When love begins after 60, what happens to wealth?

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Key points

• ET BureauLast Updated: Aug 23, 2026, 07: 15: 00 AM IST.
• While his late wife Amruta had inherited considerable land in Kerala from her mother, ashish was chief technology officer of an engineering firm in Kolkata.
• Mumbai-based family and matrimonial lawyer Mrunalini Deshmukh notes residents are free to marry or not, but wealth needs to be dealt with consciously.
• Power shift, a déjà vu: Air India could be new CEO's toughest flight yet.
• Old age doesn't spell the end of romance.Some are dating, a few are choosing live-in relationships and others are remarrying.

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In their 60s, they discovered love. What they kept separate was their funds.

In their 60s, they discovered love. What they kept separate was their funds. ET BureauLast Updated: Aug 23, 2026, 07: 15: 00 AM IST.

Older Indians are forming new relationships and seeking companionship in afterwards life. These couples often prioritize financial independence and separate their accumulated wealth. Succession planning becomes complex as families have inheritance expectations. Legal and financial arrangements are crucial for navigating these new unions. Balancing love and inheritance requires careful consideration and clear communication.

Theirs is a story that could have been a movie. With one crucial difference. Sameer Mukherjee and Ashish Agrawal had been friends since childhood in Kolkata. Their wives, Sheela Ghosh and Amruta Menon, were contemporaries, too-they went to the same school. And both were taught by Dominic Braganza, a violin teacher in the city. After marriage, the two couples settled down in the same neighbourhood. They shared the ordinary rhythms of family life-celebrating anniversaries, discussing household challenges, gathering over meals and, eventually, watching their children grow up, obtain married and leave home. (The names of the couples have been changed, on request.) Their lives seemed to be completing an arc, together. They were even looking at senior living facilities. Then came the first tragedy. Amruta was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Within months, she passed away.

Sheela and Sameer stood by Ashish through the loss. There was barely time for the grief to settle when tragedy struck a second time. Sameer died of a heart attack. The children of both families stayed with the parents for a while-until they had to return to their own lives. Sheela and Ashish became each other's refuge. They had dinner together every other day. In the background played Air on the G String, a piece that evoked old memories. Friendship gradually turned into companionship. Shortly, they fell in love. Both were in their late 60s when they decided to live together. Ashish moved into Sheela's apartment, with the blessings of their children. Live Events.

It was, in plenty of ways, a silver romance with the makings of a movie script, with one notable deviation. They may have been moony-eyed regarding each other. But they are clear-eyed regarding capital. They are living under the same roof but there is one thing they have not combined-their wealth. He pays for household expenses and consumables; she pays for maintenance of the house and the car. Assets accumulated in their previous marriages remain separate. Their children are supportive. They do not want their parents to be lonely nor are they demanding an early transfer of wealth. There is a reason why this arrangement works. By the time Sheela and Ashish discovered each other, they had built financial lives of their own. (Image has been edited using AI).

While his late wife Amruta had inherited considerable land in Kerala from her mother, ashish was chief technology officer of an engineering firm in Kolkata. She had sold a number of properties and accumulated substantial wealth. That funds proved invaluable when Amruta needed emergency medical treatment overseas. After her death, her assets were bequeathed to Ashish. Sheela, who ran an NGO for underprivileged children, had her own financial history with Sameer. This person was a finance head in a leading multinational firm. Sameer was a prudent stock-market investor. And his investments were held in a family trust. After his death, Sheela continued as a trustee and a beneficiary along with their children. Sheela and Ashish did not rethink financial decisions or reallocate wealth created in their earlier marriages. They shared their lives without sharing their funds. After families have formed expectations regarding inheritance?, their story frames a question that is becoming increasingly significant for Indians in their 60s and 70s: what happens when you enter a relationship afterwards in life. Ties and knots.

Old age doesn't spell the end of romance.Some are dating, a few are choosing live-in relationships and others are remarrying. While lawyers and estate planners are dealing with the complications that can follow a late relationship, matrimonial platforms are seeing growing demand from older individuals. Rajat Dutta, founder of Inheritance Needs Services, a Mumbai-based firm that provides inheritance-related services, sees a common thread in such relationships: couples want to remain financially independent. It is not as straightforward as Sheela and Ashish would have you believe. In another family, children were happy when their widowed father discovered companionship. But they became apprehensive when the relationship became serious and the conversation stumbled on the family home. For the children, the house was more than an asset. It was where they grew up. It was a reminder of their mother. For the father, it was an asset he now solely owned and had every right to decide how to accord with. Nobody was fighting over funds per se. The conflict was subtler: could a parent commence a new life without changing what the children believed were their inheritance rights? That is how late-life relationships collide with succession planning. It's complicated.

Mumbai-based family and matrimonial lawyer Mrunalini Deshmukh notes residents are free to marry or not, but wealth needs to be dealt with consciously. "Where wealth is concerned, I would tell the person to ring-fence it by a will or a document akin to a prenuptial agreement, " she notes. The matter is complicated when children from an earlier marriage are involved. While children may worry that the new relationship could alter what they assumed would eventually be their inheritance, a new partner may have financial or legal rights depending on the nature and circumstances of the relationship. Deshmukh notes children are often accepting of their parents' emotional needs and may even actively encourage a widowed parent to find a companion. What makes them uncomfortable is not the new partner, but uncertainty around wealth. In a case involving a wealthy man in his 60s, he had to document the eventual distribution of wealth in a will. While 80% went to his children, his companion was provided with just 20% of his wealth. Deshmukh notes, in her experience, only concerning 10% of children are not interested in receiving any share of their parents' wealth. So the conversations around inheritance need to be clear. Honey & funds.

Increasing life expectancy and individuals staying active and working for longer than earlier generations did are making these conversations urgent as well. At 60, a person could expect more than a decade of active life. It involves travel, companionship, medical care, shared homes and changing financial needs. The shift is visible on matrimonial sites. Murugavel Janakiraman, chairman and MD of Matrimony.com, notes residents in their 60s and 70s are looking for companionship, not necessarily marriage, on the platform. "Lately, a mother-daughter duo registered on the platform. The mother, a widow in her 60s, was looking for a companion while the daughter, in her mid-20s, was looking for a spouse, " he notes. Janakiraman notes the trend reflects a broader demographic shift: residents are living longer while their children are increasingly settled in other cities or overseas. He saw it up close when a backing manager in the organisation assisted his father find a companion through the platform. Matrimony.com is now exploring whether services could be developed specifically for older age groups. While a second relationship is a new chapter, succession planning is the inevitable sequel. Dutta believes private family trusts can be appropriate if capital protection, income backing and beneficiary needs have to coexist. He notes Inheritance Needs has been addressing succession matters of individuals having Indian assets and live-in relationships with foreigners. He additionally notes a strange pattern recurring in families. Indian parents are willing to provide lifelong financial security for their child but can be reluctant to offer the child's partner access to family wealth. The same reluctance is displayed by children when their parents remarry. Lawyers caution older couples to be practical when it comes to regarding what the current partner and children from a previous relationship should receive. Some couples will keep their finances entirely separate. Others will employ wills, trusts and carefully structured arrangements to provide for both a new partner and children from an earlier life. When Ranu Sachdeva, a widow with two married daughters, decided to marry Paritosh Gajju, a doctor who had lost his wife and had three daughters living abroad, they decided to modify their individual wills. (Names have been changed to protect identity.) If one partner died first, the other would be provided adequately, but they minimised the intermingling of their core assets. For context, the question is no longer whether individuals in their 60s and 70s can fall in love again. They do, happily. The harder question is whether a family can create room for that love without treating it as a threat to the wealth it expects to inherit. It was once a predictable script for most-marry, raise children, retire and grow old within the family-but now the final chapter is becoming less predictable. For context, the challenge is not choosing between love and inheritance, but finding a way to protect both. Add Now!

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In short, when love begins after 60, what happens to wealth? Is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.