Would you support him?

[Toastbutterandpreserves]

NC for this and it's long!

I'm in a quandary. My DH has wanted to be self employed for years and I have refused to entertain it, for reasons that will become clear. Whilst I obviously can't tell him what to do I told him that I would make the decision to leave the marriage if he did.

15 years ago my DH had 2 businesses liquidated within a few years of each other. Both were badly managed by him (although there were of course other factors) and both left us with significant debts which took us the next 10 years to repay.

We are finally free of that time but it was extraordinarily stressful- my DH had a breakdown and was hospitalised for a short time and I spent half the time having panic attacks.

He has never managed to work well for other people and has resented every moment of the years he has worked for someone else. It has provided a (low) wage and stability but he has been miserable and he has complained constantly and spoken about nothing else but working for himself, for all these years

He is now adamant that he will not be going back to work after Christmas

However. This is somewhat different in that he wants to be a self employed consultant rather than run a company. He says its 15 years on and he is older and has learnt a lot and matured.

Also, we both work FT and we have twins in FT childcare. It is very very hard to cope with us both commuting and I can't deny that him working from home would be hugely helpful and improve all
of our lives massively.

I am the breadwinner. He earns enough to cover childcare and that's it. However, this childcare will still need to be paid for so there are risks associated with him going it alone if he doesn't earn anything.

I am now wondering whether I am being churlish and making him miserable, and whether I should simply give in and agree a 3/6 months trial. For context I Believe it will be fairly easy for him to get a job after this time if it doesn't work out.

But, I don't really trust him to stick to any trial. I have a sneaking suspicion it will be stretched out and out because the reality is he doesn't want to go back to working for a company so why would he?

Sorry - a "This^" missing there.

That's difficult. My XH was like this. The first time he tried to set up/run his own business was in the dying throes of our marriage. He was, like your DH, determined never to work for anyone else, at any cost. He lost all our savings through utter stupidity, whilst rejecting any form of communication with me about what he was doing (when I pointed out the pitfalls and risks, he would tell me I was negative and then refuse to discuss it any further). The extents he went to in order to try to work for himself were extraordinary. Whilst on the one hand I admired him for his determination, on the other I genuinely feared he would end up the patsy in a fraud and be sent to prison. As an example, he was asked by a Taiwanese man he met in Russia to broker the sale of a multi-million pound passenger aircraft when he had no experience as an aircraft broker, let alone in big ticket finance, and no contacts in the business - this set alarm bells ringing - he was also asked to front and invest in a building development also in the Eastern block, which involved bribing the local mayor to get planning permission. He lost everything in the end on a commodities deal, by sending all the money to a middle man in another country (rather than paying via an escrow account), who then promptly disappeared with the lot.

He had to go back to paid employment and we split up (for other reasons, not financial). But still years later his determination is there, and having had a very nice life in his job over the last few years, now he has no job and various new unviable businesses and he is unable to support our 4 DCs.
Some people are capable of running their own businesses, others aren't. My XH was not a complete buffoon, as an employee he was very good at the job he did. He just didn't enjoy being an employee and wanted to work for himself at any cost. But there's a fine line between taking a leap of faith and indulging a whim. Life is not simple and when you have DCs sometimes you have to sacrifice your dreams in favour of giving them a stable life.

I suspect if your position is that you are prepared to end the marriage over this, there must be other issues in your marriage.

As a divorce lawyer, I agree with the PP who said that you need to consider your long term position - if you separate and he's working from home, you could find that he becomes the main carer.

I think you need to weight up whether this is just a whim and he's not going to succeed, or if you think it's a well thought out plan and he's got a reasonable prospect of making it work. Like you say, this has to be with a set timeline. He needs to have time to make it work before acknowledging that it hasn't and returning to paid employment and you need to be confident that he won't get to the end of that period and then say "Oh just give it another 6 months" and so on.

Woah shalli! Mind you I wonder how DH would act given the opportunities your ex had....

Interesting point. In terms of divorce I own the house (yes, martial asset but) and as long as I could illustrate 50/50 childcare- how? We share pick up and drop offs so that would
Continue. He probably looks after them alone more, and I must confess, he's the one that usually takes Time off for their illness (and obviously, this would become his default if at home) hmmm.

Just a thought following on from what someone else said - under EU regulations isn't a father entitled to some extended parental leave in the DCs early years? If so, could he take this and use it to try to set up a sustainable consultancy? He's then guaranteed of his old position back, and there's a set time limit for him to make things work during that period.
Agree that he needs to come up with concrete, well thought-through plans rather than just a "I want to try to work for myself".
We all need a better work-life balance but for most of us it's an unachievable indulgence. You have to work out if this is an indulgence, or if there is a real prospect here of a better life for all of you. His lack of ambition is a bit worrying.

IF he had said 'I want to look at doing consultancy work instead. I want to put the feelers out and see what happens. If I could get enough consultancy work to still cover the childcare costs would you support me doing this?' Then I'd have said 'Yes, but you have to be able to cover childcare costs every month & if you can't you need to find another job. I'm not ending up in the position we were in before and I will leave you if you start to behave irresponsibly'.

But with his attitude I don't think I could support it. I'd tell him that he needs to go back to work after Christmas & he needs to save enough money to cover two months childcare - when he's done that he needs to see what contracts he can get before leaving his job.

If the worst came to the worst, if you could demonstrate that you are available to pick up/drop off etc, then can't see why you wouldn't end up with shared care. But of course you need to live close to one another to make that work. If he's self employed might he argue that he would be better off living in a cheaper area/closer to family, which then puts you in difficulty? Or would he not be so unfair on you and acknowledge that the DTs need their mum as much as their dad (sadly people don't always behave decently in a divorce).

A colleague once did a case (before the days when more people had shared care) where the wife had a high powered career and husband had been the main carer, but she still won and ended up as the main carer after a court battle, and this involved a plan for her to move quite far away (making a shared care arrangement impossible).

If they were ill you'd just need to have a thought-out plan for who would step in to help.
Owning the home - yes, it's a marital asset so unless there were other factors (eg it was inherited) legal ownership wouldn't matter a great deal unfortunately.

He wouldn't have a job to go back to if he took parental leave. He works in a competitive sales environment, they frequently sack you and just take the chance you won't go legal or pay you off. He'd be redundant quicker than he could
Put the request in....

Wouldn't you be better off letting him be the main carer, divorce him, let him
Have his fantasy life, you have all the fun weekends and holidays with your children. Sounds like you are in a far better position than him to start again and he doesn't really have anything to offer the children financially

Forgot to say: Sickness - I've had a bleed on the brain and a broken back and had 1.5 days off. No work = no money.

However, for all of that I can't see me going back to working for someone else. I like our little company and I like the variety.

I'd support him.
4 hours commute is mad and not efficient in terms of time or money.
He is miserable.