Husband wants me to pay back half of child benefit

[Bakersdelight]

I’d like to get some impartial perspective on a situation with my husband. We receive Child Benefit for our two children. This gets paid into our joint expenses account. My husband changed jobs 5 years ago and his salary went over the earnings threshold. I’ve been telling him for the past 5 years he needs to contact HMRC and work out repayment via a tax return and then see whether to stop receiving it, or just pay it back each year. He’s finally done his tax returns (only because he realise he could claim some relief on his pension contributions). And has had to pay approx £10k back in Child Benefit. He is now saying I owe him half of this money because I have benefitted from it as it was paid into the joint expenses account.
I feel he is being unreasonable given the amount he is asking from me and the fact that I had been asking him for 5 years to sort it out. I would be interested in what others think.

Except if you read carefully...

They pay 50:50 into the joint account despite him earning more.
HE keeps his leftovers as savings

HE claimed the child benefit unfairly
HE used the money that wasn't his to find his half of the monthly expenses
Now HE owes it back to hmrc.

OP has faithfully paid her half of the joint account all along and not actually benefited from a penny of the overpaid money

@Bakersdelight - there's a much wider issue here that needs sorting out. However, on the Child Benefit point - you can apply to transfer the National Insurance credits your husband received as the Child Benefit claimant. This is easy to do - as he was working and paying NI, he doesn't need them. They will help fill in any gaps you may have in your NI record and count towards your State Pension.

https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit

The section on Child Benefit and the State Pension explains.

You can also transfer the Child Benefit claim to your name and opt out of the money. That way (if you have a DC under 12) you will get the credits going forward. For DC over 12, you ensure they get their NI number before they turn 16. Your 'D'H won't have to do anything in the future as opting out of the payments means there is no future tax charge for the higher earner.

What the fuck have I just read?

Your husband earns three times as much as you but expects you to contribute 50% towards family bills, including when you were on maternity leave bringing his children into the world and looking after them, and the child benefit thing is his fuck up, but he wants you to pay for half of it?

You know you'd be financially better off if you divorced him and took what is rightfully yours, right?

If you have £5000 available you need to keep it for a divorce lawyer, not paying to fix his mistake.

This. Given he is such a selfish arse it would actually make sense for the OP to keep claiming child benefit and her husband pay it back, because she and her children have no share of the higher earnings that caused the need to repay it.

This should prompt a proper discussion about shared finances. I assume you can barely afford clothes or haircuts or whatever for yourself whereas he has a huge budget. Personally I wouldn’t contribute to the joint account with % in line with income, I’d assume you both get equal personal spending, pool everything else (with part of that for the joint account for living costs, and the remainder for joint savings). Otherwise where does this end? When your kids have left home does he get to retire early with his bigger pension and savings pot and you have to work til your mid-70s? Or as a PP said he goes off on cruises whilst you live at home on beans on toast?

Well , pay a quarter then

@Bakersdelight I'd say, "DH, why do you think my two maternity leaves were my responsibility to fund in their entirely but your mistake is half my responsibility?"

I claim it and save it and then give it to him so he can pay it back. It’s a stupid system. I can’t be bothered to stop the claim and for some things it’s a useful piece of paper to have to prove I have a child.

ultimately since we are married it’s from the same pot.

It wasn't paid into the joint account. It was paid into OP's husband's account. They each have their own accounts and transfer exactly the same amount of money into the joint account each month, even though OP's DH earns three times as much as she does. When she was on maternity leave and only received Statutory Maternity Pay, he still made her pay the same amount as him into their joint account so she had to use her savings to do this. She never received any of the child benefit and so shouldn't have to pay it back. Her husband is a mean, financially abusive prick.

So you contribute 50/50 & he expects you to pay back 50% of the CB, but only your savings used for your ML?

He can piss off!

You should pay back the £10k in proportion to your earnings. That money should have been ring-fenced and not spent these past five (!) years.

But it sounds like you have bigger problems than that. Why on earth are you footing 50% of expenses if he earns 3x as much as you?

OP and her husband put exactly the same amount of money into the joint account despite him earning three times more than she does. Their contributions aren't proportionate to their income. He even insisted that she keep paying the same amount into the joint account when she only received Statutory Maternity Pay when she was on maternity leave. She had to use her savings to do this. The child benefit was paid into his account, not OP's or the joint account. She shouldn't pay back a single penny.

Agree.

OP are we correct in thinking that the CB went into your husband's account and he then paid, say , 1k into the joint account and said you owe 1k?

Rather than saying, "I've put the CB into the joint account so we both owe 950 for the month"?

(Figures picked at random)

This.

@Bakersdelight I think those telling you to pay it back are in situations where things are joint where it is a partnership and not in what is clearly a financially abusive relationship

He's a grade A shyster.

Don’t pay him a penny OP.

The fact that you’re in a marriage where he has savings and you’ve had to fund your own mat leaves says everything about how he views you. I would usually have said pay it back from joint savings but since there are no joint savings and he’s kept all the spare money in the family, he needs to pay.

You need to stand up for yourself. He has placed no value (emotional or financial) on your staying at home to look after his children for a year. How much would his 50% of childcare have been for that period? He would also see you struggle to pay him back for something he was able to pay in one go.

Think of it this way: his salary is so high that the government has deemed your family to not be eligible for child benefit. Your salary would have entitled you to it. He therefore should be subsidising the family pot for this loss of income, it should have nothing to do with you.

And I would be doing everything I could to start an emergency fund for yourself.

To be honest OP he earns a lot more than you, I agree with many posters here that you shouldn’t be having to pay half of everything while he has his own savings. That’s not a marriage. My husband and I did 50/50 when we earnt the same, now I earn more I pay more and for holidays etc. we have similar savings. If you were to divorce you would be entitled to at least half of all the assets which will include his pension and savings pot.

I've only read the OP's posts and some others, so perhaps this has been mentioned already. I wonder if someone clever with a bit of time to spare might offer help to the OP by DM putting down some basic calculations around not just the maternity leave, but potentially childcare, housework, etc.

OP sounds like these things don't come easily to her - no shade at all, OP, they don't come easily to me either - and I love the thought of her presenting a counter invoice to this absolute twat. The crust of the man, Jesus.

Initially I thought you were being U, as I have simply never claimed child benefit (knew we were over the limit and didn’t need NI contributions).

Having read a bit more I don’t think you are being U, as you don’t have access to joint savings and used yours to fund your mat leave. I’d be presenting him with a bill for childcare during your mat leave (charge half a full time mid-range nursery place per child per week), and saying he can set 5k off if he wishes.

I’d also be paying less into the expenses account going forward so you can start saving, for when you need to divorce the stingy twat. I’d suggest he pays 75% you pay 25%. If he objects say you’re happy to keep at the 50% provided that the savings are put into a joint account.

Seriously OP stand up for yourself here. The whole point of capping child benefit is that your household is well enough not to need it but that doesn’t work if you (and by default I suspect your kids) don’t have access to the actual money AND no child benefit.

This first thing you need to understand and accept is that you’re in a financially abusive relationship.

It is not reasonable for married couples to live like this.

Work out how much he would have had to pay for childcare once you were on SMP and bill him. So, say nursery fees where you are cost £80 per day. Charge him £40 per day while you were off work. As you benefitted you both financially by staying off work to care for your child. But really, this 50/50 split is not fair anyway, you have a child together and are married. Do you really want to stay married to this selfish, tight prick? Sounds like he’d sell his own mother for a penny.

But if he's counting the CB as part of his half of the family contribution, it's entirely up to him to pay it back. I don't understand the logic of those saying OP spent it.

He shouldn't have kept it and should have been making up his 50% from his earnings. It's his debt. OP has already paid her half into the family pot and is now expected to pay him back money that he should have been contributing from his own pocket. Bonkers.

I don’t think a lot of people realise what finances in a marriage should look like, particularly if marriage happens when in 30s when you have your own assets built up and suddenly they are pooled. I think was lucky that I married young and we initially had zero earning imbalance so we didn’t really have anything to share at the start and so sharing came naturally as our lives evolved.

I think there are a number of right ways for these things to be split that reflect the partnership nature of a marriage and create a fair and relatively equal in terms of own spending power

this isn’t one of them - I suspect that even though finances are and always must be 50/50 childcare and housework and mental load and free time aren’t and are very much all in his favour. Meaning the OP not only has no money she has no time either and that is not only not fair but abusive

I agree, this is how I would do it. Half the costs of a full time nursery place per child, per week. You could bung some money in for essentials if you paid them out of your savings too.

I.e 1 child at home with you for 8 months, work out costs of one full time nursery place for that period in your area (this is publicly available info), charge him half.

2 kids at home for 3 months, work out costs of 2 full time nursery places for 3 months and charge him half.

This is money he has saved because you’ve been looking after HIS kids, so he hasn’t had to fork out for childcare.

Another way to do it would be to work out what you’ve “lost” by taking care of his kids (so salary vs what you actually received in mat pay). So if you earn 30k a year, but you got 17k the year you had your kids (mat pay and maybe benefits), charge him half of the difference for each child (so for one child this would be 13k/ 2, so 6.5 k each). This would easily take you over the amount he says you owe in child benefit.

Present him with a fully itemised bill, set 5 k off, allow him a period to query any items and then demand the money or you’re off and he’s going to be on the hook for maintenance and losing 50% of his savings.