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Relationships

H's attitude towards money

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TheClosingChapter · 27/10/2015 22:01

I have no idea where to start. I think this is indicative of H's and my relationship in that if there is a problem, he hides it and then when I find out about and ask him to resolve it, it's all my fault and I'm being unreasonable.

Yesterday I opened a piece of his mail by mistake in my half termly clear up - music teacher and I use half term to clear out all the admin. Found a demand from a collection agency for £3.5k unpaid taxes (relates to child benefit which I've stopped claiming). The only way this would have been this high is because he's not paid it on time so it's gone on for over a year. H has a habit of not opening his post and anything which causes him stress is pushed to the 'I'll deal with it later' pile which then builds and build and builds.

This is not the first time. There've been others including underpaying the mortgage which resulted in a visit from a collection agency, car tax, council tax and a gas bill which have all cost us much more than the initial debt. He's been able to pay in all of these situations but for some reason has decided not to. I've now taken over the payment of all household bills.

It doesn't just extend to debts but to what he's owed as well. He had shares in a utility company which were taken over and he was owed £000s and would have lost the money if I hadn't come across post telling him so. And when the kids were small and I wasn't working there was the bank passbook with £10k that he'd forgotten about, while I was tearing my hair out worrying if we could pay the rent at that time.

I really, really don't know what world he lives in. We have completely separate finances (which bearing in mind his history I think is a good thing) with a fairly equal split of percentage of outgoings but his name is on the mortgage (I sold my house when we had kids). I just can't see how he can think it's remotely reasonable to squander £1,500 on HMRC because he won't open his fucking post. He wonders why there's no intimacy in our relationship. Well, this is one reason why and it's adding another nail to the coffin.