Possible sale of our home bringing up unresolved financial/relationship issues - long

[feelinganxious192]

Hi

H and I have been together for 19 years - married 13 of those. We have 3 dc - 2 at primary school, 1 at secondary.

I have posted about our relationship over the years, but in a way my question is not about the past but about what to do now.

The house we live in is in h's name only. When we got together I was much younger (obviously!) - but h is 12 years older than me. Looking back I would not have agreed to go ahead with things set up as they are (even if it meant the relationship ending), but I was naive! I moved in to h's flat. He then bought a house that we moved in to together. The house we currently live in was bought 2 years after we met so we have lived here for 17 years. At the time of the first house purchase, I asked him if he would wait (we were not married at that point and didn't have the dc) until I was in a position to get a joint mortgage with him. He said absolutely not and went ahead with the purchase.

So for 17 years we have lived in the second house he bought (after meeting me). In the time we have been together he has also bought and sold various other properties. He currently owns our family home as well as a retail property, a house in another town which he rents out intermittently, a property on the coast (actually a type of tower) which he would like to do up one day so that it can be rented out, and half a house (owned with a family member) which he is currently renovating to sell. I own half of the flat my sister lives in (this is part inheritance, part gift from my Dad).

The way that things are set up financially is that h pays me a wage through his business and I get child benefit and child tax credit into my account. I have recently started working again (after being a SAHM for a long time) so that goes in to my account as well (and will probably reduce the tax credits though I haven't sorted that out yet as have only just started working - it is contract work as a teaching assistant and there won't be any work in the holidays and am not sure where I will be working in September). I pay for food and anything child related - clothes / shoes / school trips / christmas and birthday gifts / any activities etc.. I also get occasional gifts from my Dad. This money allows me to pay for some activities for the kids and cheap holidays (this year I have paid for a 7 days in a holiday park in Wales and our overnight train tickets abroad this summer - we are going to stay with my Dad).

H pays for the mortgage and covers all bills (I used to pay for things like the MOT and car service but had more savings at that point). He is going for broke trying to do this latest property up and in a sense has less access to cash than me (but is obviously well off asset wise). There is still a mortgage but I don't know how big this is.

What bothers me is the fact that I am living like a child. H is a bit of a gambler in a way and juggles his financial commitments. He is living on the overdraft - he does renovation work for other people but is doing that less at the moment as he is concentrating on finishing the property he owns with a relative. I don't have access to any of his accounts and don't know what he does financially at all (apart from what he occasionally might tell me). He is now 58 (I am 46) and has had enough of working as physically hard as he has over the past 10 years. So I think the sale of this property and possibly of the house that we live in, would allow him to pay the mortgage off.

So about a month ago he got an estate agent over to value our house. He now talks about what he hopes it will sell for and we are doing up (or rather fixing as parts of it are a in need of tlc) some rooms. The agent asked us where we were planning to move to and of course we couldn't really say anything as we have different ideas about that. Our whole relationship h has talked about wanting to live in a particular mediterranean country and he is now saying that he wants to live there and he will go there on his own if necessary (). However he is prone to making statements like that and also says "shall we move there?" when any interesting country appears on the TV. I would favour moving closer to the outside of the town we already live in as I am scared of losing the cosmopolitan element of our life. DC1 also really likes his secondary school and so I suppose that I vaguely think we could move somewhere greener and cheaper from where he (and the others when they start there) could commute to school. H and I have not really talked about this - but I suppose we are not the only couple who disagrees about where to go and live.

But the crux of the matter (as far as this post is concerned) is that the possible sale of our home opens a whole can of worms for me that I don't really want opened. Over the years I have asked h if I can be on the deeds a few times. He is very defensive about this. We also have no will and no life insurance. I know that if we were to get divorced 50% of any assets would be mine (though I am not sure if h realises this as in a counselling session 2 years ago he said that he bought the house before we got married - ie. it does not count as mine ), but if h were to die or become incapacitated, it becomes more complicated than that. Also he could have made a will to anybody he pleases. I suppose I feel a degree of insecurity which could easily be got rid of if things were set up differently between us and if h were a different, more trusting kind of person.

I also feel slightly humiliated that in the end, despite having been together for so long and having 3 children, the big financial decisions are up to him as of course he owns everything.

So I don't think I could now move into a house which again only he signs for. In fantasy moments I think that he might, when it comes to it, ask me to be on the deeds of wherever we move to, but in all honesty, I don't think this will happen. In the past he has said things like if I want a house I have to work for it (just like he did when he started out - he is very big on this and how much effort he put into it). He has also said (in an argument) that I will not have more decision making power - or words to that effect - when I was saying that I wanted to be on an equal footing.

What I find upsetting is that, although I have undoubtedly not sweated as much as him (and have not been great at housekeeping either), I have contributed over the years. In the six years before we got married, my earnings went towards food. I then looked after the kids for a long time. I got a small inheritance when my Mum died and some of this went towards furniture, appliances and holidays.

So I am waiting to see what he actually plans to do deeds wise when and if we move somewhere else. But if it transpires (as I think it will) that he plans to keep things on the same footing, I will be pushed into taking my head out of the sand and doing something about it.

I am also worried about the future finance wise. I am planning on doing various things to get my working life back on track so it is not that I don't want to work - I absolutely do. But what is going to happen when h and I have both retired (not that I plan to for a good long time)? Is he going to have access to all the assets and money they may or may not generate while I ask him for money?

Basically, in an ideal world, I would want our entire financial set up re-drawn. With both of us owning more or less everything, and everything being out in the open. Pigs will fly before this happens with h however. Apart from anything else he is bitter about losing his family home to his first wife in their divorce and is very defended against this kind of thing happening again.

So I suppose I am asking how I can bring this issue up again with h and have an adult conversation with him about it. How can I get my point across without him misinterpreting my motivations?

Thanks for reading this far .

Am getting ready to go to work now. Thanks for all your messages - they are really making me think. Will respond to the latest ones later.

There are a lot of people commenting on here who clearly don't develop property.

An unusable asset is not valueless!

The most tax efficient way to develop property is to find by debt as you get debt relief on the interest and the interest rates are low.

The rate of gain in value (if you've chosen right) is more than the interest and the gain when you sell is often the aim, not thoughts of generating a monthly income.

However, how is he funding his life? You seem to know so little about household income.

Sorry, not making a choice does not absolve you from being complicit in tax evasion.

I would be incredibly shocked if he put all his finances to you if there was 100% tax compliance.

I don't know anything about tax credits but agree it's incredibly unlikely your joint income is less than £42k, if it is, why bother with all this stuff?

I would assume he pays you the annual tax free allowance from his co. This is simply a way to get tax free money from the company. He'll need to set up a pension for you soon as you're an employee and auto enrolment applies. Have you checked he has been paying your NI?

If you don't actually do any work for his company then it's a sham, and you know you're not doing any work so you know you shouldn't have a salary, so you do know about the tax evasion.

Look, bottom line us, he's done a number on you. He's made you feel protected and provided for when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. I really feel for you, of course you want/ed to trust him. But scales are falling from your eyes.

Register the charge on the marital home. If you do nothing else, do that one thing. If he gets cross, take it from there.

There are a lot of people commenting on here who clearly don't develop property.

Sitting on it for years in an inexplicable manner (his wife doesn't even know why) is NOT developing though, is it?

An unusable asset is not valueless!

That's rather the point. How (allegedly) "unusable" has it got to be and over what timeframe that you can neither sell it, refurbish it, rent it out or anything else in preference to claiming tax credits designed to top up a low income (on an ongoing basis)?

He pays you A salary to keep the profits down on his company/ business costs and therefore the tax he pays to the government. You then claim tax credits. It may be legal but it is wrong and is a loophole. Tax credits are to prevent child poverty. You own at least four properties. You are not poor. no wonder the govt is reviewing tax credits when it is clearly going to the wrong people.

You are going to wake up one day and find your "d"h has sold your life from under you and moved the cash offshore. Followed by himself.
Take control of the situation while you still have choices and access to the documents. You have to stop anxiously wringing your hands and hoping it will all get better, it wont.

It's a clear argument for an asset test for Tax Credits.

Maybe if they did that, asset-poor people who really NEED their TCs wouldn't be targeted as they are currently. See also ALL child maintenance being disregarded, even when it is £1000+ pw.

The properties are not developed because h has not had the time or money to do it. If he were in a position to generate income from two of them, he would. The 3rd property (which he owns half of) is being done up and is going to be sold when finished. He has only had one of these three properties for a long time and there is a planning permission issue with that one (as well as a money issue).

Even if there were an asset test, this would not necessarily mean that people are able to generate more income because in h's case, for example, if he had been able to he would have done so. There might be an argument for making people sell their assets or not buy more until they had developed them (though how would you check that) I don't know.

The property which is rented out intermittently (someone pointed that out suspiciously) has tenants who sometimes leave early (often without paying the last few months' rent and sometimes trashing the place) and h then spends time finding new tenants and repairing the place. It is also far away so not easily accessible.

He has been a workaholic all his life and the last 10 years has been completely exhausted by working physically very hard (in his day to day job). That day to day pressure has meant not dealing with the asset he has had the longest.

Have felt somewhat attacked by some posters. Added to which these assets are not mine - they are his - he has always done as he pleases with them as they are part of his business. I don't have a say.

The fact of receiving a wage through his business I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand it is fairly common practice in small businesses. On the other hand no it doesn't make me feel great. If I had said that to h near the start (though he set this up before I really understood it) or if I were to say it today he would not listen. Communication between us is limited to day to day logistics and talk of the dc mostly and he does not do confrontation well. Is short tempered and defensive.

What I am trying to do now is get my own working life back in some kind of gear so that I am in a position to fund and disentangle myself.

downtown a lot of your post resonates. I have wondered about an affair but there are no other signs at the moment. His keeping his retail property secret from me did make me wonder what else he might have hidden - woman wise for example - if there had been the occasional dalliance I certainly wouldn't know but in many ways he is not the type.

I am not going to come back to this thread because tbh I can't take any more criticism. I do need to sort lots of things out and am going to concentrate on getting my working life back together if I can.