Does money gifted to me also belong to DH?

[Xitt]

Pregnancy and weight loss have left me with an apron of skin that’s constantly sore and affects my mobility and self esteem. I need it surgically removed but can’t afford it. Unexpectedly my DF has offered to pay for it. He also wants to pay for me to retrain so I can return to work.

DH and I have had a huge argument because he insists that any money gifted to me by my DF is OUR money because we’re married, so therefore he gets a say in how it’s spent. And maybe he might need some of that money for something. Or he might just not agree with spending it on my tummy tuck and retraining; maybe he’d prefer to pay it off the mortgage. We have joint finances and I’m currently a SAHM so his salary and savings etc is joint money. He thinks it’s unfair that he has to share his money but when I’m gifted some money I’m not sharing.

I sort of see his point but DF has offered this money for a specific purpose. AIBU to think it’s my money for my tummy tuck and retraining, and DH has no say in how it’s spent?

You are.enabling him in his career which is why his earnings go in the family.pot.

Can your dad.just pay for your two.things directly so the money never actually touches.you?

Till as an academic, I think the OP has a predisposition to a certain type of work. She has already said she wants something that has good earning potential and isn't sporadic, so imo she's unlikely to be attracted to life coach type work.

I do think you'd have to be stupid to do MLM type work, but stupid and uneducated are not the same thing.

The OP is an academic, I can't see her setting up as a life coach or getting sucked into some MLM type bollocks
You say that, I know many well educated people who've been sucked into MLMs (fallen prey to the guilt tripping and the idea of having money and time).
I also know of people who think that because they're well educated, they'll be great at running their own business but actually they haven't got the business sense or drive, so they end up setting up what is essentially a hobby business (life coach/craft/beauty treatments that don't require the same rigour as people who do specialist level 3/4 training). Their other halves, unsurprisingly, are reluctant to fork out on additional childcare and cleaners when the hobby busines isn't bringing in enough to cover the additional costs and then the person running the hobby business gets frustrated that their job doesn't have the same weight as the main breadwinner.

Ultimately, retraining is a lot of hard work and requires a plan and a timeframe and a reasonable look at finances.
It could be entirely the best thing to do for everyone and lead to a household that's more harmonious and equitable. It could equally lead to years of resentment, added costs to the family pot and not resolve any of the issue, leaving the OP still going to her dad for handouts and complaining about life.

FWIW, retraining was an amazing decision for me and it's given me and DH more flexibility. I think it can absolutely be the right option, but there has to be a plan and not be driven by "do something but I don't know what, it's for me so you have to lump it and consider whatever I do as being comparable"

I do agree with you that the retraining has to be properly thought out and for something 'real'. Possibly the OP hasn't settled on anything specific because the chance to retrain is something that has only just became available. When you think that something is out of reach, you tend not to plan exactly what you would do if it wasn't.
I hope she takes some of the suggestions from this thread that would use her existing skills and qualifications, since that would save her a lot of time and money.

I agree aderyn19.
That's why I've been wary about the unilateral decision of "but it's MY money for me to do what I want".
If the retraining involves placements etc then the childcare costs during retraining have to come from somewhere, and it doesn't sound like there's flex in the family pot to cover that right now so it needs to be considered (and probably covered by her dad)
It really has to be a proper plan from the couple that both parties are agreed on. At the moment, I have a lot fo sympathy for the husband because he's continually being informed of decisions affecting the household that have been made by the OP and her father (complete with guilt tripping of "but I had a baby... I sacrificed... As if there was no agency at all).

I don't think it's so much that it's out of reach, so much as they've got themselves in this martyr way of thinking of woe is me, if he doesn't give up his prospects I can never have a career (but I don't know what in), I'm always going to be doing 100% of everything and so on. Even when they'd decided they wanted to retrain it was still with the resentment and woe is me approach as if it's inevitable that they'll continue to have moaning rights forever because they had a baby.

If you want to retrain and are determined enough to be willing to dictate to your spouse that you and your father have decided you'll be doing X Y Z then you're driven enough to come up with some sort of plan rather than complaining about how inevitably you'll end up doing the same old thing and the DH should accept whatever you want.

I think she will come up with a plan. The problem here is the husband's open unwillingness to even look into options for flexible working. Even if they split he's point blank refused to take on any responsibility for their child on a week day. Which means that she has to. She doesn't get to refuse. I can't defend a parent at all who thinks they get to opt out of parenting when it's not convenient.
It's not a question of wanting him to tank his career, more wanting him to do what he agreed when they decided to have a baby, which was to share parenting.
He has changed the terms on her and I think that's why she is very protective of the money she receives from her dad and her potential future inheritance. She doesn't trust him anymore.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to how it must feel to have no money for yourself despite working ft and if the OP was getting lots of money and spending it on luxuries that she was unwilling to share at all then I would understand him being hurt by that. Corrective surgery and retraining are different though. A caring husband should want her to have what she needs and as a grown woman ultimately it's up to her to decide that.

I guess the long and short of it is that OP thinks her husband is doing what he wants and doesn't give a fuck about her happiness, so she has decided to do as she wants and not give a fuck about his either. I can't say I think she's wrong.

If your DF has lovingly gifted you the money for a tummy tuck (and they are aware of it) then that money can ONLY be spent on a tummy tuck.

Using your friends money for other things would be so rude ! Your DH is a dick

He doesn't have to consider flexible working if it doesn't suit his job They can BOTH have a career with childcare. That's what thousands and thousands of people do.
It's all well and good saying he changed the goalposts but both of their situations changed. Shared 50/50 may have worked well prior to his promotion when the OP was also still looking at her career in academia. For reasons entirely separate to the DH, there were issues with her career surrounding maternity that meant she felt it wasn't viable continuing (change on her part that's not her fault but still very different to continuing the original career after maternity leave). He got a promotion that made her being at home financially viable, but with that came achange in expectations which isn't uncommon with promotions (again change on his part, not his fault but still a change). Suddenly the career decisions and practicalitiea of BOTH people have changed and so it's hardly surprising that the allocation of childcare and house stuff changes. That's life. It would be ludicrous to argue "over a year ago when we tried for a baby and were both in a very different situation, we said we were going to do 50/0 shared but now we are in a totally different position I still expect the same terms".

I'd point blank refuse to alter my hours to do childcare around a total non plan cooked up by my DH with his parents without any discussion with me about how it will affect OUR household. I'd be telling him to get stuffed and come back when he's ready to have a proper conversation with me as his wife, instead of informing me of what I need to do because him and his parents have decided on some unspecified non plan. That may seem blunt but if he can't be arsed to come up with a plan and have a proper conversation with me, choosing instead to bitch to his parents about how awful everything is (not even starting on how all money from parents would be kept specifically away from me) then I'd be seriously questioning what I'm doing in the marriage. I certainly wouldn't be being told how I should be making waves at work to change my work pattern around a total non plan that could quite easily cause financial shortages in the family.

Retraining isn't the issue. The sense of entitlement is.

I do accept that DH and I might be in the minority with this, because both of us take a dim view of people who air their relationship issues in public and also think it's ridiculous when people run back to family to bitch and whine about their relationship. We've seen it cause too much drama, resentment and really acrimonious splits in the end, often over small or easily resolvable things that could have easily been resolved had one half (or both halves at times) spent more time actually talking to their spouse instead of moaning to family.

I don't agree with complaining about your relationship to family members either. It does cause long term problems. But that said, if a person feels unsupported by their spouse, it's natural to seek that support from family. The OP might not have been slagging off her husband to her dad. She might have just been upset because she's uncomfortable physically and missing her old life. The other thing is that parent do see things for themselves - she might not have needed to say anything specific for her dad to see there are problems.
I don't think her DH has to necessarily change things at work right this minute but he does imo have an obligation to explore possibilities and be willing to change things in future if OP finds a good career. And I think he needs to help her get that off the ground. That might be taking holiday so she can attend interviews or helping to find childcare. It shouldn't all be on her because the child isn't solely hers. Sometimes feeling supported isn't about the DH doing 50%, it's about feeling he's on your side and wants you to be happy and is willing to put himself out a bit to make that happen. I'm just not seeing that with him.
It doesn't matter that she agreed to sah or wanted to initially. She doesn't now and so thing have to change.

I think they'll end up divorced. He'll do contact when it suits him and will take the view that paying child support absolves him of any other responsibility. She'll end up relying on her dad to help her.

I don't think her DH has to necessarily change things at work right this minute but he does imo have an obligation to explore possibilities and be willing to change things in future if OP finds a good career
I can agree with that.
Once OP has a proper plan and the pair of them have actively discussed the ways to bring it about then there's room to discuss if/what changes need to be made to his hours etc. But not before.

I do think she's been bitching to her dad though. People don't just have continual handouts and make plans for their children's lives which affect their spouse out of nowhere.

I agree if she no longer wants to SAH then it has to change (just like when a WOH parent no longer feels happy being the sole earner).The thing is, hasnt said she has to stay home. He just wants to discuss her going back to work (Vs being informed that her and dad have decided she's retraining).

I don't know how it will go. My gut instinct is it will go one of 2 ways:

1. They'll get divorced, OP may or may not retrain in something with long term prospects. She'll either retrain and get on her feet with the help from her dad (I hope!), or she'll get enough maintenance from exH, handouts from dad each time she decides life is hard and then do some sort of hobby business.
2. She'll decide she's quite comfortable having all the bills paid for her, use money from her dad to do whatever she wants without communicating with DH, they'll have a marriage full of resentment on both sides and she'll stew in victim status about hard done to she is for years.

I can't see them actually behaving like sensible adults to resolve this in a way that brings a happy marriage, even though it's entirely possible.

@Aderyn19

Do you realise that the OP has been systematically changing the narrative of her husbands character throughout the thread?

He's went from a normal person with a decent but not fantastically paid job who wanted a say in how a significant gift of money should be used, to a career driven high flyer and is now a career driven chauvinist who wants nothing to do with his own child.

If the current incarnation of her DH is true then the op should have included that in the op and i suspect we'd have a very different thread.

Reading through the thread I found myself flipping around on my stance towards your problem, op, but having read your last post I think it's very very clear that the problem you really need to solve is that of being married to a complete fucking arsehole.

Divorce him. Take the child he has no intention of taking any responsibility for and go and live with your dad. You're not leaving a job, and you're not leaving a marriage worth having. Get your body sorted courtesy of your dad whieyou're there, and while you're doing that think hard on what you can do vis a vis career. Then do that.

You'll be amazed how much easier it'll all be when you've shed the real problem.

Buccanarab you can be career driven and not highly paid. I think she's been pretty consistent re her DH - she hasn't blamed him for lack of money but has said he still has his job (with promotion) doesn't want her to work until the free nursery hours kick in, is unwilling to do any week day childcare or even investigate different ways of working.
She's also said he feels that marriage means that what she is given in gifts is his too and he would like her dad's money to go towards the mortgage or something else that he would like. But the fact is, her dad has offered it for an operation or retraining and presumably if he wanted it to be a joint gift to the DH he would have said so.
The h has no interest in changing anything to help his wife be happy and wants to appropriate money not intended for him that might give her opportunities.