Can someone tell me how I should feel over DH's bombshell? Money

[ASeagullNamedDog]

It turns out H has been raiding our savings for the last 18m-ish on the secret

He has spent £45k behind my back on fuck all - 37k of that in actual saved money, and wasting at least £800 per month out of his wages somewhere else

Nothing to show for it, says he doesn't know where it's gone

I've only found out as I asked him to transfer £15k for a big purchase

This money was earmarked for our children's future

This is divorce material, isn't it?

No secret children or other women, apparently not a gambling habit

I'm very calm but I'm not sure if I'm calm because I'm gonna crack up in an hour or two and bury him

the two of you need to go through all his income and expenditure for the last few years. I shudder to think how much was just wasted paying interest on the credit cards. As much as I sympathise with you and the children, I can also imagine his panic as the debts mounted

He's raided the savings of £ 35K set aside for the DC and used £ 800 a month out of his salary, which for all we know he can afford. OP doesn't mention debt and credit cards, does she? I missed it if so.

£ 37K, sorry.

Prostitutes maybe. Definitely divorce material unless he can open up and offer a reasonable excuse

I did wonder about this. But I check accounts all the time because I need to know what's in them. If I had a lot of money, maybe I wouldn't feel that need.

Please try and be as calm as you possibly can, also try to keep a detailed log of everything that happens, conversations etc.
It's likely that in time the truth will come out in dribs and drabs and if you have a detailed record of what happened during the initial trauma it will help you to see the full picture.

Do you think he has dabbled in Bitcoin and got burned

He's lying to you OP.

He doesn't want to tell you where it's gone.

This in itself is a dealbreaker.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. I experienced something similar years ago but on a much smaller scale and although I didn't end the relationship then and there (I was pregnant, surprise surprise, he started the financial abuse as soon as I became pregnant) it destroyed any trust I had in him and we eventually split up.

By the way, that's how you need to think of it, you know that? Financial abuse. That's the term. Be in no doubt about this. He's abused you and your children financially and now he's gaslighting you by pretending he's got no clue on what he's spent money he knew damn well wasn't available for that expenditure. This is abusive behaviour and you need to be very clear sighted about that.

Good luck, I hope you manage to sort something, but you'll be in shock for a while.

BUT it doesn't explain the lies or the bizarre behaviour of liquidating investments while he still had £60k in cash.

It's not that bizarre, @TheSunWithTheSmile. Buying Premium Bonds made sense when interest rates were very low. If you weren't going to get any interest on your savings you might as well try your luck and see if you win anything. There are accounts offering 5% now so it might make sense to move the money. The Premium Bonds were in his name, not the DC's names. Maybe he sees it as the £60k in his account is the 37k that was in Premium bonds plus the £800 per month he was meant to be saving (£45k total), plus £15k of his own money.

So rather than spending their "savings", he may see it has he has spent his own savings (OP has said she has her own personal savings, so presumably they have separate finances) and now he can't afford the £15k OP wanted for the big purchase, as that will empty out his account out. It's not great but nothing like "spending the kids' savings".

It won’t matter which accounts your money is in if you decide to divorce. The starting point is 50:50 split for finances.

She mentions 7k on credit card.

That's some serious mental gymnastics to justify lying to your partner. Presumably the large joint purchase was agreed so he knew this was coming, they are married to joined financially in the eyes of the law as one fiscal unit, one partner cannot go off spending tens of thousands of pounds without informing the other because these decisions affect them both. They clearly aren't so rich this is pocket change or the OP would not be upset. There was an agreed budget, agreed amounts going into savings, a joint financial plan. If it was all innocent as you suggest and was about seeking a higher interest rate why would he not have informed his wife about this plan? Why is he so ashamed now then if he's done nothing wrong?

The apologists on here are unreal.

I'm going to assume that you are posting in good faith and were trying to offer comfort.

I'm autistic and it took me a long time to learn that anything approximating to "cheer up, it could be worse" or "count your blessings" will have the opposite effect to that which I intended, every single time. I still only open my mouth to change feet on plenty of other matters, but I'm confident that I have this type of situation nailed.

I think you've misunderstood the OP's principal problem. The OP's most important problem detailed in this thread is not the loss of the money. The OP's most important problem is that the man she married and had children with has demonstrated that he cannot be trusted to uphold an agreement that he made with the OP to benefit his own children, and therefore she can no longer trust him with anything else. Your comment does not address that trust breach in anyway and can be (mis)interpreted as completely denying the importance of this breach of trust to the OP, which is why you raised the ire of other posters.

In future cases like this, you may find "5 Ys" a helpful root cause analysis technique, in which asking "why" or "how" or a similar interrogative five times or fewer will usually get you to the root problem. In this case: The OP is very concerned by her husband taking the money. Why (#1)? Because he took it from the kids' accounts without telling her. Why (#2) is that a problem? Because she thought she could trust him to leave the kids' money alone and he didn't. Why (#3) does that matter? Because if she can't trust him with the kids' savings, how can she trust him with other stuff, up to and including her and the kids' lives? And we are here, at the root cause in three Ys, with the OP literally staying awake all last night because she fears her husband might commit family annihilation whilst she sleeps.

I hope that it's clear now why "at least you are not destitute" was not a helpful comment.

I wouldn't want to give a definitive answer on the OP's situation without more information, but behaviour that recklessly reduces the assets of the marriage will be taken into account. It sounds like that has happened here.

She had no reason to. It’s not her fault her husband has been up to no good with their money.

If he has 60k why did he use the other savings?
It's odd that he didn't transfer 15k of that money to cover his tracks if he had it?

Someone I knew at school, his mum hid how bad their COL crisis was from his dad until the repossession bailiffs came to evict them from the family home.

It ended in divorce and him being fostered with other relatives.

People can be totally deluded about their ability to fix their finances. That doesn't make it any less divorce-worthy.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia I am afraid @Littledogball 's post was not well-intentioned at all, the "🙄" indicated that they thought the OP should stop complaining because she has some money, so apparently should never be sad about anything that happens in her life or seek support. It was a deliberately unpleasant post which - thankfully - has now been deleted.

People can be totally deluded about their ability to fix their finances. That doesn't make it any less divorce-worthy.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia I agree. My point in the post you responded to is that there is a huge difference between frittering away surplus income as it comes in, and making a conscious choice to liquidate existing investments to fund whatever you are doing and hide it from your wife. The first is bad financial management, the second is also deceit.

How devastating for your poor friend, what a sad story.

It was suggested I should give him even more so he could pay off his debts and still have enough for another house deposit from my pension savings...

Have you stopped laughing hysterically at this?

What a bliddy cheek!

He obviously knows where the money's gone - if he'd bought £45k worth of items then where are they?! He's hiding something, likely either gambling, drugs, use of prostitutes or investing in something risky like crypto. If he wants the relationship to continue then he needs to come clean!

Why are you married to such a disrespectful waster? The number of women who stay with men like this is really disturbing.

@Emotionalsupportviper not quite, and it's been a few years now. 🤣🤣 Luckily I decided to invest the money in a very good lawyer instead and he didn't get to fleece me as much as he's hoped. I've since got a couple of promotions and bought the children a very nice home. He managed to get himself fired a couple of times and is living in an HMO I believe, drowning in debt again presumably. He has no contact with the children so my main focus has been on making sure they are ok, but I suppose there is some karma looking at our respective situations now!

I work full time

i don’t get how you can work full time, so presumably grasp income, debt, pensions, savings etc and yet in your home financial affairs never checked premium bonds, savings, saw credit card statement envelopes addressed to your husband and not enquire. Nothing.

Fwiw dh is extremely bad with money

Because of past issues I have for the majority of our relationship been in charge of anything money related
Apart from the 2 years after Ds was born and my brain wasn’t to be trusted. It was like amnesia but instead of forgetting people I forgot “skills”
Paying bills and balancing a cheque book was not possible.
When I took back control of the finances dh said I needed to get a job as our expenses outweighed our income.
Within a few days I had reduced our outgoings by £2000 per month.

If you stop looking at where and what you spend your money on I think it is very easy to squander money which then adds up.

But in this case the “I dunno” “Spent it on stuff” answers you keep getting just looks like lies on top of theft and divorce is the only option or you will live your life always wondering when will he do it again (whatever “it” is) Your security has been taken from you by someone you trusted and it will happen again except next time it will be for a larger amount.

I think you might need a forensic accountant to sift through everything. (Has he cashed out any of his pension or liquidated any other assets or investments that should be there but you haven’t checked yet

He might be handing you over £60k but at the very least it must be shown that £45k of it is to replace the £45k he took from childrens savings and that you have placed the same amount in PBs in their names for their future. The rest you could give to your solicitor as part payment to handle your divorce. Otherwise on divorce the whole of that £60k will be considered marital assets and the starting point on divorce is 50/50

Your children won’t get their money back and you will still have solicitors fees

Can you get a letter from him to ring fence the £45k and that it is officially the children’s money that he is paying back and cannot touch it ever.

I think you need to get photos and copies of all financial stuff, all the company assets and finances and investments as well as any financial investments, pensions bank account statements and assets owned by Dh whether solely or jointly. Also any debts, credit cards and borrowings etc for business and him.
Also do you have a rough estimate on
how much the business, marital home and any assets (including his hobby equipment etc is worth
On divorce everything is given a valuation amount, it is added up and divided by 2 to give you a starting figure.

Then you choose what you want up to your percentage amount. Solicitors make more money when you both want the same thing . If you can trade off one thing for another it is certainly going to be cheaper.

This isn't the USA, the rules for keeping firearms in the home are very strict and the police come around every couple of years to inspect the storage arrangements. One of the rules is that the FAC holder has to take the keys to the safe everywhere with them so that kids and burglars can't get access to the keys. However, this only works if the FAC holder is still being mindful of his/her conditions of having the FAC. Source: well-heeled cousins who shoot.

One of the other safeguards in place, which a lot more attention is paid to since Thomas Hamilton's club dropped the ball prior to Dunblane (and should have been paid attention to beforehand, those poor kids would still be alive), is that clubs have to monitor their members' welfare and report concerns onwards to the police. Source: Govt webpage linked below.

The OP would not be unreasonable in phoning the local police firearms licencing team and her husband's club secretary to inform them of the situation at home and ask for advice, as both relationship problems and financial pressures are deemed wellbeing concerns for shooters that the club should be aware of and consider reporting onwards to the police.

This of course assumes that we are correct in our guess and it is shooting and not say, golf, and the OP's fear is of being clouted over the head with a very expensive golf club. Shooting is a rare hobby and it would be very outing for the OP to confirm that guess, so probably best that she neither confirms nor denies.