To have walked out on dh for this....

[ritaBx]

I've come to my mums for the night

Basically this morning I found out I had been left some inheritance. Not a massive amount but it took me by surprise. My family member died 3 weeks ago. And I have struggled with it. Partly because he wasn't the nicest person and treated some members of my family very badly. But he was always good to me and loved my kids to bits. I hardly saw him much at the end, I felt bad for not going but also just angry with him.

Anyway I woke up to find a small amount of money in my bank account. And I didn't know how to feel about it. I told my dh and he told me to spend it on something useful - I.e paying for what we've put on credit card for Xmas or a new fence.

But that didn't sit right with me. I'd like to split it into 3 and put it in my dcs child trust fund accounts. It feels right for me....

Dh not happy about this and gets a bit short with me. I was already crying as I really am struggling with the family member I've lost death. I've just not shown it (as usual)

So this then results in an argument. I tell dh I'm struggling. He doesn't listen and turns it around on me because I've gone in a mood with him.

I then tell him I'm sick of not being able to speak, he doesn't listen, makes everything about himself and I'm fed up of running around after him all the time. I don't work as 3 dcs, one with additional needs and one a baby. He thinks I have the life of luxury but I don't. I work my arse off at home. Keep on top of everything. Never ever sit and watch tv etc etc....

Anyway tonight he's still not speaking to me. I make tea, he doesn't want it. I ask him to watch the baby so I can get a few jobs done, he tells me he will do it so I can't throw anything back in his face.

The atmosphere is awful so I've gone to my mums with the baby. I tried to talk to him calmly before i left but he just totally ignored me and carried on watching tv

YANBU to not want to spend time with someone like that. He behaved like a dick sitting there watching tv whilst you tried to speak. You're his equal in the relationship regardless of your employment situation; if he doesn't see that I don't think he's someone deserving of your time, energy or love, frankly.

Think for a while about how the balance works in your family unit; is it the sort of balance you was to see replicated in your DC's futures? If not, change that balance and tell your DH you're not prepared to continue with life the way it's been so far.

Also, any parent who has to be asked to watch their own child is an arsehole. It's his absolute bare minimum responsibility whilst he's in the house and it's wanky beyond measure to use "watching the baby" as ammunition in a fight.

@FudgeBrownie2019 thank you - my head is foggy and my eyes hurt from crying. I needed to read that

Decisions about relationships aren't ones you can make in an instant, or even overnight. Take time to work out what you want and where you want to go next; if it means staying away for several days, do it. If it means sleeping in a separate room to him, do it. Find a way to get some distance and clarity and focus on you; not just the DC but you.

I know when you have DC that your overriding instinct in every situation is to preserve their home life, regardless of what you're going through. But having happy, healthy parents with high self-esteem who value themselves is vital for them, too, and at the minute your role is undervalued, unrespected and undermined by his behaviour. You don't have to stay with someone who doesn't value you; it's easy to say and it's a cliche, but it's also one of life's biggest truths.

Life with 3 kids (one SEN and one a baby) must be incredibly hard. Feel for you, OP. I think you did the right thing putting some distance between you both. As long as he knows you are safe, leave him to it.
Think about what you want--do you want stay with him and work on your marriage (obviously takes two) or do you want to start over? Is this a blip or is the marriage crap, more often than not?

Your grief is very new. Do not make any long term decisions about money or relationships in the near future.
Take time to work through your grief.
If he does not understand this, he may benefit from joint counseling

Have you talked it through with your mom?

First of all

There are two issues here:

1. This particular argument over money where you have been emotional due to mixed feelings over someone passing away and unexpected inheritance.

1. The background issue where you feel undervalued and DH has an unrealistic idea of what being a SAHP to 3 kids is like.

First thing you both need to do is discuss each of these things calmly and rationally and keep them separate - however that involves numpty of a DH actually speaking to you as going in a huff and not communicating is childish whoever is doing it!

To sort out what's happening with the inheritance, I agree its yours to decide what to do with as it's your relative - but he's probably in the huff as he has taken a solely practical emotionless view whereas you are emotionally involved and don't feel comfortable accepting the money so are more comfortable passing it on to kids. Perhaps explaining this will save you and DH in long term on uni fees, house deposits etc. so it's not as if you're pissing it up the wall?! Would you feel comfortable putting half to something like the kids christmas and half to the kids accs if it resolves the dispute as that's still for the benefit of them?

Second to that perhaps you should organise a girls holiday and go away for a long wknd, with particular attention to ensuring DH doesn't have back up childcare he can palm kids off on to give him a snapshot of how relaxing your life really isn't? Try to really look at downtime for both of you, as well as time together (if you can get some help from family) too. At night one of us does dishes, baths and bed, other does dinner and tidying. We alternate. We both work, but it was the same when I was off on maternity. You need to make a conscious effort to take some downtime even if it's 30 mins each on sofa whilst other does kids. If it's all one way traffic, that becomes really disfunctional, you resent / devalue each other and the longer it goes on like that the harder it is to fix.

Hope you and bub get some sleep and can get this resolved tomorrow ❤️

So your husband does the following

• tells you how to spend your inheritance (I'm sure most people would wish as a first choice that money that they leave to a relative be spent on a fence or Christmas credit)
• gets cross at you when you're crying and doesnt accept you're struggling
• refuses to discuss it anymore and instead sulks like a child
• totally disregards the effort you go to looking after 3 kids and doesn't value your contribution to your family, the effect on your children of having their mother there all the time, or the effect on his career of not having to so drop offs or pick ups or take emergency leave to look after kids.

The first two points I'd be able to forgive if he apologised and meant it.

The last two though make me think what is the point of this relationship. If the whole argument was because he thinks you should do what he says with the money because hes the Big Man with an Importsnt Job and you don't count because you're just a stay at home wife then I'd use the inheritance to leave him

You are stuck in a marriage with a man who treats you like a servant.
I am very sorry for you. I hope you will be able to regain your independence.

Give yourself time and space at your mum's to work things through.

Often, though, in my experience, it's a crisis like this that throws the rest of things into focus and makes you realise that all the stuff you've quietly been putting up with is actually a much bigger deal than you'd let yourself admit. But the realisation doesn't necessarily come all at once - it's only after the event that you can see "yes, things were dead in the water from then on."

(For me it was a health scare and the worry that my now ex, if it came to a straight choice between being there for me if I turned out to be seriously ill versus his career, would choose his career every time. Even then it was several months, perhaps even a year before I realised the full significance of it. In retrospect there were a whole load of incidents which piled up and piled up, and really, any one of them should have pushed me over the edge but I clung on because I loved him and didn't want to lose the relationship. Probably wasted a couple of years of my life and potentially the chance of settling down with someone much nicer...)

Wow - the executor has done an amazing job to have got probate and now be in the position to distribute funds within three weeks! Sorry to hear of your loss.

Death has a not so lovely habit of showing people's true colours. I'm sorry he's treated you this way, it's your money that you didn't have the day before and it's up to you how you choose to spend it.

So you're not working and he's working to support you and the kids and that's where all "his" money goes, it's not his it's both of yours and rightly so. And it's not quite enough money as sometimes you've used a credit card. Now all of a sudden you have some money, so he suggests you use some to pay off the credit card as he can't earn enough for everything. But you say no, "my money" is my money, not "our money", I'm not paying towards the family outgoings, credit card etc, I'll decide what to do with it but it won't be contributing to household bills or debts.
Is that right?
I can see why he's upset tbh. If you can't, perhaps have a conversation when you've both calmed down.

ISmell, I don't think the problem is the disagreement. Those are normal in a marriage. It is the behavior afterwards that is the issue.

How much debt are you in? Are you paying interest on it?

Does dh organised family finances and carry that load to make sure everything gets paid? Tbh if you have put xmas presents on credit card they need to be paid off more than sticking it in trust funds. You need to have a calm conversation with him. He probably doesnt get why you are upset about this death if you didnt actually see the person.

SuperMoonIsKeepingMeUpToo I thought that too, given my DM died recently and it took 10 months. But I've re-read the OP and it doesn't state that the family member who died 3 weeks ago is the same person who deposited the money in OP's account.

Talk about putting your own spin on it ISmellBabies because nowhere in her post does OP mention "my money is my money" or anything about refusing to contribute to family outgoings. I hardly think putting the money into their DC's trust funds is the most selfish of actions.

OP is working. She's doing however many hours each week with their DC whilst he works; if she went back to work there's a high probability he'd have to up his game with "watching" his own DC (which OP has mentioned he has a problem with) and up his game around the house. Not to mention the sky-high costs of putting more than one child into nursery so she can work; DS2 is 8 and his nursery fees when I went back to work were £1200 monthly and that's just one child, no additional needs involved.

Notwithstanding your dh’s horrible attitude towards you, if you’re paying for xmas stuff on a credit card, you can’t afford trust funds for you children

If it's a small amount OP then it's bugger all use sat in the bank tbh.

I can kind of see your DH's point in that it would be better spent clearing off an immediate debt. But sulking over it, and not eating food you'd prepared? That's childish and unkind.

I'd stay where you are until he gives you a decent apology for his behaviour.

i'd save the small amount separately so you have a cushion to fall back on - seeing as you're not able to earn an income right now.
HE can step up at home and do his fair share instead of playing lord of the manor

Martin Lewis would always say it is ridiculous to have savings when you have debt. Why don't you pay into 3 bank accounts later when you aren't so financially strapped for cash? Plus if your relative wanted to leave the money to your 3 children they would have stipulated this, instead it came to you.

This one disagreement has spiralled into covering several. You need to write down and split out the talking points.

You are grieving and it will take time for you to come to terms with what has happened. But running off to your Mums to give you space, fine for a very short term, but you need to return for your children if nothing else.

How long have you felt like this? "that I then tell him I'm sick of not being able to speak, he doesn't listen, makes everything about himself and I'm fed up of running around after him all the time. because you have two other children and yet had another baby. What changed between child number 2 and 3?

Realistically as a SAHM the bulk of housework etc that can be done in the day should be done by you, then when he comes home it is his responsibility to do housework and child care along with you. And yes, I have been and still am a SAHM.

As above:

So you're not working and he's working to support you and the kids and that's where all "his" money goes, it's not his it's both of yours and rightly so. And it's not quite enough money as sometimes you've used a credit card. Now all of a sudden you have some money, so he suggests you use some to pay off the credit card as he can't earn enough for everything. But you say no, "my money" is my money, not "our money", I'm not paying towards the family outgoings, credit card etc, I'll decide what to do with it but it won't be contributing to household bills or debts.
Is that right?
I can see why he's upset tbh. If you can't, perhaps have a conversation when you've both calmed down.

I thought that was a possibility too. And maybe he was confused - you said you didn't know what to do with the money so you spoke to him, which perhaps he saw as an invitation to have an input, he made a suggestion, and then you said that you wanted to put it in trust for the children - so you did have thoughts on what to do with the money. It could have sounded like when he suggested what you could do with it to benefit the family you then didn't see it as family money but yours. The way he reacted was definitely unacceptable, but the above isn't an entirely impossible scenario for how it got there.

As a one off incident, I'd say talk when you're both calmer and it's not so raw. However the later part of your OP suggests that this isn't a one off and there's much more to it. If that's the case, then maybe now is a good time to think about how you feel about the relationship more widely. But do it on the basis of the bigger picture, not this one incident.

It doesn’t sound like his behaviour was kind, but you say you’ve hidden your grief so maybe he didn’t know in advance of the argument you were struggling and in the midst of an argument THEN you say you’re struggling, he’s going to think “emotional blackmail”. Just seeing it from the others POV.

You lost me a little when you said you had 3DC so can’t work, some of us have to work even if they have 3 DC... and if you are putting stuff on credit cards and he’s working to try and be the financial manager of the relationship, maybe he saw that money as a bit of a buffer/pressure reliever.

So for me sorry but YABU flouncing to your mums, go home and sort it out like adults.

If your family member died three weeks, ago, as you say, there is no way you will have already inherited.

Is this post real?