To wait for inheritance before divorce?

[Definitionhelmet]

I have reached a difficult point in my marriage. DH has lied to me and there has been a break down of trust and communication. There has not been any abuse or infidelity but I am done.

DH knows how I feel but wants to stay married and to try and make it work.

The practicalities of separation are difficult. Kids are at a difficult stage and this would exacerbate their problems. Financially we can’t afford to maintain two households and stay in the same area. which would be essential for kids in f we did spilt.

In any case I can’t see a long term future with DH. but also I am not considering another relationship and I am scared about What the future would look like on my own.

But if I do delay the inevitable- for kids and practical reasons WIBU to at least hold on until DH inherits (likely a substantial amount in the next few years) as this would make separation an easier possibility. Or is this grabby, cynical and unfair on DH?

How can I navigate this?

This doesn’t make waiting/hoping for someone’s death right! Rather than be grabby and immoral- the time should be spent on thinking about how she is going to improve things.
You are all making moving sound horrific - it might not be nice or what you want, but it’s not the end of the world. People do it all the time for different reasons.
If it comes out later, that the children lived with unhappy parents for years because mum was waiting for a payout she had not earned, do you think they’ll agree it was worth it?
I hope the money is spent or put in a trust because this behaviour is awful.

I should have got divorced years ago but stayed on in part because of money. I won't go into details but it was sort of the reverse of OPs situation, I'm the breadwinner and on my parents death I and my brother will get a small inheritance. My husband has no family and there's no money on his side. I'm divorcing now because the situation has become untenable, but my ex-husband is very aware that when I draw up the financial order he will not get a bean of any future windfalls. He's not happy about it, but he's getting half our property which I've paid all the mortgage and fees for, so he's going to have to lump it.

Splitting up is expensive and hard. My husband will find it difficult, and I recognise that, because his income is much lower than mine. But that's life. People manage. They have to.

What a gold digger.

I think the emotional toll of staying in a loveless marriage will be too much OP. Life’s too short to be so unhappy maybe? If the marriage is over for you, then it’s over surely? You could both move on and be happier. The trust and respect needs to be there for a marriage to work.

When I divorced, I got 50% of the marital assets and this included the inheritance from my PILs that we’d received during our marriage.

However, it was considered an asset because the inheritance was received 16 years ago.

I would think that if the inheritance had only just been received by your husband, then it would be considered his… and you would not benefit.

Erm, she is explicitly weighing up the option of delaying an inevitable divorce and staying in a marriage that she is 'done with' on the off chance that later down the line she will get a share of a substantial inheritance from any settlement. For this subterfuge to work the DH will be led to believe that the OP is sincere in her desire to make the marriage work.

Nothing screams 'compassion' like deliberately staying in a dead marriage and feigning love while you bide your time before initiating divorce proceedings when you have maximised your chance of a decent pay day.

The fact OP asked this already tells you what sort of person she is..m

This is not true. Inheritances in needs cases are absolutely part of the pot to be taken into account on a split of assets in financial remedy proceedings on divorce.

Maybe OP knows him a bit better than you do love? She’s leaving him because he’s dishonest and the trust is broken. If she thought he would try to do right by his kids or if she had other way of keeping her kids in their familiar environment wouldn’t need to stick around with a liar would she.

Except she’s not leaving him. She’s planing on stringing him along and staying married to him until his relative dies, probably in several years time, just so that she can get a share of a possible inheritance.

How can that be anything other than selfish and grabby?

It’s the posters on the thread who are grabby and immoral, so preoccupied with money that they completely ignore the children - which is basically what too many men do on divorce.

If it was years OP wouldn’t be considering it. The kids unhappiness won’t come out later it will come out immediately.

What’s interesting is that generally MN advice is to try to keep kids near their dad after divorce to facilitate continued relationship. On the evidence of this thread, as soon as money is involved, that goes out the window and all posters can focus on is the thought of losing money. Fuck the kids eh.

It’s the OP just getting her ducks in a row & trying to get the best outcome for her dc?

She doesn’t say several years, no. See my previous post - you’re so obsessed with money that you’ve deleted the kids from the picture. Money is literally all you can see.

YABU.

This is one of the reasons I'll never get married or cohabit. I'm due an inheritance at some point (unless obviously it has to go on care) there's no way I'll be splitting it with some greedy chancer.

I would stay. I’m a single mum and have struggled with money since my divorce, my husband did inherit a lot of money after our divorce and my children did not benefit from it.
Any calculation of child maintenance does not take inheritance into consideration and it is based on earnings.

What would you say about a man waiting for his wife to inherit before divorcing her? Grabby and greedy no doubt.

for me the rights and wrongs depend on the kids and their ages. A parent’s divorce is a massive change for them and it’s often made easier if they can stay in the same area.
I think on paper we all want to have morals etc but when you have kids the priority when ending the relationship needs to be about keeping things stable for them.

I'm not sure if this has been said as not RTFT, but...

A significant inheritance may have been protected by the parents already. There are ways of doing this (my parents have done it for me, after my aunt had to give 50% to the husband abused her child). I'm not sure how it's done as they are still alive but they've implied it to me. It just means that if DH or I ever divorce, he would not have access to the money. Your DH parents might have done this so you could be waiting around for nothing!

I think you are on a very slippery slope if you start using your kids as some kind of moral offset to excuse shitty behaviour on your part. Maybe I am cynical in my old age but I generally find people who use such 'I'm doing it for the kids' mental acrobats are usually just doing it for themselves.

My small inheritance was ring fenced so not included in marital assets.
You need professional advice.

I think if the law was different it wouldn’t be so much of an issue but here there is no guarantee that the dc will ever see it if the parents are divorced.

I think that also playing into this is that decisions may have been made earlier in the marriage predicated on this inheritance, but without it materialising, she will have no claim, despite any sacrifices that may have been made based on the promise of it.

This is the case in my circumstances - not an inheritance, but a large bonus (life-changingly, early retirement sized) which we knew was coming, and was the reason I was willing to make a number of sacrifices (although thank goodness, not giving up work as he strongly encouraged me to do). When the relationship became untenable, I had to suck up the fact that I'd been the sole carer for the kids, whilst working full time, and moving all around the world on the promise of an early retirement with this lump sum - and that wasn't going to happen now - all that extra work done for him and nothing to show for it.

Sticking around isn't always grabby. Sometimes the person breaking the deal is the grabby one.

Love, the op knows him well enough to know she can drag this out for another however many years.

He's been dishonest and broken her trust, but she’s fine to tether herself to him until such time.

She’s also not said, love, that she doesn’t trust him to do right by his kids. What she has said, is that until this person dies; they cannot afford to comfortably house them where they are…

I'm not here to conjure up scenarios- purely to answer the question the OP asked. Yes, this is really grabby and makes her as dishonest as he is.

DH has lied to me and there has been a break down of trust and communication. There has not been any abuse or infidelity but I am done.

DH knows how I feel but wants to stay married and to try and make it work.

Perhaps there's a third way between staying in misery and waiting for the money and leaving now and struggling?

Since you plan to stay for a few years anyway and your husband wants to make the marriage work, have you thought about you both giving it your all? Therapy, counselling, mediation, the works, whatever you can do.

My DH used to lie about things and I was ready to walk. We have come through it and I understand more about his way of thinking. I am not saying you should have to or should even want to, but if you are staying anyway you don't have much to lose. With no abuse or infidelity in the picture, you may have a good foundation for repairing your marriage.

We have been happy for a long time now. My DH has just paid off our mortgage and put the rest of his inheritance into my bank account 😀and we have complete trust between us.

In summary:

1. If you are staying for a few years anyway, why not try to make a serious go of things?
2. If you try and succeed, problem solved!
3. If you try and don't succeed, it may make you realise you have to move on now, inheritance or no inheritance.
4. Imagine how you will feel if you stay in misery (not even trying to fix your marriage), and dragging yourself through each day and then your DH doesn't get any money or gets a fraction of what was expected? What a waste of your life!
5. Even if you leave, I would hope your children would benefit from the inheritance at some point anyway so there's that. Although there are no guarantees of anything in this life.

I hope things work out for you, I really do.

DH has lied to me and there has been a break down of trust and communication. There has not been any abuse or infidelity but I am done.
Does it not depend what the lie is?
'Of course I'm happy you can be a stay at home parent forever' changing when the kids hit high-school and finances change is very different to, of course I'm not gambling lying about spending money! Can't think of other examples!