This marriage is financial abuse - AIBU?

[catstaff47]

This is about a friend. I think she is being financially abused by her DH. I will try to give the facts as she described it -

1. He earns about £120k she earns about £12k (working p/t to be around for teens).

2. He pays the mortgage and bills. There is a food shopping account into which he puts about £150 per week (for 4 people and several pets).

3. Apart from this, she lives off the £1k per month she earns - even though she buys a lot of the kids stuff out of this as well because he will not.

4. She has no idea how much money he has saved or where and he will not tell her!

5. If she runs out of money in a given month, she will take / borrow from other people rather than just ask him - her own husband!

That's about it.

I could not imagine living like this and don't know how she has accepted it for so long. To me she has been somehow conditioned to think it's ok. I have told her this (gently), but I don't think she will do anything about it or leave him. Plus I think he must be beyond help to even do this in the first place.

AIBU and what would you say to her?

I think you need to step away and stop getting stressed about your friend’s financial situation.

The best advice anyone could give her is to work more and increase her own financial independence. That’s what I’d tell her if it was my friend (and she’d asked for advice). If you think your husband isn’t sharing money properly, get financially secure yourself asap!

Even if she pays that...

Say...£100 for phone contracts
£200 for clothes. That would be £300. And I am being generous, there are definitely cheaper contracts and £200 monthly on clothes is a lot too!

Even with this spending, she would have £700 to spend how she likes. For whoever this is not enough, they have an issue spending.

I also have the feeling that 'she' is you. As if this was my friend and she was saying that she couldn't pay when having coffees/lunch with me, I would feel she was taking the piss with this set up!. I would also feel ashamed to ask my husband for money having £1000 available to me every month. The difference is that I wouldnt ask relatives either and cut back.

Sounds like a prison to me. All very well and good when it’s continuing but I made a pact to myself that I would never be dependent on anyone financially. Too risky.

She has all her bills and expenses covered, so she can choose to work as much or as little as she likes. Based on working in a very PT role, she has £1k a month to spend on mobile phones and anything else that she fancies, with no real responsibilities that she is expected to cover.

Yes, I think it's strange that she can't talk to her dh about money and that she doesn't know how much they have in savings etc, but I don't see that she is necessarily being financially abused.

In your shoes, I would stop paying for her lunch though, as it sounds like she has plenty of disposable income and just isn't managing it very well. Of course, the lack of ability to manage her money may well help to explain why she and her husband don't have a joint account!

If we look at the legal descriptions: Financial abuse includes disadvantaging someone and/or controlling their access to or use of money.

Even if she had a habit of frittering, this does not give him the right to control her.

Please do not give a limited example ‘making her contribute equally’ as a legal definition.

Classic mumsnet thread, an OP naking post after post trying to justify why they are NBU , drip feeding extra details to back their position up etc.

Your friend is s living a life of her choosing and by a mutual agreement. If she doesn't like the rules anymore she is free to live more independently.

I'm not immediately blaming the woman. I'm offering another perspective. We don't actually know that she feels she can't ask him about money. OP is making assumptions because the friend didn't answer her question (the question being something like do you ask your husband for money or discuss money with your husband?). The friend didn't answer this question. Maybe she just didn't want to discuss her family finances with OP. For all we know, she might well speak to her husband about money. I hope so.
As for saying she can't even get a coffee - well she has £1000 per month to spend. All bills are paid by her DH. I think she can buy a coffee.
I'm not saying I agree with their set up. He may well be a controlling monster. I don't know. I'm not automatically assuming she's being abused though.

So food, bills and mortgage are paid by him? And she keeps her whole wage for herself? I’m not seeing the problem unless I’m really missing something? Unless of course he’s refusing to let her work?

I still don’t understand why your friend can’t work full time or increase her hours on the days she does work, if her kids are teenagers now?

How old are they? Can they get a little part time job to earn a bit of their own money instead of asking for £20 here and there? It’s unclear what age they actually are.

I am not the friend. If this was me, I would say. It's an anonymous forum. Also, I would know myself why I couldn't ads my husband for money, if that were the case.

I will be honest though - I am actually talking about a relative. A very close relative. I don't want to say more than that.

Yes I am over-invested, but this is because I care and a lot of people in the family are wondering what's going on and nobody can work it out. This has been going on a long time. People are stuck between feeling worried but also taken advantage of at times. It's confusing. So the speculation goes round and round and round. It's a saga basically and it's draining. So I thought I'd ask on here for outsider perspectives.

If the non-working partner had full control over spending every penny of the working partner's income, then that would make the non-working partner financially abusive.

In any relationship, both parties have rights and responsibilities. By your own admission, all bills are paid by him, plus enough for food. The kids are teenagers out at school, so it is perfectly fair for her to then contribute a few hours of work into the mix. Her share then goes to her own expenses and some bits for the kids; it really doesn't seem to most people that she reasonably would need more, nor that he is likely to have a great deal more given their income at £132-212k (reduced by tax, mortgage, bills, pension, holidays, commuting, food bills and other expenses). Quite probably he does had a similar amount to spend on himself, but that would be OK, he's actually entitled to some discretionary spending money and not give it all to his wife. If she is overspending her own and her family's money, then that's down to her bad budgeting and him out any of you throwing more and more money at her will not help, she will just find more theatre trips / lunches / clothing to spend it on.

If it’s really a 1M house I would say mortgage is more like 3-4k especially with recent interest rate rises. I assume he also pays for a pension. Council tax could be another £250 plus a month.

He wanted a SAHM

Well, she’s not a SAHM now is she? She could have said no. She didn’t have to agree to this situation if she didn’t want to either! I’m presuming she was a SAHM and now works part time?

If she wants more money, she can work more hours. If she wants to know how much her husband earns, she needs to speak to him. If he won’t talk to her, then they’ve clearly got more problems going on and need to think about whether the relationship is working.

Trying to sponge coffee off your friends and blag loans out of elderly people doesn’t make her sound very nice, tbh.

Her husband works in a high paid job, probably stressful, and she has two weekdays off as well as weekends, gets home at 3.30? There is no need for a school hours job if her kids are teenagers. So she could add another £60 a week there working the same number of days.

Yes I get that running a house is time consuming but everyone manages it whether they work full time or not.

The point here is the belief that if he has an extra £500 a month then he should share it with her. Would be nice if he did, but I do not personally think that people who have different lives (one a soft life with part time school hours and lots of free time and the other with a stressful high earning job) should necessarily have the exact same spending money.

it sounds like she would spend any amount of money she had and that’s why she has a budget for groceries.

And let’s see what you pay for OP:

clothes for the kids. Maybe £150 a month?
Clubs. Maybe £100 a month?

I have teens. I spend about a faction of that on clothes. I don't think I spend that all year on DC1. Looks like the OP cannot budget. That kind of spending money is obscene if anyone asks me. And then she cries 'financial abuse'? It's an insult those those who really go through this.

Financial abuse would be if her DH made her hand over all her earnings to him and he refused her access to money. Financial abuse is not him paying all household expenses, her having complete access to her own income with complete freedom as to how she spends it.

You flit between she can't/wont ask him to he won't tell her. It's very confusing.
She has no reason to only be working part time. She has teenagers she is in the perfect position to work more hours get a better job.
To have a food shop budget is normal. Mine is £100 a week for a family of 4. It works.
Their issue is they don't communicate. You shouldn't be in a position where you can't talk to your husband. He should be the first person she talks to.
However you do need to be mindful you know one side of the story. If you are pissed off with paying for her stop going out with her.

So the headline story here appears to be

‘Woman only working part time doesn’t have enough money for her socialising, so is trying to sponge off others’

She needs to work full time.

I would love to read the husband’s side of this.

I think we all know people no matter how much money they have, it’s somehow never enough and they are always “skint” when actually they have lots and can afford things like tutors, take aways, constantly new clothes, lunch money instead of packing a lunch. OP even if it’s your sister, she sounds bad at budgeting and not financially abused. She doesn’t take any responsibility for household bills but can’t budget her own income. You are very dismissive about her DH, when it sounds like he is working a stressful job, struggles with his MH and is providing a huge beautiful home for everyone. Maybe he would like to work less but can’t because household expenses are so high.

Instead of saying no to the kids your “friend”is asking her elderly mum for money?! Tells me everything.

I have two people in my life that are either family or as good as.

One is a single parent on a decent income but has debts and struggles to balance the money each month. Often has next to nothing for last week of month.

Other is single and has low outgoings. Has eluded to having a very decent amount of savings. Earns £500 a day very easily.

One of these people always lets me pay for
lunch, and very occasionally will pay for herself. The other one is deeply uncomfortable about me paying for lunch to the extent I have to do it secretly to avoid words.

Guess which one is which?

Your friend is considerably financially better off under this arrangement than if she were supporting herself independently so she isn't suffering a financial detriment, quite the reverse. However whether her H is abusive is a different matter. Many women are well provided for, given a lifestyle they could no way afford without a man, enabled not to work, and want for nothing; however they may also be controlled, given no autonomy, restricted to what their H deems they should have, and resourses or threats to withdraw them used to coerce and punish. Its not the arrangements that make the situation abusive, its the inbuilt power inequality and whether or not the man chooses to exploit that or not.

He sounds horrible. £1,000 pm disposable income really isn't much when you have £100k plus income and teenagers.

So just this week I've paid £70 for tutors, £100 for school trips, £50 for day out with 2 daughters.

It's really hard to economise when you have teens because they need everything now and waiting means they miss out - they're struggling with maths and ask for a gcse tutor, they just had a growth spurt and their clothes are adult prices, the school email pops into your inbox about the £80 politics trip next week for their A level.

Yes, you can live on beans and do nothing apart from school but you shouldn't have to on £100k.

I don't know why she feels she can't ask him about money. It seems simple to me - but that's irrelevant as I'm not in her marriage dynamic. I have tried asking her this, many times. She gets evasive, defensive or changes the subject. Most recently, she said she does need to talk to him, but she needs to wait until the time is right. When I once asked her if he would be transparent with her about money if she asked, she just looked blank and said 'I don't know.'

On what planet is that normal?

Some family members go on and on about him as a petulant, controlling bd basically. So I hear this all the time. Everyone has stories about how he never pays for anything and his petty he is about money.

She's married to him she should be able to ask him about money.
She needs to work FT

He would have been like this when she met him. It was her choice to marry him and have children. People don’t change.

If she does not like it, she can leave. But IMO he isn’t doing anything wrong as such, he’s just secretive and stingy. He may have lots of debts and be embarrassed BUT he’s still supporting their whole lives and you don’t seem to want to give him any credit.