To think he can’t get away with this? Marriage breakdown.

[SheIsStuck23]

I posted this on the Relationship board yesterday but only got two replies so I’m now posting it here because I’m desperate for help and advice.

I’m posting because of all the fantastic knowledge and support that is offered on here to women who want to escape shitty relationships and because I don’t know how to help my friend.

I’m going to see her in a few days time and I would love to be able to give her some guidance.

The back story of her and her husband:

Together for 13 years.
Married for 7 years.
They have two children aged 11 and 8

My friend was a SAHM until the youngest started school and then she started a college course in order to get into a career. She should get her qualification late next year.

Her husband works in banking and she thinks he earns about £95k.

My friend has never had any access to his earnings and all she has had since the birth of their first child eleven years ago is a monthly “allowance” that he gives her, as well as the child benefit.

He pays for the mortgage and bills and keeps the rest of his earnings to himself.

Their marriage has been very rocky for about 3-4 years (he’s awful) and a few months ago my friend told her husband that she didn’t want to be with him anymore. He made lots of promises about how he’d change (which he’s already been promising for many years with nothing changing) but she said enough is enough.

A year or so ago she had suggested marriage counselling but he wouldn’t pay for it and still won’t.

Their house is worth £400k and she wants to put it on the market but she knows he won’t agree. They are still living there together (separate rooms) and my friend says the atmosphere is just horrendous. She wants to start divorce proceedings but is terrified about how he will react and she doesn’t have access to any money to pay solicitor fees anyway.

He has now stopped giving her a monthly allowance (out of spite I imagine) and so all she has now each month is the child benefit money. She has to use this to buy things for herself and for the children, and for her travel costs back and forth to college.

He’s treating her so badly and it’s just a mess. It’s just awful. He’s telling their daughters that my friend wants to break up the family and he’s the victim…..

Surely he can’t get away with this?

She has no other family nearby and she feels completely trapped.

How can I help her

@Shortbread90 you should read OPs updates - her friend paid off the mortgage using an inheritance and is also responsible for the food shopping, bits for the house and everything for their two children out of the paltry ‘allowance’ he pays her (which he has just slashed).

He takes not interest in his children and refuses point blank to lo after them in any way. He is not ‘taking care of his family’.

I can’t quite believe some of the responses on this thread.
@SheIsStuck23 ‘s friend has carried, birthed and raised her and her husband’s children. Pregnancy and childbirth still carry risks to the mother’s health and life! Yet she’s unreasonable for giving up work???

Yes, the OP’s friend is vulnerable but only because her husband is abusing her and exercising coercive control. He doesn’t need to be violent towards her tone committing a criminal act. His financial abuse and his psychological abuse are abhorrent.

She should divorce him and she would be eligible for Legal Aid because of her husband’s abuse. It is coercive control and is likely to be considered as domestic violence.

I salute you @SheIsStuck23 for trying to help your friend. Is there any way you could lend her some money to help her get away from this man? On divorce she will be eligible for at least half the assets of the marriage including savings her husband has made and a proportion of his
pension. She gave up a career and a chance to build a pension in order to raise her husbands and her DC.

I think with your help and support @SheIsStuck23 your friend will be able to get out and build a new, happier life.

Thank you, I think she’s already feeling a bit of the weight being lifted just from having opened up to her parents.

She went to her parents last night and her husband phoned her and told her that he’s really sad, he feels like he has no reason to go on if they all abandon him and that if she leaves him then she’s going to really damage the children. She said it was no different to any of the other manipulative things he has said to her though.

When I spoke to her this morning she was feeling a bit apprehensive about her husband receiving the solicitor’s letter today but she knows it can’t be avoided.

My husband is going to drive me up to her parent’s house this evening and I will stay there overnight as me and my friend thought it might be nice to take the children out tomorrow as there are lots of touristy places near her parent’s house. It will hopefully do the girls some good to have some fun and distraction, and my friend too hopefully.

She’s also arranged to spend the whole Christmas Break with her parents too so at least she has that to look forward to.

keeping the children in a toxic environment, exposed to his emotional manipulation of them, is going to damage them far more longterm than splitting up. They would begin to internalise their home life as their normal, and that then sets a standard by which to frame adult intimate relationships, so getting them out and showing that its not acceptable to put up with that treatment, is the best gift she can give them

I'm glad she's out of the fog enough to see his nasty weaponising of the kids he doesn't care about for the mere manipulation tactic that it is.

Well done op. You sound like a great friend x

Brava to you and your friend @SheIsStuck23

It takes a lot of courage to get away from such coercive control.

That’s what I keep telling her but all she does is berate herself for not having done it sooner. She thinks she’s let her children down by making them live in the environment they’ve had to for the last few years.

I have told her that she’s made the first steps now to break away and that’s all that matters.

The law doesn't agree with you, fortunately for OP.

You're doing a good job, OP.
Have a good weekend together

That’s what I keep telling her but all she does is berate herself for not having done it sooner.

The very wise Dr Maya Angelou once said "You did then what you knew how to do. Now that you know better, you'll do better". These words have given me a lot of 'self forgiveness' for things I thought were right at the time and also the power to 'do better' going forward. And this applies to your friend and any decisions she's made for herself or her children in the past. She stayed because that is what she 'knew how to do'. And she's already 'doing better' by starting to move forward to end her abusive marriage.

My reply to that would be that many women in comparable circs feel it has to be bad enough to leave. They get to breaking point only after trying to make it work or trying to put up with him for a long period of time. They often feel they need to have tried everything before deciding to separate. Or else some extreme piece of behaviour brings everything to a head.

Well, realistically it has indeed had a lifelong adverse effect on the children already. What's done is done, but she needs to urgently seek whatever resources she can to get them some counseling and therapy.

Yes, hopefully she'll get a great divorce settlement and that will provide her with at least some of the resources she needs to mitigate the harm inflicted on her children by their financially abusive father.

No, I just think that taking half of everything you haven't put a penny towards just because you're married is a shit thing to do.

Look, I have little truck with women who deliberately plan to give up paid work outside the home as soon as they can, and don’t resume some sort of paid work as their DC grow up, but what you say is inhuman.

The woman in question bore all the physical risk of bearing and birthing children and for whom her husband did very little. She stayed home by mutual agreement and enabled him to become a high earner. And he treated her like rubbish.

She is owed half of the marital assets - she’s worked for them, unpaid and unacknowledged. And indeed, abused for all her work

Child benefit is means tested, everyone who claims it, gets it if they have kids but if you earn over a certain amount its then recovered via tax allowance. This is to ensure that no matter what the household income is, the person who is the care giver, gets national insurance credits towards pension entitlement so they are not penalised pension wise for being a stay at home parent.

Tell your friend she should open a bank account and ask the child benefit people to pay direct to her bank account?

As had been said a few times, the H would
have to cancel his claim to allow OP’s friend to start a new one in her name.

cpag.org.uk/file/3125/download?token=cDEkwUus

This is very informative regarding the transfer of child benefit. If he doesn't actively respond to the request to transfer it will be transferred to the mother. If he does object it can be resolved eventually, albeit the document acknowledges this is a thorny issue.

No, I just think that taking half of everything you haven't put a penny towards just because you're married is a shit thing to do. It doesn't matter what sex the high earner/sole earner is either. Op's friend hasn't worked for over a decade, hardly fair to the husband is it?

@CalistoNoSolo

Marriage is a contract, no more, no less. You contract everything you have and everything you’ll have in the future to another person, by choice. Perhaps people should look a bit more carefully into what they sign rather than seeing it as some big romantic gesture.

This guy deserves to lose everything tbf. If you have kids, you need to look after them, and he clearly isn’t, either physically or financially. He’s also happily taken every penny from his wife with the attitude of “if you leave I’ll take everything”, so it will be even more satisfying when he finds out what that contract he signed really means.

Also ask her to contact student support services within her college/university. They normally have a hardship fund, and if she explains the circumstances Ann shows evidence of her income, they will probably help.

She should be entitled to universal credit. She will also be able to apply for student finance once she has separated.

Well thankfully she’s not having to worry about the financial side of things now her Solicitor has said her husband cannot stop her monthly allowance. At least she can finish her course without having to worry about how she’ll cope.

Her husband received the letter from the Solicitor on Saturday and as expected he was not happy. He transferred my friend’s allowance to her but he is refusing to speak to her. She said the atmosphere in the house was absolutely awful beforehand, but now he’s basically acting as though she doesn’t exist.

Next step is to move the Child Benefit into her name and her own account.

Her Solicitor has instructed her husband on this too so hopefully it will be soon sorted 🤞