Husbands inheritance

[lisaloves]

DH has inherited 15k from an Aunt who sadly passed.

We are very happily married with 2 DCs. Comfortable financially but certainly not loaded. Huge mortgage and things we need to do to the house etc.

DH wants to put the entire amount in to Bitcoin. He's reluctantly agreed to just put half in to Bitcoin and the other half in to our joint ISA.

AIBU to think this is selfish?

For reference I am the bread winner by a country mile and we share all of our income. I never question this so it now feels unfair that his money is 'his' money - when for a long time I've earned much more and it's all been shared money.

I don't know much about Bitcoin but from what I've read it's very risky business.

@BuildersTeaMaker
Might also want to point it that if you divorce that inheritance most certainly is a joint marriageable asset, and therefore it’s a joint decision where it goes.

Not if you are in England. It’s not a joint marital asset unless/until the beneficiary puts it in a joint account of some sort. Your DH paying off your joint mortgage with it is what made it a marital asset.

“As a rule, most assets that are acquired during a marriage or a civil partnership are added to the ‘matrimonial pot’ and are then divided upon divorce or dissolution.

But any assets which have been inherited by either spouse are often treated differently by courts in the context of divorce. The precedence for this was set out in the case of White v White on 26 October 2000 which stated:

This distinction is a recognition of the view that property owned by one spouse before the marriage, and inherited property whenever acquired, stand on a different footing from what may be loosely called matrimonial property.

In this article we will look in more detail at what happens to inherited assets in divorce and how to protect a future inheritance in a divorce settlement.”
www.divorce-online.co.uk/finances/assets/inherited-assets-in-divorce/

You are missing the point.
Yes you are legally correct but any decent person would use this money to help their family. This is the point.

Like your husband I had heard stories of crypto success and I wanted to learn more about it so a couple of years ago I put £150 in bitcoin (it was an amount I could afford to lose) - it's now worth £25. I'm leaving it there in the hopes it goes back up long term but it's a terrible way to invest, as pps have said there's no protection.

During the same time some shares I own have increased by 7%

Bitcoin success is for people who hopped on the bandwagon in 2010

i simply don’t Understand how on earth you could think such a statement is in the best interest of a happy partnership

basically you are saying that someone who has to work their personal bollocks off to earn money with all the stress and stain of that, has to share that with their spouse.

whereas money obtained by one partner through sheer luck, and no graft at all on their part, they can keep all to themselves…even if they’ve not contributed anything in terms of income and sat on their arse all day watching their partner graft for money

how on earth do you figure that is remotely conducive to a happy marriage? You are completely bonkers.

And, I’d add, in the event of divorce it is seen, quite rightly, as a marriageable joint asset .

only in a few specific circumstances will a court allow it to be “ring fenced” …usually where marriage is very short and person inherited before marriage.

I know this as I divorced last year. No question that ex inheritance, after 26 years of marriage, was part of the joint assets even though it was in his sole name.

This so simply not true under English law, if you get an inheritance after you are married it most certainly is seen by divorce courts at joint marriageable asset.

No, it’s really not. The starting point is that it is not a joint asset. And in the case of a high earning OP who is financially comfortable in her own words it is highly doubtful that a mere £15k would be deemed necessary to be added to the financiak settlement for her post divorce financial stability. Even if it is included in the financial settlement it is still added as a nonmatrimonial asset:

“If money is inherited by either husband or wife during the marriage, whether or not it will be added to the matrimonial pot will depend upon several factors, including:

Passage of time – In a long marriage, where either party brings non-matrimonial property (money from inheritance) into the marriage, the source of these assets will become less important as time goes on and may gradually come to be seen as matrimonial property.

Mingling of property – Where the non-matrimonial property ends up being intermingled with matrimonial property over time so that it becomes difficult to distinguish one from the other, it is more likely that it will all be added to the matrimonial pot. This could be where a portion of the inheritance is used to purchase shares as joint stakeholders, which then significantly increases in value over time.

Matrimonial home – If an inheritance is used to purchase a matrimonial home, this is more likely to be considered as having been added to the matrimonial pot and divided accordingly.

However, the factors above will generally only come into play if the matrimonial assets are adequate to meet the needs of both parties in terms of a financial settlement. If the matrimonial property is insufficient, then the non-matrimonial property will need to be added to the overall matrimonial pot in order to cover the financial needs of both parties following the divorce – this is especially the case where there are young children involved.

It is important to note that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to dividing inherited assets; the outcome will always be decided on the facts of the individual circumstances.”

You do understand that your divorce isn’t all divorces? Nor does a non matrimonial asset being added to your financial settlement mean they always are added, or even that it’s correct to call inheritance a joint marital asset, when it clearly isnt under the current law.

basically you are saying that someone who has to work their personal bollocks off to earn money with all the stress and stain of that, has to share that with their spouse.

whereas money obtained by one partner through sheer luck, and no graft at all on their part, they can keep all to themselves…even if they’ve not contributed anything in terms of income and sat on their arse all day watching their partner graft for money

Except nobody's said that.

Op and her husband both work. They both contribute to the family finances and they have both made the decision to have children and live their lives according to those incomes.

OP has said they're comfortable. She's not slaving away every day while he does nothing.

Being the higher earner doesn't automatically make you the harder worker, either.

If it’s an unhappy partnership it will be because one partner is sitting on their arse all day doing fuck all to contribute. Not because their inheritance is theirs to do with as they wish.

For most happy couples, both are contributing equally if not financially then through hours of labour being a SAHP or working a low pay job. Then an inheritance comes along.

It’s not wrong to agree, that we each decide what to do with our own inheritance
even in cases where one partner knows they will have no inheritance to speak of ever.

It’s not going to ruin an already happy partnership to agree that it’s not an all or nothing when it comes to contributing. Especially when the family is “comfortable” financially and the inheritance is a mere £15k. If it were a life changing amount like a multimillion pound one or the family were in poverty, then yes would expect/like some sharing but the decision to do so is still not a joint one.

You might as well have written “DH inherited 15k and wants to have a blow out at the casino with it.”

People get so weird over inheritance... it's unearned, sometimes unexpected, money that is given to someone who is (most likely) grieving.

If you were coping without it before then you can cope without it now - the fact you took on a large mortgage is a consequence of your previous financial decisions. I'm assuming you didn't take on the mortgage with the assumption that the aunt's inheritance would pay it off? So why should it factor in now?

Likewise, unless there is a back story about why you outearn him (e.g. he his lazy or unmotivated) then that again is a financial decision that you have previously agreed to. The inheritance doesn't change that.

I would have an incredibly low opinion of my DH if he started mandating how I spent an inheritance. Yes, a decent person would probably invest it partly into the family; and it seems that that is what your DH is trying to do (albeit 100% in Crypto would be inadvisable). The compromise to have 50% in an ISA and 50% in Crypto seems fine to me.

Inheritance has a way of causing arguments and destroying families but it really doesn't need to if people would reframe how they see it and stop assuming that there is a "correct" way to spend or save it. It's up to the individual (i.e the recipient) and the moment you start mentally counting someone else's money then you're going to end up with a whole host of negativity around it (e.g. resentment)

Bitcoin is a bigger fool scam. Please tell him to research this properly.

Bitcoin isn't a "risky" investment any more than a ponzi scheme or MLM is. It's not an investment.

It is a scam.

I don’t think there is enough context or information to take a properly -informed view, but this does seem like a bit of a storm in a teacup, to be honest.

It’s 15k, in fact only 7.5k as he’s agreed to save half of it jointly (in a fictional “joint ISA” but let’s just assume that there is another, true joint savings vehicle where it can go).

OP describes them as “comfortable” and the DH does work, he just isn’t the main earner. The assumption is that his income is also treated as joint family money.

We don’t really know what a “huge” mortgage means, but it’s unlikely to be out of kilter with their joint earning capacity pre-inheritance. If they have over-stretched themselves with other debts that was OP’s fault as much as her DH’s. We don’t know the proportions in which they contributed to the deposit for the family home.

We don’t know whether the DH does less, exactly or more than a 50% share of the childcare and child-related physical and mental load.

We don’t know if the DH is insisting that all OP’s earnings go in the joint pot or whether he’d be perfectly fine for her to spend 7.5k on something entirely for herself.

I doubt very much that 7.5k spent on the mortgage would make much of a difference to their daily and longer-term financial position in the grand scheme of things. It might be better to use it to do some work on the house, but the other half could go towards that.

OP maybe instead of a theoretical calculation you could sit down together and agree (eg) we really need the bathroom re-done, how about you price up, organise and pay for that and then spend/invest whatever is left however you like?

The desire to invest in Bitcoin is a bit naive, but unless he’s a total idiot surely he’ll do his own research first (and hopefully decide against it). It still has a better potential return than buying a luxury item or going on holiday.

It's his money, so he can absolutely do what he likes with it. But, no doubt, most IFAs would say that Bitcoin is risky.

If he is using half for bitcoin, I have a bridge to sell him that will alleviate him of the other half.

Is he usually an idiot OP?

Bitcoin has absolutely plummeted in the last year. If it were me and DH, we’d probably have £1500 fun money and put the rest on the mortgage given everything that’s going on right now.

Since he is not an experienced investor he should not touch bitcoin. A stocks and shares ISA would give him some experience of investing and the ups and downs of the market. AJBell might be a place to start.

Put as much as you can afford each month into your own premium bonds. Your premium bonds savings should come before what he'd like you to spend on beer and TV and fun money that he would expect you to cover.

Bitcoin is hugely volatile. If your DH already had a diversified range of investments and knew a bit about what he was doing, I don't think it would be insane to buy some (although it's not what I would do)- it has tanked and recovered multiple times, it's pretty low now, if he thinks he can call the top he could make some money. BUT everything OP has said suggests that this isn't the case, she hasn't mentioned other investments beyond a "joint ISA" (eh?) and the husband seems to see it as some sort of guaranteed get-rich-quick scheme, rather than what it is (very high risk).

Half the stories you hear about people making a bomb on bitcoin miss out the ending, where it tanked and all their paper gains were wiped out.

Anyway, sounds like a bad idea. Putting it into a s&s ISA would be much better if you don't need to touch it for 5+ years. If he wants the thrill of a gamble, save a quid for a lottery ticket.

Bitcoin is nuts -

I would sit him down, having gathered all the evidence, and say look we share our finances right? So what we do with this money has to be a joint decision. I am really unhappy about bitcoin, but if you really eat to invest some I’d like it to be no more than 20% - 3k.

sounds like you can afford to loose that

Actually rereading this something jumped out. "Huge mortgage " well interest rates are rising and set to be at least 6-7% in the near future.

Granted £7.5k may not make a huge difference but overpayments on mortgages can be offset by reduced payments if you want, so putting it into the mortgage seems like the sensible course of action. DH and I both got unexpected lump sums from inheritance and both put them in the mortgage.

Well.
Now you know you're the only one who shares.

He, OTOH, believes 'what's yours is ours, what's mine's my own.'

Apart from he contributes his wages to the family pot too

He would be better off putting it into premier bonds.

As long as he holds until 2030, that will be at least a 10X profit. It’s a good risk at these prices.