Financial disclosure - STBXDH spending

[Heresee]

Having exchanged Form E it appears STBXDH is deliberately doing a number of things:

• loading debt onto the balance sheet post-separation and claiming 50% to be mine
• excessively socialising (he has never stopped even while made redundant for years) and attributing this to me claiming it is family expenses
• continuing to load the credit cards which I have no visibility over and blame me openly for all the expenditure when he (now) is the one earning an income
• using credit for work related expenses and not reimbursing into the joint account
• siphoning off funds from the joint account which he labels “company loan repayment” when the company was only ever a shell company with no income/net assets

The list goes on each time I look at those statements and his claims on Form E. I seem to find more layers of lies and contorted statements each time I revisit the documents.

Meanwhile he continues to issue commands over family matters while I continue to be financially controlled. I am trying to stay immune to it which is not easy living in the same house with no job yet from my many applications. He barks orders over the job I ’should’ get too ignoring the fact I left the high paying role years ago to focus on family duties, while he became the income earner. I have retrained gradually in a mental health role and the jobs are not remunerated the same so any job I get will not match what I used to but his lawyer seems to insist I should be doing what I did decades ago.

I feel trapped as the system is slow and I seem unable to get out quickly. He holds all the financial cards and takes his time to sort out matters, openly saying he is ready (he has done a half baked job of disclosure) and blaming me for being "slow and keeping us all in this situation!” when I am spending most of my time still caring for family (4 kids) while trying to move on with a job hunt.

What is the best approach in this situation? I have been steadily ploughing on but it feels like it has been too long after a year like this.

Can you seek interim spousal maintenance

claim universal credit now

why can’t you go back into the sane field ( evdd ed m at lower paid) as before? Would make sense to maximise your future earnings rather than work in a lower paid field ?

What does he mean by you being slow? Is there any truth to that ?

your lawyer should scrutinise and raise questions back to his on form e so I wouldn’t worry about it too much

Will look into UC. Thank you for the suggestion.

It has been too long (16 years) to step back into my old profession. I need to retrain and so am looking into routes back at the same time, but the responses suggest it is not straightforwards (so far).

It seems to be taking a very long time but then there is a lot of repetitive letter writing from his solicitor which we now recognise is circling the same themes without moving on (despite having agreed a position). My solicitor has written a firmly worded letter to stop the multiple pages being sent. It is like his solicitor also forgets what has been agreed and I find myself berated by them for the same thing again. A weird kind of gaslighting in the parallel legal universe.

My lawyer seems to want instructions from me on how to raise Qs on his Form E. I can see lots of issues so have sent an initial round, e.g. many statements missing/incomplete, no valuation evidence for statements of value, many statements relating to opinions on what I should be doing not him so seems to be focused on the wrong person, claims I should be liable for his credit card spending (yet it contains his pubs, restaurants and hotels etc) as it is attached to the joint account so I am now categorising each line item. I know the objective is "broad fairness rather than arithmetical precision” - am used to analysing data to peer review standard - but it seems his statements are not teased apart. So do I repeat the same exercise as I did with mine where I looked at each line item to categorise and then identify the differential in calculations? His asset valuations are also very low and looked at the steps and saw that if I use Forms ES1 and 2 these allow me to present the differences in figures with evidence of my determined valuations.

Meanwhile, I seem to have been doing all this admin and sorting for months!

joint account

😱 Close it FFS!
Contact the bank and have it frozen at least.

I assume you're still living in the family home and he's moved out? Put in a claim for CM tomorrow.

Are you claiming UC? You should be. Paid into your OWN bank account, along with CB and CTR.

After you've removed 50% of whatever is in there.

This is job #1 9am (or whenever the phone lines open) tomorrow morning.

A weird kind of gaslighting in the parallel legal universe

Solicitor will type whatever they're being paid to type, if that's what the client wants.

STBXH is the one delaying. So he can milk the assets dry.

Stop letting him! No joint anything, except house deeds. Remove 50% of everything to your own bank account tomorrow.

You're so used to being financially controlled you don't realise you have the power to stop it now you've left the relationship.

@Amazinggrace842

Thank you for the advice. So hard to see what is going on from the inside.

Totally. In the aftermath of an abusive relationship you don't just snap back to "normal" like clicking your fingers. The abuse alters the way you think, the decisions you make, your marker for what's right or wrong or fair or unfair. It causes you to place yourself lower in your own priorities than you should and to show loyalty or give favours to those who don't deserve it.

I hope your joint accounts have been stopped now OP. Your finances should be totally separate. The bank should he told you're getting divorced and about his financial abuse. You need to prevent him running up debts in joint names, siphoning off all the money in joint accounts for himself. Not be arguing about it after its gone. Any joint accounts are 50% yours, regardless of where the money came from, so take 50% of it and transfer into your own account before getting them closed/frozen/your name removed (if you can't close them alone). If that seems unfair, remember he's not playing fair and he's an abusive dickhead so any money you get that you think morally isn't yours, think if it as compensation if that helps. Legally it absolutely is yours, so take your 50%, end financial dealings with your ex and get on with arguing about who should get what in the split.

Be aware your lawyer is a bit "less than" not to have advised you to end the joint account, that's a pretty basic thing. Unless there's something unusual about your situation which you haven't mentioned? I can't imagine any circumstances though where keeping a joint bank account with your financially abusive ex would be seen as a good thing.