This marriage is financial abuse - AIBU?

So the headline story here appears to be

‘Woman only working part time doesn’t have enough money for her socialising, so is trying to sponge off others’

She needs to work full time.

I would love to read the husband’s side of this.

You flit between she can't/wont ask him to he won't tell her. It's very confusing.
She has no reason to only be working part time. She has teenagers she is in the perfect position to work more hours get a better job.
To have a food shop budget is normal. Mine is £100 a week for a family of 4. It works.
Their issue is they don't communicate. You shouldn't be in a position where you can't talk to your husband. He should be the first person she talks to.
However you do need to be mindful you know one side of the story. If you are pissed off with paying for her stop going out with her.

Financial abuse would be if her DH made her hand over all her earnings to him and he refused her access to money. Financial abuse is not him paying all household expenses, her having complete access to her own income with complete freedom as to how she spends it.

And let’s see what you pay for OP:

clothes for the kids. Maybe £150 a month?
Clubs. Maybe £100 a month?

I have teens. I spend about a faction of that on clothes. I don't think I spend that all year on DC1. Looks like the OP cannot budget. That kind of spending money is obscene if anyone asks me. And then she cries 'financial abuse'? It's an insult those those who really go through this.

Her husband works in a high paid job, probably stressful, and she has two weekdays off as well as weekends, gets home at 3.30? There is no need for a school hours job if her kids are teenagers. So she could add another £60 a week there working the same number of days.

Yes I get that running a house is time consuming but everyone manages it whether they work full time or not.

The point here is the belief that if he has an extra £500 a month then he should share it with her. Would be nice if he did, but I do not personally think that people who have different lives (one a soft life with part time school hours and lots of free time and the other with a stressful high earning job) should necessarily have the exact same spending money.

it sounds like she would spend any amount of money she had and that’s why she has a budget for groceries.

He wanted a SAHM

Well, she’s not a SAHM now is she? She could have said no. She didn’t have to agree to this situation if she didn’t want to either! I’m presuming she was a SAHM and now works part time?

If she wants more money, she can work more hours. If she wants to know how much her husband earns, she needs to speak to him. If he won’t talk to her, then they’ve clearly got more problems going on and need to think about whether the relationship is working.

Trying to sponge coffee off your friends and blag loans out of elderly people doesn’t make her sound very nice, tbh.

If it’s really a 1M house I would say mortgage is more like 3-4k especially with recent interest rate rises. I assume he also pays for a pension. Council tax could be another £250 plus a month.

If the non-working partner had full control over spending every penny of the working partner's income, then that would make the non-working partner financially abusive.

In any relationship, both parties have rights and responsibilities. By your own admission, all bills are paid by him, plus enough for food. The kids are teenagers out at school, so it is perfectly fair for her to then contribute a few hours of work into the mix. Her share then goes to her own expenses and some bits for the kids; it really doesn't seem to most people that she reasonably would need more, nor that he is likely to have a great deal more given their income at £132-212k (reduced by tax, mortgage, bills, pension, holidays, commuting, food bills and other expenses). Quite probably he does had a similar amount to spend on himself, but that would be OK, he's actually entitled to some discretionary spending money and not give it all to his wife. If she is overspending her own and her family's money, then that's down to her bad budgeting and him out any of you throwing more and more money at her will not help, she will just find more theatre trips / lunches / clothing to spend it on.

I still don’t understand why your friend can’t work full time or increase her hours on the days she does work, if her kids are teenagers now?

How old are they? Can they get a little part time job to earn a bit of their own money instead of asking for £20 here and there? It’s unclear what age they actually are.

So food, bills and mortgage are paid by him? And she keeps her whole wage for herself? I’m not seeing the problem unless I’m really missing something? Unless of course he’s refusing to let her work?

I'm not immediately blaming the woman. I'm offering another perspective. We don't actually know that she feels she can't ask him about money. OP is making assumptions because the friend didn't answer her question (the question being something like do you ask your husband for money or discuss money with your husband?). The friend didn't answer this question. Maybe she just didn't want to discuss her family finances with OP. For all we know, she might well speak to her husband about money. I hope so.
As for saying she can't even get a coffee - well she has £1000 per month to spend. All bills are paid by her DH. I think she can buy a coffee.
I'm not saying I agree with their set up. He may well be a controlling monster. I don't know. I'm not automatically assuming she's being abused though.

Classic mumsnet thread, an OP naking post after post trying to justify why they are NBU , drip feeding extra details to back their position up etc.

Your friend is s living a life of her choosing and by a mutual agreement. If she doesn't like the rules anymore she is free to live more independently.

If we look at the legal descriptions: Financial abuse includes disadvantaging someone and/or controlling their access to or use of money.

Even if she had a habit of frittering, this does not give him the right to control her.

Please do not give a limited example ‘making her contribute equally’ as a legal definition.

She has all her bills and expenses covered, so she can choose to work as much or as little as she likes. Based on working in a very PT role, she has £1k a month to spend on mobile phones and anything else that she fancies, with no real responsibilities that she is expected to cover.

Yes, I think it's strange that she can't talk to her dh about money and that she doesn't know how much they have in savings etc, but I don't see that she is necessarily being financially abused.

In your shoes, I would stop paying for her lunch though, as it sounds like she has plenty of disposable income and just isn't managing it very well. Of course, the lack of ability to manage her money may well help to explain why she and her husband don't have a joint account!

Sounds like a prison to me. All very well and good when it’s continuing but I made a pact to myself that I would never be dependent on anyone financially. Too risky.

Even if she pays that...

Say...£100 for phone contracts
£200 for clothes. That would be £300. And I am being generous, there are definitely cheaper contracts and £200 monthly on clothes is a lot too!

Even with this spending, she would have £700 to spend how she likes. For whoever this is not enough, they have an issue spending.

I also have the feeling that 'she' is you. As if this was my friend and she was saying that she couldn't pay when having coffees/lunch with me, I would feel she was taking the piss with this set up!. I would also feel ashamed to ask my husband for money having £1000 available to me every month. The difference is that I wouldnt ask relatives either and cut back.

I think you need to step away and stop getting stressed about your friend’s financial situation.

The best advice anyone could give her is to work more and increase her own financial independence. That’s what I’d tell her if it was my friend (and she’d asked for advice). If you think your husband isn’t sharing money properly, get financially secure yourself asap!

I think it’s fairly obvious at this point that the OP is the “friend.”

But let’s break it down shall we?

Let’s see what he pays for:

• the mortgage. How much is that? 2? 3? £4000 a month?
• the council tax. £200 maybe?
• gas/electric. (Between 150/£300?

• groceries. £600

And let’s see what you pay for OP:

• clothes for the kids. Maybe £150 a month?
• Clubs. Maybe £100 a month?

Out of £1000 a month you should be able to save at least half of that.

If that were true then it would be the law that any money earned in a marriage had to be shared equally. It’s not.

On divorce fifty/fifty is the start and a sahp would likely be awarded more of martial assets to make up for lack of earning potential. There is no legal requirement that money has to be shared but if a spouse is left short or has to beg then that could be financial abuse:

So a salary of 120k is probably around 6k a month post tax and pension

Say the mortgage is 2k a month
Bills another 500-600
Food you have said he pays £650
Are there any loans, credit cards or cars he is paying for - petrol, car insurance etc

If she is struggling with 1k a month fun money then maybe the issue is she is unable to budget. 1k a month to spend on yourself is a lot of money. Maybe he is worried that she may blow the family savings if she has access to it. He is making sure the family bills are covered. Financial abuse would be if he were making her contribute equally to the bills from her 12k salary. This isn't financial abuse.

I agree. God I’m worried about this common view that it’s OK for SAHMotherhood to be a form of indentured servitude. Have we gone back to the 1800s?

I think there’s an undercurrent of jealousy about the family’s overall set up. Some women would like the option of being a SAHM with 1k a month to budget all the extra family costs with. Sounds like freedom, right?

They can set up their finances how they like. Just because you don't agree is neither here nor there. Step away and stop getting so overly invested

Well, when it comes to divorce, credit ratings, benefits and HMRC investigations, finances are viewed in joint terms. For example, if a couple split, the wife is entitled to make a claim on the husband’s pension.