Can a husband do anything to restrict his wife's spending ??

[TheThreeCheesesOfTheApocalypse44]

Asking on behalf of a family member......their wife has severe mental health issues and her spending habits are out of control. As in she's spending hundreds on good weeks, thousands on bad weeks. Mental health is very bad at the moment, any attempt to talk to her is met with verbal and physical abuse. Her husband is currently staying elsewhere due to this.

Mental health services are being useless, they won't help unless she self refers. Like a lot of people with her issues she thinks her behaviour is perfectly fine. Everyone else is the issue.

I've suggested going via the bank as we're honestly at a loss now. Her husband gave in work to care for his wife. No benefits as they have too much in savings which are being wasted fast.

Can anyone advise ?? Is there any help out there for this situation??

Technically either of them could empty the joint accounts

if he just takes half and puts it somewhere safe and then starts doing his banking in that protected space he should be fine. She would have a very hard time showing he did anything wrong with that approach.

he may have no choice but to separate legally. If she won’t engage with mental health services, he can’t let her destroy his life. Even if he files for separation and even if they eventually divorce, he can still advocate for her if she will let him.

in the meantime he should be pushing to get her admitted or at least to have her care escalated.

Just to say that mental health services, even if you can get them, are often crap with really early trauma. They are stuck in the medical model which can often feel like a repeat of early abusive family dynamics ie blaming the victim and placing the problem within them (not saying there isn't a problem with her behaviour but it makes sense in the context of her early life).

Added to that, we now have the 'recovery model' which was in the beginning a counter culture and a way of empowering the mentally ill to feel like they had a voice in their own recovery but now means the patient is expected to 'take responsibility' and if they 'don't engage' tough shit, their 'recovery' is on them. Utterly unrealistic when the brain has not developed as it should due to trauma and people may need life long support.

I don't know what the answer is (well the end of child abuse might help and failing that properly funded trauma informed mental health provision) and this probably isn't helpful but just wanted to give an insight as to why a patient may not 'engage' or may 'fall out' with therapists.

Others have given more practical support but every option must feel terribly painful and as if you're in a double bind . Your husband is to be admired for his compassion but if she spends all their money they will both drown and he won't be able to help himself let alone her.

You got it in one there......it's also why her husband refuses to prosecute. This new trend of criminalising mental health issues does not sit well with me either tbh. There was a case in our local paper a while ago where a young man was convicted for lashing out at somebody. He obviously had high care needs as he lived in supported living as did the person he attacked.

His diagnoses were listed in the paper, Autism, Adhd and schizophrenia if I remember rightly....he attacked the other resident because of the noise he was making.......so why the hell was a noise sensitive person with Autism placed in that situation? Where's the consequences for the carers who allowed this to happen ? And for who signed off placing him there.

He had 10 previous convictions for similar offences, literally for reacting to his environment. Its honestly scary how badly things are going and how we're treating vulnerable people in todays society. We've gone backwards in so many ways.