To be fucking livid - DH, lost money

[Jamtartforme]

We’re skint, in the red every month. 2 kids, mortgage has gone up horrifically, nursery fees, COL, I’m sure many of you will know what it’s like.

DH isn’t lazy, he pulls his weight around the house but only when it comes to ‘obvious’ tasks. Such as washing up, or walking the dog. If its a task you can’t ‘see’ or doesn’t need to be done as part of routine - for example, arranging a birthday party or applying for school - it won’t even register. I do 95% of the mental load stuff, minimum.

This has caused a few rows between us, his point being I don’t let him do anything because when he does do it he fucks it up. But every time I do he just messes it up - he forgets medical appointments, fills in forms wrong, or relies on me to spoon feed him instructions to such an extent that I may as well do whatever it is myself.

Fine, I said, you can deal with the tax free childcare account for nursery. All good.

Fast forward to this evening and I discover that not one fucking payment has been made from the tax free account since last year. He’s been making the payments from our account and just assuming the deduction was being made because he had given the nursery our tax free code. He couldn’t be bothered to look into it all properly and work out how to use the account, even less actually work out how much we should be paying with the deduction, and now we have lost 2 fucking grand in the last year that we really, really do not have.

How angry would you be? I’m livid and can hardly look at him.

Posted too soon but, he sounds utterly incompetent and useless. As though he's leaning heavily on you to 'parent' him as well as your kids. Let me guess, his mum did everything at home?!

If you are married, that money is considered a shared asset by law. You will discover that if you ever divorce.

I can understand why you’re so annoyed but I think if he is a good partner and father in other respects, I would just put this down to being a stupid mistake, albeit an expensive one. I’m really scatty, sometimes not realising the importance of things, incredibly forgetful. Not through thoughtlessness though. Luckily, DH doesn’t berate me for it. I think he’s trying to show how sorry he is by transferring the money, but as it was family money that has been lost I would perhaps put that into a joint savings account for the future to ensure you don’t go overdrawn on the joint account. YANBU to be annoyed and angry but I don’t think he deserves the bashing he has received from some PPs on here.

In the extremely unlikely event that we divorced the law wouldn’t be involved in the division of assets because they’re already separate. The only shared asset is the house and obviously the proceeds of that would be split down the middle.

I always strive to show respect to everyone I encounter, whether in a professional or personal setting. It's interesting posters keep mentioning the workplace. According to Pareto's principle, almost 80% of the workforce may be considered inefficient or incompetent, and in some cases, both.

And how many times would it take for that person to fuck up before you lost that respect?

Well obviously you and your DP could decide to divide the assets anywhich way you wanted, but that doesn't change the starting point in law that the money in the account with just your name on it would be split 50% with your DP. If you wanted to protect all your assets then you shouldn't have got married. Sorry.

I'd be majorly pissed off too. Strategic incompetence is highly unattractive, not being able to admit a fuck up is even more so.

I'm a tiny bit on the side of the DH here. You knew how to do it. You really needed to tell him. Things that seem blindingly obvious to some aren't to others. Can't you claim it back?

How do you think OP knew what she needed to do?

Now why couldn't her husband do the same?

Yes, it lucky that the OP was just born knowing how to do things. She didnt have to look into anything/ google it/ research it. She just KNEW. From birth.

Unlike her poor, poor husband. Such a shame something isn't invented that men can use. Like, I dunno, Google. Or the power of speech to ask.

She did tell him? Read all OP’s posts, she told him he’d need to log in to the TFC account and make payments from there and, presumably, she gave him the login name and password.

Quite rightly, that is NOT how family law works - you can't really think this? That the only shared asset would be their house?

I would never chastise another in that manner. So I'd come to the conclusion there weren't up to that task.

To be strictly fair (and I don't really want to be), women learn this stuff from other mothers. I know I did. Those who were a few months or years ahead of me were my gurus when it came to checking on how and when to do new-to-me bits of parenting admin. Fathers don't generally have the same opportunities to have those casual conversations about school registration or vaccinations and so on.

But still, there's no excuse for this DH not to follow the instructions after he googled what to do.

Let’s hope you’ve got a thick one, circumferences, as you haven’t much else going for you.*

Sorry but that did make me chuckle 🙊

I agree, at least in part, with points that @ClaudiaWankleman is making (I have only skimmed, while reading all OP's so I may have missed some).

I fully get OP's anger and upset - that's totally understandable.

It does sound like a mistake, that maybe not anyone could make but certainly some people could. (Also - I'm not in the UK so don't have this system but think I get how it works from the posts here).

He also sounds like a decent partner and parent in terms of division of labour and sharing of responsibilities. I am usually the one shouting about learned helplessness and the phalanx of useless Hs who intentionally avoid the mental load.

In this case, from OP's posts, it sounds like while he's overall a good man, he is not great on future planning or that element of organisation. With discussion surely the balance can be redressed, if OP has to take on these organisational elements he could do others?

I don't think the transferring of £2k makes any difference at all. The point is that the family is down £2k. This just means OP's DH has taken money from one pot (his savings) and moved it to another pot (OP's account) but it doesn't address the loss. The only way to do this might be for him to see if he can earn £2k somehow but I'm not sure how realistic this is.

I don't at all think OP is being unreasonable for being upset at this but I would see it as silly mistake rather than intentional 'couldn't give a shit' behaviour.

What?! Tax free childcare was introduced about six years ago. My mother definitely never used it for us.

Well obviously you and your DP could decide to divide the assets anywhich way you wanted

Precisely. Which makes all this stuff about “family money” and being a “single financial unit” nonsense. He’s my husband, not my DP.

Oh sorry I’ve just realised you said other mothers, not their own mothers 🤦‍♀️ Should learn to read properly!

We used to get childcare vouchers which came out of our salaries before tax - this was more than six years ago.

May I just say that 'Mavis Chunch' is my favourite name of the week so far

If you and your DP say so.

If you split amicably yes. But should either of you want to you could make a claim for 50% and the starting point would be an equal split and your current division wouldn't necessarily be adhered to by a court

Yes, à bit confused by this. OP says she kept querying the amount, but surely she should have been querying why the money was going directly to the nursery instead of to the government account?