Husband opened his own bank account

[Bluecathy]

So this is a very long story.

I've been with my husband for 25 years. We have 7 children, the youngest is 8 years old.
Throughout our marriage there alhave been numerous occasions where he has been unfaithful but I forgave him.
Up until last year when I decided enough was enough as we were basically two strangers living in the same house. We haven't had sex for about 3 years and id had enough.
I'd tried on many occasions to talk to try and fix things but he didn't care.
I started seeing someone else as I was so lonely and I told my husband about it pretty much straight away.
That kind of fizzled out and I still live with my husband. We have even Bern getting on a little better - until this morning.
He was due to be paid today and we have a joint bank account. Except the money hasn't gone in and we have bills going out.
I phoned him straight away because I didn't want for us to go overdrawn and he told me that it's gone into his account and he would transfer some money over!
I'm in Utter shock. I don't work as I'm a carer for our autistic child so I've not got my own independent income and I feel sick with worry now. Most of things that go out are debts that he has run up but now I feel like I'm being punished for daring to seek the comfort that he denied me or sought elsewhere.
I've been totally blindsided. I need to talk to him calmly about this but I just feel sick.
Any advice on how to handle this would be greatly appreciated xx

Completely agree. The normal adult thing to do pretty much goes out of the window when separating/ divorcing though. Few divorces are amicable. I’m surprised that op didn’t see this coming to be honest. The marriage is dead.

I think I would say you both need to have a calm factual conversation, and agree a truce while you decide next steps.

Say it is clear that your emotional partnership has ended, (no point in hashing out ‘you did this / I did that’) and the two of you need to work together calmly to work out the next steps, in order to a) meet your joint responsibilities to your children and b) to cause them the least damage and upset.

Do you have a joint savings account? Where does any child benefit / DLA / carers allowance go?

I would say to him you need to work together to untangle yourselves from this mess and not play tit for tat, so could he not make changes to how money is dealt with until it is all sorted out.

(not to pour fuel on the fire but I would wonder if he has found that he has to meet new costs from his bank account, that he doesn’t want you to see. Such as a CMS payment somewhere…)

There's nothing wrong with having your own bank account. I'd never not have my own bank account and nor would dh. I'm definitely not of the 'it all goes in one pot as family money' brigade. I like having my own money and not having dh being able to see every transaction and I'm sure he likes feeling the same. So I think, on the face of it, absolutely nothing wrong with that. We do exactly what your dh has proposed, get paid into our individual accounts and transfer money over as needed throughout the month.

As for the rest of it though, this isn't a happy or healthy relationship. I would assume he realises that and is perhaps starting to look towards the future and what life would be if he wasn't in it, I'm sorry to say. I think it's what any woman on MN would be advised in his situation. I think you need to get your ducks in a row and start figuring out how you would survive independently.

He hasn't "proposed" it, he's just gone and done it without forewarning or discussing it with OP.

And it's a bit different to have that financial set up from the start than to spend 25 years with a joint account and then suddenly decide to change it without even a heads up.

Communication is key here. You need to put in your big girl pants and start the conversation.