A reader writes:
I have pastored a congregation of about two hundred for eleven years. I was trained to counsel couples on communication, forgiveness, the usual. Nobody trained me for what I am seeing now.
This month alone I have had three couples in my office, and in every case the fight is about a house. One couple are building on the husband’s family land, and the wife feels his mother is running the project and her own money is disappearing into it. Another couple bought two years ago, the mortgage payment has gone up, and he wants to sell while she says selling would be admitting failure. The third are younger. She has been saving for a deposit for six years. He keeps lending money to his brothers. Last week she told me she is not sure she can marry someone who does not see the house the way she does.
I can pray with them. I can open Ephesians 5. But I am not a financial adviser, and I sometimes feel I am out of my depth. I do not want to give bad advice about mortgages. I also do not want to send them away with only a verse. How should a pastor handle this?
— Rev. O., Clarendon
Our response
Thank you for writing, and for taking these couples seriously. You are right that houses and money now sit at the centre of many marital conflicts, and right to be careful about the edges of your role. The good news is that most of what these couples need from you is not technical. It is the work you are already trained to do, applied to a very concrete subject.
The house is rarely just the house
In each of your examples, the argument about property carries something underneath it. The first wife may be asking whether she, or her husband’s mother, is the woman of this new household. The second couple may be fighting about pride and fear of failure. The third may be about loyalty: to a future spouse or to birth family. Helping couples name what the house represents to each of them is often the most useful thing a pastor can do. A simple question helps: “What would it mean to you if this went the way you want? What are you afraid it means if it doesn’t?”
Get the facts on the table, together
Many money fights happen in fog. One spouse knows the numbers and the other does not. You do not need to analyse a mortgage, but you can encourage couples to sit down, perhaps with a trusted church member who is good with figures, and list: what comes in, what goes out, what is owed, what is saved, and who is supporting whom. Seeing it written down calms many arguments and sharpens others into something solvable.
Help them find a shared goal
Couples often argue about means when they have never agreed on ends. Ask them to describe, separately, what a good home looks like in five years. You may find more common ground than either expected. Amos asks whether two can walk together unless they have agreed (Amos 3:3); the agreeing usually has to come before the house plan, not after.
Address extended family carefully
Two of your three cases involve parents or siblings. Genesis 2:24 speaks of a man leaving father and mother and being united to his wife. In our culture, that does not mean abandoning family; it means the couple’s decisions are made by the couple. You can help them agree on boundaries: how much family support is affordable, who has a say in a build, and how they will answer relatives together.
Know when to refer
Your instinct is sound. Refer them when the question becomes technical: whether to sell, how to restructure a loan, what building on family land means legally, how to protect savings. Build a small list of people your members can trust: a lender who explains options honestly, an attorney-at-law familiar with family land, a financial counsellor, a Christian marriage counsellor for deeper patterns. Encourage couples to go together, so that neither spouse hears the advice second-hand.
And watch for warning signs that are not about money at all: one spouse controlling all income and access, threats, fear. Financial control can be part of abuse, and in those cases the priority is safety, not compromise.
Keep the gospel in it
Finally, do not underrate the verse and the prayer. Couples fighting about a house often need to hear that their worth, and their marriage’s worth, is not measured by square footage or by whether they own. Contentment, honesty and mutual submission are not abstract here. They decide whose name goes on the title and how a wife’s savings are treated. Your role is to hold that bigger picture while the professionals handle the numbers.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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