is a lot cheaper then going to jail for trespassing. You do reserve the right to call the police if your ex-partner isn’t trying to leave (or use the threat to your advantage). There is one more thing I want to warn you of in case this happens to you, In certain states, if someone has been living with you longer then 30 days then you have to evict them. You cannot simply put someone out without going through the courts. So use that nugget as your ace in the hole.

So what do you think? How should you handle a breakup when you were living together?