to divorce my husband over £3

[mrspepperspot]

This is the final straw. Background:

DH earns decent wage - way above national average. I'm on unpaid maternity leave. We agreed DH would support us until I go back to work - I plan to go back in the next 12 months. He pays mortgage and most bills. He has always had a lot of debt - overdraft, loans and credit card bills. I didn't realise until after I married him the impact all this accrued debt would have on our relationship.

I have always paid half the bills until recently when I took unpaid maternity leave with second dc. So when dd was born I went back to 4 days a week when she was 4 months old and continued to pay half of the mortgage, nursery bills (even though I was earning less due to going part-time and he was working fulltime still).

In order for him to support us while I'm not earning I paid off a chunk of his debts with my saving. My theory was that with no overdraft and one of his credit card bills gone he would easily be able to pay the mortgage and bills. I have been using child benefit (we don't get any other benefits like child tax credit) to help pay for food and clothes for the dc.

DH recently admitted that despite me paying off his overdraft he is now over £1000 overdrawn and is struggling financially. I went through his bank account and together we worked out how to reduce our outgoings. Eg he was paying over £100 a month to 'buy' extra annual leave at work which I made him cancel - he'll have to get buy on the 25 days he currently gets like everyone else.

Anyway final straw came today. Every week my parents give dd £3 a week pocket money. We don't give her any pocket money so I really appreciate my parents doing this. I put the pocket money on the kitchen shelf last night with a reminder to myself to make dd put it in her money box.

This morning the money has gone. DH has taken it. This is not the first time. Last week he 'borrowed' money from her money box to buy a chinese and didn't give it back despite me nagging him. His mum sent the dc's a cheque for £20 for christmas which he paid into his bank account. I suggested he buy the dcs a christmas present with the money but I know the dcs will never see it, DH will keep it.

I can't go on like this. In other ways DH is a good man - works hard, is a good husband and father but the way he manages money is appalling. I can't respect a man that happily takes his daughters pocket money without a second thought. I am now thinking about going back to work fulltime and divorcing him.

It's not just straightforward debt anniemac - did you read the posts? The OP's husband racked up debt after the OP paid it off, has never paid for holidays or big purchases and is stealing from his own children to pay for takeaways!!

There's a lot of good stuff you'd be throwing away.

I think you should put him on a strict cash-only regime and him have NO access to credit cards or anything with an overdraft/credit facility. You to manage all the money coming in & going out.

Live like that for a while and if you still have too little respect then do what you think you need to. But at the moment you don't seem to be supporting him to solve his problems.

Turn it around, would you expect him to divorce you over the same problem?

smash his face in

Taking your child's pocket money is lower than stealing IMO. What would have happened if your child had gone to the piggy bank and the money was missing? How is she supposed to trust her father after that?

I am also curious what he is actually spending the money on. Drugs? Gambling?

I agree with the posters pointing out that you knew you were marrying a feckless wastrel with no financial sense - yet now want to divorce him not because he has changed but because your circumstances have - is it really what you want to throw out years of a relationship over an issue that has always overshadowed you both?

If you still have feelings for him then it would be worth sitting him down and explaining what he could lose if he doesn't take this issue seriously and get help. Being a single parent won't help your finances and will seriuosly affect your children. I understand your problem - but people do not change because you want them too, or because they should but because they want to and he needs to understand he could lose you and hurt his children - maybe it will be the kick up the backside he needs?

I hope you can make him see sense

Is it? I take mine all the time, it's really handy. And they've got loads.

anniemac have you read the thread? It is not about 'taking a few pounds from the jar of a family member' as you imply. It is about my DH ongoing problems with money that have had a negative impact on my family. I don't think I have been uncaring and the 'solidarity' that you say I haven't shown, well if you read the thread you'd know that I have been carrying him financially for years and still am!

All I wanted to say is be very very sure that it was DH who took the £3...we had reports of ghostly activity last week and it turned out to be the DC's having found and moved something.

Just check is all....

If he has taken it and has now lied to cover then I think you have a serious problem to deal with. Agree that divorce may not be best option but you should do something to confront the issue.

OP did you know that he buys days off?

If you did divorce how would he pay maintainence?

I'd be bloody furious.

My ex left me in thousands of pounds of debt, swanned off to sit on a beach in Thailand leaving me to sort out paying bailiffs, court orders etc. He used money I gave him to pay bills to buy takeaways, couldn't go to Tescos for a loaf of bread without buying 16 other things we didn't need, constantly needed bailing out. And all this was kept secret - the dishonesty and the deception were almost worse than the situation, which it took me 4 years to dig myself out of.

I'm not sure about divorce. I'd be thinking counselling first - and giving him some cold hard truths about what happens if he doesn't man up and deal with it.

I think that if he is so incapable of managing money and would steal from his own child then he is pretty much a lost cause. My brother has been bailed out of debt twice by my dad, and what happens? Well, my brother's right back in debt yet again.
The only time I've ever known a feckless spendthrift change his ways was when his dad (who was also his employer) took over all the debts, took the interest and debt payments out of his son's pay packet and basically gave his son pocket money (the son was 26 at the time) for 5 years until all the debts were paid.

Unless you are prepared to stop all his accounts and I don't actually see how you can stop his access to his wages nor running up overdrafts, (obviously the banks are happy with this situation) then you need to divorce him. This debt will grow and while you are married it is your debt as well.

Stealing children's pocket money is crap, I know someone who when stoned ate his kids Easter egg so they had nothing Easter morning. It's so crap he really does not give a shit about you or the kids, does he?

annie I'm glad you said that about marriage...I was beginning to think I had gone mad...

my DH had student debts which I didn't when we got married but I have always thought of debts as being 'ours' and not 'his'. Similarly there is just income not 'mine' and 'his' and bills again not 'mine' and 'his'.

I tend to agree with HappyCamel on this - don't forget this is her job, she knows what she's talking about!

Yes your DH is irresponsible with money, but you don't seem to want to sort it out as a couple!

Fwiw I'm rubbish with money, or was in my twenties. I have a few thousand of debts left and am on mat leave now. I am doing my best to pay it all off, and DH is too. It's our problem, not my problem. His being better with money than me has helped me to be more organised, less ashamed of the debt and more pragmatic. I've also allowed him to take control of finances where appropriate because I trust him, he isn't judging me and he can get us out of the hole. They may be debts from before our marriage, but finances become joint in a marriage. Yes marriage is about romance and about kids, but it's also about being a team and accepting each other. Legally what's mine is his and what's his is mine, more or less.

You knew this about your DH, you even say you enjoyed taking him out, now you want to leave him because you could be better off on benefits? Paying out for holidays and the like before sorting out your joint finances shows a lack of financial responsibility on your part as well as his IMO. You seem very unsupportive and unloving of him, and as a result he's burying his head in the sand further.

anniemac but it is stealing. He took his 5 years old daughter's pocket money and the money that her grandmother sent her for christmas. The fact that it is 'only £3', well so what? That's a lot of money to my dd. I know for a fact he wont replace it, because he's done the same thing in the past and never repaid. He has borrowed money from me and never offers to repay, he has borrowed money from my parents and hopes they will forget to ask him for it (of course they dont but are too embarrassed and eventually will ask me, redfaced a few months later for the money).

As for the chinese, when the takeaway came I looked in my purse saw I only had £10 asked DH if he had any money on him he disappeared and returned with some money which we later realised was from dd's money box. (DD asked who'd taken the money, it was lying on her bed with coins everywhere).

I've been unsupportive of him I have paid my way through our entire marriage. I have paid off his overdraft for him, I have paid off his credit card. If we need something for the house I have just paid it and not asked him to contribute at all. All in the hope that he can work towards paying off his debt.

Ok but have you talked to him? Have you tried to merge your finances?

You still talk about you 'lending him money' which is a really weird concept in a marriage - how is that helping him exactly? And is he now 'lending you money' now that you're on mat leave?

It just makes no sense to me.

I was fairly neutral on this thread until I read one of your last posts OP.... you ordered a takeaway when

a - you know your husband is in debt and should be cutting down?
b- you didn't check you had the money to pay for it?

At the time the takeaway arrived I think you were in a lose-lose situation so you can't pin that one on him really, although he should obviously have said that he'd borrowed it from the money box and then had it paid back, but if you were originally going to pay - it should have been you putting it back!