DINKs have been enjoying the spotlight. For the past few years, child-free millennials have shown off Champagne breakfasts and spontaneous luxury getaways on TikTok, bankrolled by the money they are not spending on nappies.

But a new kind of financial power couple has arrived.

"For decades, the average American couple sat down at the kitchen table to combine finances after arriving home from their honeymoon," Shruti Joshi, president and chief operating officer of financial planning company Facet, tells Fortune. Not anymore.

Facet has taken stock of a growing cohort of couples who share neither a bank account nor a common household pot of money. The arrangement has become common enough that it has earned its own name: SPLITs. These are partners who keep their finances separate while still sharing a single plan for the future, and Joshi says they make up a growing share of the households Facet works with.

"Our planners are used to working with couples who each hold their own savings accounts, debts, and 401(k)s, while sharing a plan that ties it all together," Joshi adds. "We saw this pattern so frequently, we knew it deserved a name of its own."

When a financial planning company goes as far as giving a client pattern its own name, the shift has moved beyond a quirky arrangement: separate finances have become a household profile that planners now routinely build strategies around.

Why more couples are keeping their finances separate

One major shift underpins the trend: the stigma has disappeared. "A generation ago, keeping your own account looked like betting against your relationship," Joshi says. "Today, it's seen as a sign of maturity, and people are much more open to talking about finances than a generation ago."

Couples are also settling down later in life, arriving at relationships with savings, investments, and retirement plans that took years, even decades, to build. "They don't want to take those apart to merge with a partner. And they shouldn't have to," she says.

"More women also now have serious earning power, and when both partners have careers and comparable incomes, there's less reason to funnel everything through one shared account."

Growing up amid high divorce rates has also made younger couples more conscious of protecting their financial independence. There is a practical side, too: merging everything into one pot can get messy when one partner is paying off student loans while the other is debt-free with a pristine credit history.

That is why SPLITs reap the same core benefit as DINKs—two incomes working just for them—while keeping full autonomy. Without pulling every penny into a single account, each partner can spend, save, and splurge on their own terms.

Meet the new power couple—but there's a catch

On paper, DINKs have long been the couple to envy. Per Pew Research Center data, they have a median household income of $193,900, compared with $151,900 for dual-income couples with kids. They do hold less wealth overall—$214,700 against $361,500—largely because they are younger and less likely to own a home. But they are also skipping the sky-high cost of having kids.

Couples with children carry about $70,000 more in debt, per the Federal Reserve's 2022 data. Then there is the price tag of the bigger house and the four-by-four. Once loans, credit cards, and mortgages are factored in, child-free couples were around $100,000 in debt, a figure that rose to $168,000 for couples with kids.

SPLITs share the same setup: two incomes and, for now, no childcare bills. The power comes from how they manage their money.

They can still pool money for big goals like buying a home or traveling the world. But financial autonomy means neither partner has to justify splurging on themselves. "They're less likely to feel the need to hide a pricey new jacket or justify a weekend trip with friends," Joshi adds.

SPLITs are also building their own credit and retirement savings, and protecting their wealth should things turn sour.

The arrangement, however, only works with regular, honest conversations about who pays for what. Joshi argues that this requirement is itself the superpower: it means SPLITs end up talking about money more often than couples who pool everything and may avoid the topic altogether. "That dynamic keeps them on the same team, eliminating a lot of common money fights," she says.

But there is a catch. The setup is perfect for child-free renters. The moment a couple wants to buy a home together or start a family, it suddenly becomes less of a flex.

"The financial plan you settled on when you were happily childless and renting a townhome in the city may not be the same one you need when you decide to buy a house and have a baby," Joshi says, adding that mortgage providers and tax codes favor a joint account.

"SPLITs know their lifestyle works best for them, but they've been dropped in the middle of a financial landscape that doesn't support couples with separated finances."

That gap—between how a growing share of couples manages its money and a mortgage and tax system built around joint accounts—sets up what to watch at the next milestones: how SPLITs who go on to buy homes or start families rewrite plans that were built for a child-free renting life.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.