I’ve just discovered that DH has a shitload of credit card debt 😲😲

[0lga]

I will try to explain properly but I’m just reeling in shock.

We are in the process of separating and divorcing, he has already moved out. He left boxes of stuff, old clothes in bin bags etc for me to dispose of (that’s typical of him, he still thinks I’m his servant). I shoved them in a cupboard and ignored them, until this week when I started to sort them out to take to the recycling.

Among all the rubbish I found bags of old bank statements and I’ve just spent hours going through them. I’ve discovered that ever since we got married, he has been spending a huge amount of money on credit card payments . I’m talking about £30,000 a year 😡😡😡

To put this in context, we had a good income of about £ 90,000 net between us. I earn about £30,000 and he earns about £60,000. So we are comfortable, can pay the bills, run a car, go abroad each year on holiday, pay a good amount into our pensions etc. I thought the only debt we had was our mortgage, which is nearly paid off.

( These aren’t the exact figures BTW, I’ve just rounded things to make it easier to talk about ).

It turns out he has been lying to me for our whole marriage - in fact he earns £90,000 not £60,000 and has been spending the difference on about a dozen credit cards. I don’t have the card statements, only his bank statements, so I don’t know what he’s spent it on.

He’s always been very secretive about money. I’ve never seen any of his own financial details, we both get our salaries paid into our own accounts and then pay into a joint account which we use for all the bills and we’ve always had enough , so it was never an issue IYSWIM.

And now I know why the bastard has been so secretive. I’m absolutely raging, I can’t get over how much money this is that he’s thrown away.

Im assuming that he’s paying off old debts, as the payments for each card are pretty much identical each month. But I know fuck all about credit cards - I have only one which I hardly every use and if I do I pay it off in full by DD each month. So my payments are different amounts each month.

I just can’t compute that he’s paying roughly the same than I earn each year and the debt doesn’t seem to go away. And he’s been doing this for nearly 20 years !!!

I have no idea how he got into this debt but I can see he had it when we got married.

And I’ve even less idea why he has gone on buying himself new cars every few years and the newest iPhone / MacBook when he has all this debt. It makes zero sense to me.

There’s no point in asking him, he will refuse to discuss it and walk out. Or just lie to my face , like he did about his affair. Even when I had cast iron proof.

He was still swearing on his kids life that she was “ just a colleague “ and telling me that I was paranoid when she had already admitted to me that it had been going on for years.

So we are not exactly on speaking terms before this.

Please help me, I want to kill him 🤬

What a dick. I’m sorry!

All I can say is good riddance. I hope you can move on from this and enjoy your new life.

It's an extra kick in the balls, but let's face it, you already knew he was scum so this shouldn't come as any surprise. Try to protect the assets you have. Chances are if you don't mention this he won't either and he'll slope off with his own debts to battle with. It's like throwing a shovel full of shit onto a ten ton shit heap. Makes zero difference 🤷🏼‍♀️

at Least we don’t have to tell you to LTB.

Don’t give him these documents yet. Find out from your solicitor exactly what needs to be copied.

Not that it helps but if it's £30k extra on the bank statement then it's net pay so after tax they are presumably in the £100k+ rather than £90k region

1st thing is to make 1000% sure that you are not legally liable for any of this debt AND that the debt will not affect your divorce settlement in any way. You need to talk to your solicitor and give him the whole story. I know the UK has some different rules than my US state re 'marital debt', but you want to know for sure.

I'm not in the UK, but I have a friend whose exH had hidden debt and the debtor filed a lien against their house and she played merry hell (or her attorney did) making sure than her share of the house sale was 'protected' from that lien.

But overall, at this point just try to just be thankful that he's gone and that his 'shit' is no longer your problem.

I’ve already sent an email to my solicitor giving her all the details, I’ve spent hours going through at the statements, putting them in order, working out how much money it is and seeing the pattern in how he pays off some and then borrows a lump sum and pays off another.

i hope I’m not liable as he had all this debt when he met me. He’s not mentioned it at all in the divorce so far , but it’s early days.

I don’t know what has possessed him. I can understand how you can have debt if you are really hard up, if you have an emergency or your circumstances change, get ill, lose your job etc. but I don’t understand how anyone who earns as much as he does can have this debt for so long.

why the fuck is he paying so much into his pension while he has a big debt ??? I don’t understand what he is thinking.

I wasn’t planning to give then back at all - he left them here for me to throw out with all his other boxes and bags of crap. The stuff that I’ve been asking him to take out the loft for years but he was too busy and it was important blah blah blah

If the debt is in his name and he never told you about it then you shouldn't be liable.

But all those assets he purchased? They're marital ones so hopefully if all added up you can fight for a larger share of the house equity and he gets to keep those purchases frivolities.

Do you have children? Would he have to pay maintenance? At least with this higher income you would be entitled to more maintenance so don't agree anything with him, go through official channels.

Also with the higher income you could argue a higher share of house equity because he can afford to accommodate himself better than you can.

That’s the issue though - I don’t think he has purchased any assets with the money during our marriage, I think he’s just been paying off these cards with nothing to show for it. because all the payments are pretty much identical each months, to within a few pennies. Eg £746 to Nat west, £189 to Egg, £45 to MBNA.

There will be £5 / month paid to Marbles for a year, then suddenly a credit into the account of £15,0000 from Marble. Then he pays large sums eg £5000 to Nat west and then the Marbles payment goes up to £750/month.

I don’t know if he’s Moving it around to use interest free credit.

OP well done for being savvy enough to find this info. Send what you have to your solicitor and speak to her about it properly on the phone.

As for him, well you knew he was a liar. And now you know … that he’s a liar. I’d be wondering what else he was lying about. Keep the peace and keep looking for evidence.

Think how glorious it will be to make your own sensible financial decisions again.

Thank you @bonzaitree , but I don’t feel savvy. I feel like the most stupid and gullible woman ever.

First I have no idea that he’s shagging a woman at work.

And now this. He has wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds, it’s blowing my mind. It’s enough to buy each of our kids a HOUSE , not even a flat.

and I haven’t got a clue how much he borrowed and what he spent it on in the first place . I don’t think it’s drugs or gambling but clearly I have NO IDEA who he even is 😢😢

You don’t need to know what he’s spent it on, your relationship is over and you’re getting divorced? If the credit is in his name alone you’re not liable for it.

I know( hope ) I’m probably not liable for the debt.

But he’s wasted £600,000 of our money on it - why would I not care about it ? That’s a phenomenal amount of money to me !

I’ve been paying a third ( actually a bit more ) of all our bills for twenty years because I earn a third of our income. Except I don’t.

I had to use up some of my savings to pay for my maternity leave because he couldn’t afford to pay the bills himself . Except he could if he wasn’t paying £2,500 / month on debts .

Ive used up more of my savings to pay for work on the house that he couldn’t afford to . Expect he could .

most of my money has gone on “ us “ - Running our house and kids. The house that he will get half of.

most of his money has gone on him , his personal spends and his debts.

I’ve been subsidising him for years as well as doing 90% of all the parenting and housework.

Cant you see why this is an issue for me @Whatswhatwhichiswhich ?

@0lga I can completely understand that, I didn’t mean to minimise what you’ve been through at all and I’m truly sorry it came across that way.

It is a phenomenal amount of money, I can’t comprehend what someone would spend that on nor why they would worsen their families situation like that. I’d meant that it no longer matters what it’s been spent on, he’s lied for the majority of your relationship and cheated on you, whatever he says about it now is also likely to be lies and you could drive yourself mad trying to find an explanation. If your name has been added to any of his debt it is fraud and you are not liable. He cannot show this money has been spent on the family so you are also not liable - however your solicitor will be able to do a much better job of reassuring you of this than I can. And for what it’s worth I hope you take him to the cleaners, sounds like you more than deserve it

Wow, that's an insane secret to keep from you. So sorry for what you're going through.

What on Earth has he actually spent £600k on though? I understand what you're saying about moving money around and changing credit cards but it must have been spent on something. Gambling? Drugs? Secret second family?

If he hid them previously so well. Why leave them behind? I would say don't mention it too and see what happens. They probably want you to mention it and share the debt.

Crickey. Good riddance. You’ll never get the dull
truth I imagine so perhaps time to draw a line and move on. Do you think there might be addictions here? It’s a phenomenal amount of money to have nothing to show for it. Why on earth didn’t he declare himself insolvent? Embarrassed perhaps?

What an idiot
If the debt is in his name, it will not affect you
Almost the same situation here, except 18 years and £20,000
It didn't affect my settlement and he's probably still in debt now
More proof that he doesn't deserve you.
I couldn't believe the deceit when I discovered it

I can certainly see why you're pissed off. Hold onto that anger and use it to fight for every penny you can get out of the financial settlement. He's sucked enough money out of you, don't let him get any more.

ummm, i'd be looking for a secret savings account. per chance any paystubs that show the income split and two or more accounts?
an investment portfolio, buying his shares with credit?
or do the actual cc statements have the full list of purchases?

He's a cheat, a liver and bad with money. At least there's no doubt for you re the divorce!
Make sure you share what you know with a solicitor.
Good riddance

There will be £5 / month paid to Marbles for a year, then suddenly a credit into the account of £15,0000 from Marble. Then he pays large sums eg £5000 to Nat west and then the Marbles payment goes up to £750/month.

This is confusing. The first part I thought was what I sometimes do; almost max out a 0% CC, put a note in the calendar for when the 0% ends, and then pay it all off. I've paid literally all my outgoings via that card and put my actual income in savings to earn interest - free money basically.

But the second part looks like a money transfer? They're expensive, even if at 0% there's a fee - it's not worth it. It would explain why the repayment figure goes up so much though. Often when you start 'working the card hard' they increase your limit to suck you in. It looks like he's maxed it out again with a money transfer purely to run up debt - because that £5,000 limit or whatever was available to him for 'free' if used on the card itself (and paid off every month), yet he's chosen to transfer the lot to a Natwest bank account?

If you're saying the affair has been going on 'years', I suspect this could be (possibly) a convoluted plan to run up huge debts so you get less in the divorce. Even if you're not personally liable, a judge could split the assets in such a way that the debt value is allocated to him first, and then split the remainder.

The worst part is he doesn't even have to use that debt allocation to actually pay the debt; he just gets more money in the divorce

Edit: It could also be a ploy to show his outgoings as much higher so he has to pay less maintenance in the event of divorce? Repaying debts is listed as a reason that the paying parent can apply for a variation in CMS.

Are you sure it's debt? He could have been buying a secret house. That sounds more plausible than paying 30,000 each year for 20 years.

Oh I wouldn't mention it - it's in HIS NAME - don't poke the beast. If he brings it up and tries to share it with you, you can legitimately say you had no idea about it.

In divorcing it benefits you NOT to mention it - all you need to mention is that you know he earns £100k plus and you go through the CMS to sequester his wages for child support