Not financial abuse, but not quite right either?

[errrnotsure]

I'm starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable about the financial balance in my relationship. Came to a head in a heated converation with my DH last night and i was very upset, but after sleeping on it, i decided to get the advice of mumsnet, and try to look at it all in a more rational light. Please be honest with me.

Background - I'm a sahm. DH works in a well paid professional role. I've been a sahm since DC1 was born and we've since had DC2, both are pre-schoolers ATM. Before we got married we had discussed having a family, and i had always made my position clear that if financially possible i would like one or both of us to be at home with them in the early years at least until school age. My DH was on board with this (or so i thought) and luckily when I had DC1 we were in a position for it to be feasible for me to SAH.

Prior to me leaving my job at that point we were both earning approx similar salaries and contributed 50/50 to a joint pot for all joint outgoings. Anything left over was our own disposable income.

Since I've been at home, I manage the joint account, into which DH puts enough money each month to cover all necessary expenses - mortgage, food, bills etc. In my personal account i receive Child Benefit (which i use for kids clothes and activities etc) and £100 a month from DH for myself. This was intended so that i had a bit of money to buy coffees, clothes etc without having to ask DH for it all the time. I was happy with this. If i ever need extra for something big, i just ask and he transfers it to me via bacs. In the past 4 years Dh's salary has nearly doubled, he has been promoted and done really well. I have been pleased and proud of him.

A recent pay rise made me realise that we would no longer be entitled to claim Child Benefit, so i sat down with him to discuss finances, and my idea was to combine everything into both names, with us continuing to use the joint acct for joint expenditure, to make our savings joint too. Currently all ours are in his name - apart from the kids savings which are in mine, but obviously i don't touch them. We would keep our personal accounts for disposable income and we would place an equal pre-arranged amount each month into them. I feel like this will be fair as currently DH spends about £100 a month on lunches alone. Hes not a spendthrift, but he does obviously have more access to disposable income than i do and he does not have to ask anyone if he needs extra money for anything. Side note - he never says no, and we are generally on the same page about what we spend vs save, it just the principle of who has access IFSWIM?

He's not happy with this idea. He would like to continue as we have been, except he puts the equivalent of the child benefit money into the joint account and i use that.

When pressed by me, it became clear that he is not comfortable with me having total access to all income. I told him i feel financially vulnerable and he cited the fact that we are joint owners of our house. This was a contentious issue when we bought the house (before we were married) as DH put a lot more more money into it than i did because of a parental bereavement which left him with a lump sum inheiritance. I did put some money in, and obviously we got the mortgage based on two salaries, plus i paid into it 50% repayments for nearly two years and contributed to renovations as well.

Summary if you've got this far (sorry). I feel it is a trust issue, i want to feel he trusts me and that we're a team, but he clearly doesn't - at least with money?

Otherwise we have a generally happy marriage, beautiful healthy children and i don't want this issue to overshadow our relationship. I always thought that marriage meant sharing everything, but maybe i'm being unreasonable? If keeping separate personal finances is important to him, should i be okay with that? I have had the benefit of being able to look after my own children for a few years, something lots of people don't get to do. I just feel sad about the whole thing, its really not what i imagined, and i'm not sure if i should just accept it and adjust things accordingly? What happens if he ever gets sick/disabled/older and i end up being the main wage earner? I can't imagine wanting to do things this way if it makes him feel the way i do now.

I'll most likely be back at work next year when my eldest goes to school. I doubt i will catch up with his earnings anytime soon, so now there will be an imbalance for a long time I imagine. Also because he is the much higher earner, i expect my career will continue to take a hit throughout school years.

Should i be asking him to contribute to my pension? Or should i be offering to split the mortgage into joint tennants in common with his original investment ringfenced? I don't know which way is up anymore and i'd like us both to be happy.

Help me navigate this please - i'm not sure what i should do at all?

I live my own life now ( I also have a better car ). Don't want to say too much! My story is pretty identifiable to friends that have had to listen to my whole sorry story! He has also left me before So have never felt secure anyway. Earning your own money is the way to go but I also value the time I had with my kids.

Yes, anything in his sole name will be frozen until Grant of Probate is granted (I think it's a little different if you are in Scotland). It's there so that the Tax is paid first, before any other assets in the estate are distributed. The bank won't even give you money for a funeral. So you are probably talking months. You are probably though, as others have said, in a worse position if for any reason he can't get his own money for a long period of time, e.g. if he was incapacitated and there is no living will. At the very least you should have living wills and access to a few thousand if you have this in savings. ( Living wills was something I meant to do this year).

Yes, I'll report mine and yours... the more reports HQ get the faster they seem to respond.

You could suggest that he transfers what child care / cook / housekeeper would cost.

Sure, and then she could transfer back to him an amount that would cover her housing, food, sundries, transportation costs, clothing, health & beauty aids, entertainment and leisure, etc. etc. etc. People who claim a SAHM is worth the salaries of all of those professionals forget that if he were paying for them, the breadwinner wouldn't be paying the keep of the SAHM.

I think the husband is being generous. Just because he agreed to support the household while she fulfilled her dream of being SAHM doesn't mean he agreed to turn over every last cent of his wages to her. If he went into a marriage at 50-50 and later accommodated his spouse's request to stop earning a wage (she said he was 'on board' but was he enthusiastic? was he the instigator of the plan or just going along with her plan?) doesn't mean he is obliged to hand over everything now.

If I had been sharing expenses with someone and then their income became nonexistent, I might cover 100 percent of expenses out of the goodness of my heart but I certainly would not be handing over all of my assets lock, stock and barrel. He already made a concession regarding the house.

Absolutely right about you having immediate access to money should anything happen to dh.

I don't work and my dh does. We have a joint account, he doesn't care or even want to know what I spend, but insists on also having a serrated account for himself. Someone upthread mentioned the privacy aspect, but should there really be a need for privacy in a marriage?

Its hard because we do need to kind of prioritise his job now that he is the higher earner

Trouble is, if you do that you never catch up again as you're always the one to be making all the sacrifices. I speak from experience and trying not to be bitter as I agreed to taking a back step without realise how much it would fuck up my prospects for so long

I think there is a strong instinct to care for your young children if you finacially can at the time, so yes you can almost walk blind into it. One day you wake up and think what in the hell just happened?

I'd talk to him and say you're resuming your well paid career and he does 50/50 childcare and it does not get outsourced to paid carers outside of your contracted hours. I already think you have been under rewarded for the loss of career advancement you'll have suffered for the time out - if he was sharing everything fairly I'd say it doesn't matter but as it stands, he could be siphoning money into accounts you don't know about and wouldn't find in a divorce situation. Either you are married and support someone's career on the basis the gains are equally split, or you do 50% of everything and work as hard as each other. Otherwise it's exploitation.

This a really thought provoking thread, especially after the "supporting dh's career" one. I think my dh is a very reasonable man, we have very rarely fought about money. But I have always earnt my own money and we have separate bank accounts as well as a joint account. I do wonder how things would have been otherwise.

Every woman whether they are earning or not should know what her DH salary is, whether he has a pension and the details of that pension, any savings and whose name they are in.

Savings should be in joint names and valuing someone's welfare means pensions should be equally paid into. I will put money on the fact they are not.

You can play a little fast and lose with these rules if you are not married. Not if you are married.

Yes it is financial abuse. Not so bad you can turn it around, but turn it around between you must and quick. Your DH is devaluing your welfare and input and therefore you are also devaluing yourself. That is abusive. In this situation I would be gathering the information I needed to leave.

Or equal amounts in individual named savings

it's hard because we do need to kind of prioritise his job now that he is the higher earner

You really don't. As he pays 40% + NIC contributions on every thing he earns over (approx) £40k it would make more sense for him to take a pay cut and you utilise your tax free and lower rate tax allowance. You'd also be able to claim CB if he earnt less than £50k. But he clearly likes to play the Big Man. Nothing wrong with being a SAHM but you really need to make sure the father of your DC doesn't have a Big Man Little Wifey attitude.

Yes, we figured this out iGoogle at this point it's much more efficient for me to get a separate pension and earn money because I pay so much less tax than DH. The children really like him being around more too.

I agree with joysmum - once you prioritise one career it stays prioritised. For good. Because it becomes the higher earning one immediately, and then it is always valued in monetary terms only - as more valuable.

Thanks all for your input. Had another chat last night which was much more productive. I appreciate all the different viewpoints here, but I really do think he's a good person who is just being a bit thoughtless and yes selfish in how he's dealt with this. I don't think it's pre-meditated or abusive, but either way the outcome is still that I feel like a bit of a second class citizen.

We're going to sit down at the weekend and have a open discussion about all of our finances: income, outgoings, savings, pensions etc. I'm hopeful that we can reach a more equitable solution.

One decision I have made is that I'm going back to work as soon as my eldest in in school (sept). I've arranged to view a local nursery for my youngest in a couple of weeks and I'll be looking at childminders/wraparound care for my eldest. It's not the childhood for them that we had planned, but I do need to get back some financial independence. Agree with posters who said I should prioritise my career, if for no other reason than its only fair at this point for me to be a bit selfish too.

The funny thing is that when I go back to work, both of our lives are going to get about 200% harder and a lot of the home harmony will be sacrificed, plus we'll basically have less money than we do now. I'll be interested to see if this sparks a sudden appreciation of my efforts, or whether he'll just be happier when I'm working out of the home as he'll feel like we're both 'in it together'. Not sure what's going to happen, but I feel like I'm on a better path now, so thank you.

So you'll be paying for nursery for your youngest, wraparound care for your eldest, going to work AND (more than likely) doing the lions share of the work in the home? And all for less money than you have now?! And you're HAPPY about this?
My dear, he has played you like a fiddle.

No, I won't be paying for childcare alone. We'll discuss it this weekend, but it will be coming from the joint pot. He won't take issue with this. He doesn't have a problem paying for stuff. Access to finances has been the issue, not lack of provision of finances.
Equitable division of domestic labour is another issue, but I expect we'll have to get a cleaner as a minimum. I already stopped doing his laundry and wife work in relation to his family, so I don't expect it will be a huge deal (although of course there will prob still be a slight imbalance as I will always be more organise than he is).

Once you are deemed to be earning your keep will he grant you access to money then?

errnotsure

but the irony is that i do actually trust him 100%.

Just playing devils advocate here, if this was the case why are you not happy with the status quo??

blindsider because although I trust him 100% not to cheat, or leave me destitute, I am a grown woman, and I would like some control over family finances. Just because I trust him to have our best interests at heart, doesn't mean I should leave it all to him?

Or maybe I've just spent long enough on mumsnet to know that many a foolish woman has said exactly the same thing as I did, and been proved wrong?

No, I won't be paying for childcare alone. We'll discuss it this weekend, but it will be coming from the joint pot

Will this be the joint pot that you'll both be paying your whole wages into?

I'm going to say one last thing err, and that is to trust your instinct.
I think you have some suspicions about your DH, in particular around his spending habits and his reluctance to allow you access. His being generous with you in regards to 'giving' you money does NOT make up for this. Nor does it make his behaviour ok. His behaviour and secrecy is not ok. It doesn't matter if he's generous or a good father, you're not asking for anything unreasonable from him.
Like i stated in my previous post, when will he deem you worthy enough to allow you access to the money and accounts? When you're earning 20k? 30k?
What hoops are you going to have to jump through next?

He's spending money on something he doesn't want you to see. Call his bluff, if you're going to have a chat about it this weekend, finances etc ask him to print off 6 months worth of bank statements so you can work out incomings and outgoings, see where cutbacks can be made etc. if he's hiding nothing he'll be happy to do this.