He won't share his money

[NotEqual]

My Dh has a high earning secure job(earns £80K a year) and recently sold a share of a property and got another £80K. However he won't entertain the concept that half of this is mine(or to put it better,it is all OURS).We do not have a joint account,he puts money into my account every month plus I have a part time job and child benefit,so I am not short of money.He doesn't thimnk I can be trusted with money as I do occasionally run up credit card debts which he then pays off.I know this is stupid of me but I feel sometimes it is the only way to spend what I consider to be my money too.If we were short of money or had loads of debts I would not do it but we are not.Sorry I sound like a spoilt bitch but I am not,I just feel that I am not an equal partner and he cannot love me as much as his money!!

then that's great sandcastle, you have something in place. but LOTS of people don't, either because they can't or they don't want to think about it or they just haven't thought about it.

I think it's the whole 'it won't happen to me' attitude.

I'd like to think it won't happen to me, but life has this way of throwing things at us when we get to complacent, doesn't it?

It's good to have savings. On my divorce every penny of them and 100% of my shares and a huge chunk of remortgage went to my ex husband so he could buy himsdelf a 5 bed house for cash. Part of the deal is also he doesn't have to pay anything to the children and he chooses virtually not to see them anyway but at least I can carry on working for the next 30 years and support all 6 of us.

Actuall in the UK on divorce doesn't matter whose name the money is in - it's added together and both of your debts are deducted and then you do the split. So if you have £30k saved and he has £30k on unknown credit card bills and then you do 50% split you get zero (unless there is not enough to house the children whose needs come first). My brother has all their savings in his non working wife's name for tax reasons I think but if they divorce he would still get his 50%, doesn't matter they're in her name. On the other hand he coudln't clean out the accounts as you say .. however in practice lots of couples bank on line and know each other's pass words and every single day some divorcing person is transferring money they shouldn't in an account they shouldn' t have access to, calling banks pretending to be XYZ and getting money transferred. Keeping your income and job can be beneficial. But I'm divorced and you're all happily married so I probably just feel fed up today. I'll get back to doing my bills.

But I would know if he started moving money around, as would he know too.

So we would be alerted to it first time it happened.

xenia, we know each other's online banking info, so if he decided to get transfere happy with my money..I'd move it back.

He wouldn't anyway, because it costs $2 to move money online & he hates paying for the pleasure!

how quickly would you know? we could get silly with all the what ifs, but say he opened an account elsewhere, and moved your money to that. you couldn't move it back. and if he's about to leave you and was considering emptying the accounts and hiding the money, then the $2 probably wouldn't be an issue..i know...what if what if...

But Xenia - the financial independence goes way beyond just having access to your own money. Yes, it will be put into the pot on splitting assets, but it sure as hell comes in handy to pay the lawyers in the meantime and to keep the mortgage paid and bills covered until a financial settlement is reached.

It means that you have a financial history should you need to get a mortgage/credit card etc post the split.

It means that you can minimise the distruption to children's lives from the rather devastating effects of divorce.

It opens up such a lot of avenues that all too many non-earners have closed down to them. Their negotiating position within the marriage may be okay, despite no earnings, but their negotiating position post divorce or split can be awful, especially in the fraught weeks and months before a settlement is reached!

Fair question.

I probably check our accounts online every other day. Sometimes everyday.

I know, soapbox, althoguh I did pay both my husband's and my legal fees and neither of us took any money from any accounts during the divorce process - we still lived together and trusted each other financially and never argued about money. Obviously negotiating how much he'd take was terribly awful but I was lucky we had no silly tricks but others aren't.

Say I'd given up my work in 1984 when I had daughter 1 and was living on a teacher's salary 19 years later when we split up. We might have had a fairly small house or flat and he'd be paying me maintenance from £30k a year. I would probably have got most of the assets, not 50% just to house the children. They wouldn't be in private schools and after the divorce we'd be trying to divide that £30k or whatever between us. Now some would say that my presence with the children over 19 years would be worth anything, priceless (but they don't know how hard I find staying at home with the children so I doubt I would have done the children much good) but financially we are so much better off because we both carried on working all those years particularyl after divorce.

Even though I resent the fact English law gives the lower earner such undeserved huge sums even if the higher earner ends up with 100% of the child care and child support, I am still glad I had the huge sums to give I suppose.

Some husbands of stay at home wives on divorce will ask the bank to freeze the accounts in joint names - once he's hidden what he's drawn out and freeze her credit cards immediately. The person divorcing - say here a husband who's got involved with the pretty receiptionist at work, not unusual scenario, has time to plan whilst their other half has no idea and posts on threads like this that they 100% trust him.... so he could do the online transfer using her codes etc, take the money from her accounts and then when she finds out it's too late. He feels he's getting back what he earned anyway and it will help him set up the receiptionist in a nice new house they'll build together for their new family life (she'll have a baby within 2 years with him) and now it's down to the wife to apply for interim maintenance as he's cut of all money to her, HGe's thinking lazy so and so make her go out to work full time, there are jobs in Tesco. People's views get so skewed. I had dinner with someone last night who was quite polarised as was his ex wife in their intractable court proceedings over some of these things.

I have to say that I know I am a bit more careful than some as my friend lost her home thru this very thing.

Her dh remortgaged their home for a huge amount without her knowing. He was the nicest person you could wish to meet. But his company was suffering & he needed money. Instead of telling her he got her to sign documents saying they were for something else. She trusted him, had no reason to doubt him.

She only found out when he left her. He had signed the house over to her so she could live there with their children (all the time knowing she would then be liable for the debt, as repayments were well behind)She had to sell the house as she couldn't afford to live in it.

...always read what you sign... I think for some of those bank loans secured on the house there is a legal obligation that the bank forces the wife to get another lawyer to advise her and if she doesn't she may be able to overturn the remortgage but that may be completely wrong.

I suppose I'm saying even if your favourite choice of reading is Heat magazine make sure you can understand a bank statement and the finances of your marriage and be an equal partner in making financial decisions.

This was 10 odd years ago, so there was none of this double checking they do now.

My dh went to buy a new car 2 years ago, on HP. The HP company rang me & asked me if I was aware!

I read EVERYTHING I sign. I understand statements pretty well too! Don't worry...

I used to like Heat, but they don't sell it here!

I once came across the idea that at the heart of marriage is interdependence - that as a unit of two you are able to tackle so much more than as a unit of one. Therefore within the unit of two a degree of divson of labour is necessary in order to free up both parties to bring to the unit what thry can bring best.

So..within my marriage that means that I shop for and prepare meals. Dh could do this if he were single but much prefers not to, ands because he has me (a keen cook), he doesn't need to.

Similarly, I could have a go at household repairs (or pay someone else to) but it would take me twice as long as dh (if not longer) and even then I'd probably knock the house down by mistake...!

So my point is that the handling of money should be done by the unit of two. Who does it doesn't matter but it should be the one wh is best suited to that task. Dh and I go through our bank accounts once a fortnight and discuss spending. My mum does all the accounts for my dad's business and handles all the personal accounts. My MIL never opened a bank account in her life. It's not a gender thing - it's being part of a team and working as a team and seeing the handling of money as one of the many jobs (like cooking, housework, repairs, childcare etc etc) that it takes to keep a family going. The fact that dh earns much more than I do doesn't come into it.

If you can't see your family as a team / unit then that doesn't say much for the strength of the unit. I uunderstand Xenia that you've had a bad experience of marriage but try not to get too jaded. Money is important but it can't buy you happiness, love, friendship, family, fulfilment, intelligence or sensitivity...all the things that really make life worth living. I'd much rather set my sights on the more satisfying rewards of life.

I don't like teams. I was always the last to get picked at school. I'd much prefer to see us as, you know, fellow inmates

rl, but the fact my ex husband always put on the dishwasher so after divorce I might have needed a lesson in it isn't a problem. The fact a man only knows about finances leaves you hugely exposed. So only allocate and choose to be ignorant of areas that do not leave you exposed to risk of that major kind.