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!!

We have a credit card and put everything on it through the month and it is automatically cleared by DD at the end of the month.

Before we moved in May, we had a current account mortgage where interest is charged daily - it was better to have your salary go in at the start of the month and sit there until right at the end as it meant we paid less interest each day on the account. In addition, because we spend so much on it, we get about £70 worth of Tesco vouchers every 3 months (it's a Tesco platinum card) which is always handy!

You have to be disciplined though - we have ours paid by DD automatically so we haven't given ourselves an option to not pay it off.

DD - direct debit obviously, not daughter! Ha ha!

Notequal, worth pointing out to him that if he dropped dead tomorrow, his accounts (and any joint accounts) would be frozen for some time while the legal process grinds on. Can't remember details but I know my MIL had nothing but the cash in her purse because she and my FIL had a joint account. How would you pay the mortgage/the undertakers (£1,000s)/any bills for which he is responsible, let alone buy new shoes for the kids/any other expenses you couldn't manage out of your own income?

MIL didn't tell us this but several friends of hers who had been widowed and experience this put some money in a condolence card and said, this is just in case you need it, someone did it for me, if you don't need it, pass it on to any friends in a similar situation (she was in her 70s). Heartwarming practical help. Of course, as soon as we realised we sorted stuff out but it's the kind of major practical problem you don't know about in advance.

Actually, the problem is more likely to arise where accounts and other financial investments are held in his sole name. Until probate has been sorted and the will executed (assuming he has made a will), all such accounts will be frozen. Joint accounts are usually left to run as normal unless they are operated on both signatures rather than either or.

I'm astonished at people who seem to think £50k pa isn't a lot. I've brought up four DCs on half as much (though fortunately no mortgage) and would have been humbly grateful if STBXH had brought in half as much as that to eke it out. Now he says he has no idea how we got into debt, with some dark hint that I've got it squirrelled away somewhere because I've always planned to run off with a young lover. Chance would be etc.

Another question for Nonequal - do you know how your dh's father and mother organised their finances? Has he 'learnt' that 'women can't be trusted with the money'?

Wicked, I went barmy when I discovered the thing about the house..My dh originally had bought the house for his parents because his dad's health was failing (He's perked up now, mind!!) and when my dh and I were about to get married I discovered that he and his mother had a trip to the solicitors booked to transfer the house into trust for dd ie His dear mother must have feared that I had my eye on it and would be after it in divorce proceedings...I emphasise this was the week BEFORE we got married after being together for five years!! We're still together, though god knows why now I think of it!!

Xenia: "A few people are suggesting on this thread that money equals love - that the man who shares all the money or gives the non working wife money is showing love. Interseting materialism for supposedly unmaterialistic non working mothers."
I don't think people were suggesting that giving the money is what shows love - it's trusting your partner to handle the money that shows the love - this is what the OP was worried about.

As far as I'm concerned, we have a joint bank account, most of the time DH has earned more than me, but I supported him when he was doing a PHd - neither of us have ever counted who earns/spends what.
We do have separate credit cards, but that's just a matter of convenience in case either of us loses it.
However when we married, DH did promise 'with all my wordly goods I thee endow' so if I really wanted to I could hold him to it....

Yes, I know a lot of men and women who have this view - woman (or occasionally man) at home who actually if the working partner is getting the £1m December bonus doesn't have a massive house to clean. In stead she has people to do just about everything so arguably she should be getting less in a sense because she's doing less, he's paying for the nanny, gardener, au pair and all she has to do is keep fit and pretty and give good sex. Some prefer a working wife anyway because that's more interesting and less risky on divorce but others like the pretty stay at home status blonde type of wife. Just depends on their preference. If they're fairly intellectual they might like to be sayign to friends - my wife is a surgeon at XYZ or runs HSBC.

On this "in a way though xenia, you have proved the extreme case - you have done it on your own, so you've proved that you dont need a "better half" supporting you in the home. I dont think that most men are capable of that, though. They are far more dependent on support from home. They may look like high achievers, but if they came back every night to a messy house, sulking au pair, lost sports kit and no sex (for example) it would show in their work performance."
Well it's not easy for men or women being a full time working but single parent. I know widowers with young children who do it too and the issues are just the same.

On secret house purchases etc we hope couples are completely open. In fact marriages can be easier and better if you both earn about the same really. It's the huge disparities which can lead to these problems. Also some men and owmen are just absolutely hopeless with money and you'd be an idiot to let them near any accounts at all. In fact they should be sent off to forced therapy for retail addiction etc.

Huge disparities are a non-issue in this house because it's irrelevant to us who earns what.

Am realising actually how lucky I am to have a dh who appreciates and respects all the things that I do, paid or otherwise. He is a gem.

Xenia - what is your obsession with 'providing good sex'?? Most odd.

Good God no, Batters, I wouldn't suggest such a thing. Not that it's particularly relevant to the thread, admittedly, but I don't have a mortgage because my parents left me enough to buy a small house with and I left the overspending debt unsecured because I wanted to keep flexible. STBXH kindly suggested I take out a mortgage (him taking out a job would have been a bit more helpful), but by the time I was ready to agree to it we'd also got talking about divorce, so now HE won't agree to mortgage the house because he thinks it will give me some kind of power over the property which I will of course abuse. So I have no mortgage, but the approximate equivalent of a small mortgage on credit cards and a loan, which is rather painful.

Someone living on that amount whose parents didn't have the good taste to leave them a reasonable sum would be in deep trouble, no mistake.

I have to say, that if my DH earned stacks of money, and I didn't have to work, then I wouldn't have all that help!! I find that utterly ridiculous having an au pair and nanny and cleaner or whatever... that is being "kept" in my opinion. A SAHM that does all the childcare, cleaning, organising etc is not "kept" and is completely different to that.

AS a SAHM, I am very rarely actually in the house. I'm either working (small paid part-time job and voluntary work) or helping out at the boys' school, helping friends, my parents, etc. Perhaps we should change the acronym from SAHM, to HBM (home-based mum - or dad or parent). My home is my base, but that's merely a jump-off point for all the other things I do.

And the fact that no one pays me to do all the stuff I do does not make it of less value than the work done by someone who is paid £150K pa.

Ditto Freckle - I'm a SAHM but I work freelance (am working right now actually!), I go into school to read with the Y1s, I'm on the PTA committee so have loads of work to do for that. I also help out friends with childcare etc - some work part time and there are times they can't do pick ups etc and I'm always helping them out by picking up for them - which I'm more than happy to do.

I never actually sit down and have a brew and a breather on a week day - I'm always run ragged trying to fit in work, school commitments, household stuff.

Any reasonable man on those sorts of sums (or woman) of course has that help. It's ridiculous to expect her to have her hands down the toilet when you earn huge sums and everyone she knows has a cleaner the cost of which is tiny. Of course you'd expect her to manage the process, pay the people doing the jobs, organise etc. I don't know wny non-working wives of men like that who don't have cleaners and a live in au pair and everyone on this road has a gardener. And you get some men (I've even seen one one posting on here) saying well I earn mega bucks through my efforts because I'm very good at what I do (and remember hardly any of us are good enough to earn that money), I pay for the housekeeping, nanny, gardening, interior decorating services the family gym membershipm hair cuts holidays etc so what is she giving me? Well may be that's when we get into my brother's comment about some of his colleagues saying having the Oxbridge wife prepared to give up her career as the status symbol rather than the ex model who looks pretty but isn't very clever so can't talk well to your friends. Mind you it has to be the Oxbridge woman who is pretty too I suppose. Sex.. someone mentioned..isn't that part of this deal? You look attractive to him, be nice to him, put out to him but not just badly but well and then he pays. Traditional model of marriage around the world beloved of the 1950s mumsnetting stay at home mothers may be... or some of them.

Where does love and sharing everything come into all that?

What about plain, simple companinship? Marriage is not just about sex and running a household.

You can't put a price on friendship, as the saying goes.

Xenia, I do believe you're trying to wind people into a frenzy by suggesting that mnetting sahms bear any resemblance to 50s housewives.

I think this would be a shame if it turned into a WOTH vs SAHM debate since we've had that a million times before. The fact remains if you're married there are only joint marital assets, not his n hers, regardless of who earns the cash OTH. Although Xenia I noticed on another thread that you said you had to pay £900k to your ex on divorce so maybe that's coloured your judgement somewhat? (I know it's not usual etiquette to post about stuff on other threads but it is relevant here). Since I earn more than dh I'd have to pay maintenance were we to divorce but that's fine with me, that was the deal.

I would also take issue with the 'someone's paid more because they're worth more' argument. Hmm, so teachers, midwives, are only worth pitiful salaries then?

And loyalty. Having a partner who sticks with you in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer - beyond price.

Sobernow - phew! I thought it was just me!!

I started reading this thread and gave up halfway and then have caught the last few back up the top. In answer to the OP, yes if I were in your position I would consider that half of that money is mine as it is a shared marital asset. And actually although as you said you do have more than enough to live on it sounds as if he has substantially more to fritter away on what he wants which to me is not an equal partnership.

I have been a SAHM for 7 years and have only recently started earning again. Our money goes into a joint account and I am in charge of the budget as I'm better at it than DH. We have made sure that we have an equal amount monthly to do with what we want, which at the moment happens to be pretty much nothing as we have been doing up the house and have stuff to pay for. But when we get back to having a surplus (fingers crossed) we will jointly decide what we are going to do with it and have an equal amount to spend on what we each want to. I would expect no less as I make and have made an equal contribution to this marriage in other ways apart from financially.

In your situation I would that I was not an equal partner and I think the fact that you have a comfortable amount to live on each month is not the point, it's the whole principle and balance of your relationship. I don't think you sound like a spoilt bitch.

And I really don't get this 1950s housewife rubbish at all. Maybe it applies for a small percentage of people but it is completely alien to anything I see.

I don 't usually post on these kind of threads as I realise that my views are so minority that they become difficult to articulate properly[wry grin]

A bit of history first - I was divorced when I was 30, thankfully before having children. No huge sums involved as we were earning more or less the same amounts so we split the equity in the house and carved up some other investments and that was it.

However, the process of starting over again was pretty hard - moving from a large 5 bed house into a 2 bed flat (albeit very nice) is hard, no matter how over indulgent it seems.

I think that my experience of divorce has coloured my attitude to work and earning, and financial independence. I look back and wonder how I would ever have managed post divorce if I had children and no income. A scenario which I suppose I have actively avoided being in since!

I am fortunate to be in a good relationship, both of us have very comfortable income levels with regular nice sized bonuses. We do have completely separate banking arrangements, except for a joint savings account which all bonuses etc are paid into before deciding what to do with them. We also have separate savings accounts where we save our own excess monthly income (usually we bung all of this into a pension fund at the end of the year). It works for us, but probably because there is excess money around - if one of us had considerably less disposable income than the other, then it might not work as well.

I do worry about my future and my children's stability. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that my marriage might end in divorce or that DH might be run over by a bus, but I make it a part of our financial planning to know that should either event happen, I can provide adequately for my children and myself.

I don't think there is anything magical about being able to work in a high earning job and run a home - yes we seem to employ a small army of people to do things for us - but frankly they are things I can more or less live without doing myself, save for the nanny's job as I wouldn't mind spending the 14 or 15 hours a week she looks after the children for, with them myself. There are times when it isn't easy and every time I think of giving up work and hanging up my books - but there is always that nagging voice at the back of my mind telling me that I should hold onto what I've got!

So after all that, I suppose what I am trying to say, is that the need for, and the degree of financial independence within a relationship varies enormously between different people. Once you accept that, then the basis on which different people come to different positions or agreements is completely understandable.

Where it gets tricky is where one party to the relationship is dominating the basis on which that agreement is reached, as seems to be the case with the OP. If you are happy with your financial arrangements as a couple and they have been arrived at from a true joint negotiation process then that is fine. The problems stem from where that process hasn;t happened or where things have changed without new deals being put in place.

The scope for discontent does run both ways though - I hear as many grumps from men about how they feel their wives are taking them for a ride, as they spend their days at the gym and shopping, as I do from women who feel men are being 'tight' with their money!

Negotiation is the key to all of this - talk, talk and then talk again would be my motto