Union formation and parity progression have been profoundly transformed in the past half century, alongside partnered women’s bargaining power and access to economic resources. Partners are increasingly more likely to keep and manage at least part of their economic resources separately. Prior research has mostly treated households as one economic unit, implicitly assuming that income and wealth are equally shared and jointly accumulated among partners. Recent scholarship has challenged this assumption by emphasizing that today access to the household’s financial resources differs largely for both partners within couples, with most of the existing literature studying income. This timely special issue extends the existing literature by examining inequality in individual wealth accumulation as a function of both institutional and household contexts. Additionally, it reflects on the consequences of demographic processes for these inequalities and the consequences of inequality for demographic behavior. As union dissolution, re-partnering, and complex families become more common, devoting attention to individual—rather than only household—wealth accumulation is further necessary to identify differential exposure to the economic consequences of important life course transitions such as separation, widowhood, retirement or unemployment.