Husband goes ahead and spends half a million to buy a new house, with plans to rent the family's current home until a buyer is found. Everyone is happy to gain some new neighbors after the departure of a great young family people were particularly fond of.

Then something strange happened. The papers are signed and the house changes hands, but house sits stone cold empty - no moving truck ever pulls up.

Then word filters out - the husband bought the house but the deal was apparently news to the wife, who was not on board. She refused to move in and there it sits, months later, empty.

The house went on the market again - this time for several thousand less than what the unfortunate Mr. X first paid for it.

There were no takers, so now it's off the market, but there are no renters either. Who knows, maybe they - the couple in question - will work things out.

Still, I don't know about you, but it would be virtually impossible for me to buy a house on my own without my wife's consent, or, for that matter, for her to do so without my explicit consent. We both work and bring some roughly equivalent paychecks - we pool our money in joint accounts.

We approached house hunting the same way - it was a mutual decision that each of us had a veto power over. Luckily, we had similar tastes and we on the same page about what we could get for our money in Greater Boston - which was basically a fixer-upper with lots of potential but in deplorable shape.

It's not perfect, all that negotiating, but I think it's a heck of lot better than one person calling all the shots and other one forced to go along. When there is a glaring power imbalance, bad things happen.

So who calls the shots when it comes to real estate in your family? And have you ever thought of surprising your significant other with a house?