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.

The claimant also gets the national insurance credits towards state pension. If OP wasm’t working during this period then she also has a big gap on her national insurance record.

How would I work out the cost?

In the same way, he has absolutely no right to demand compensation for his debt from his wife. This absolutely financial abuse. He was paying from his income into the joint pot. His income included child benefit. Now he's decided that was somehow a joint problem? Nope.

If you are married, is it not just joint money?
Surely it’s just paid back from your combined pot?

Forget this. He's clearly a bully and you won't see a penny. The way to access the marital assets is divorce.

He earns more, he claimed it, he can pay it back

It is not financially abusive - come on.

Both of them knew they shouldn’t be getting it, both happily spent it, both are responsible.

Not all married couples 100% share all of their money, and it isn’t ’financial abuse’ if they do this.

Why are you paying 50/50 if he earns more than you?

He should be paying more than you

Hes got himself a nice little earner hadn’t he?

I don't think my husband would have asked that (it's for the children so if it was spent on the children, how tacky and mean!) But he is also a financial ostrich, so when they brought in the clawback and he was near the threshold, I cancelled child benefit, as I knew he wouldn't bother to do a tax return and I wasn't prepared to do his as well as mine.

Send him a counter invoice for childcare and/or financial planning I guess and then tell him to stop being an arse...

This.
It's not a question of 'who pays it back', your whole arrangement is wrong. He earns three times what you do and has his own savings while you struggle? You should share all if you both work- you're a married couple.

If that's not going to happen- no you shouldn't have to pay back the CB. Reasoning being, the way it's calculated means one high earner loses the CB entitlement. But you as a mother aren't benefiting from there being a high earner in the family- this is the abnormal bit. His high earnings lost the CB YOU need while HE stashes money into savings.

You're being treated unfairly on multiple levels here.

You seriously think it's 'normal' for one spouse to have a payment plan to the other because they haven't got savings whilst taking the financial hit of maternity leave completely unsupported by their other half? He's now penalising op for his high wage. This is madness. What's the point of a marriage that leaves you worse off than if you lived in a house share? At least only the bills would be shared then, not the debts

Are you saying that this specific situation is OK? Him with 3x the income, wife working but all costs split 50/50, him with substantial savings while she struggles? It's so so far from OK.

And 'both happily spent it' is a stretch: he did, she probably NEEDED it! Which is why she'd be entitled to it on her income.

I think if he earns 3x as much as her, then a 75/25% split would be fair.

But that’s merely a point of negotiation between them, rather than him being a ‘financial abuser’.

You had this? So you knowingly profited from a benefit you weren't entitled to for 5 years (fraud in short)? Did you tell your DH to sort it out for 5 years but he ignored you, like the OP, or you were happy to profit from it too?

She can't access his HMRC account and do it for him. He tried to profit from the system (fraud in this case?) so he sorts it out. Greedy bastard.

But you are married. All your money is joint money and all your expenses re joint expenses. There is no concept of his and hers money in a marriage. I find it weird husband and wives have these conversations. I know how much is every single bank account we have whose ever name it is in and we transfer things between them as and when we have to pay expenses etc. OP arguing over which notional pot has to pay a joint bill is ridiculous. I’d say the bigger issue this has thrown up is you need to have a bigger conversation of how you manage your money together.

You acknowledge the current situation is very far from fair. What about the maternity leave?

Whether or not you consider it financial abuse is not really the point. I think the way OP immediately jumps to 'OK, I'll set up a payment plan' after the first couple of (kneejerk, not knowing the full picture) responses is a bit of a worry. She's clearly not an equal negotiating partner here. It's only 'merely a case for negotiation' if both parties have some.power in the situation.

Argh, but why do you split costs 50/50 when your earnings are totally different?! You've probably subsidised him £10k proportionally over the years already.

We don't have blended finances and have our own savings but we pay into the joint account proportionally to our wages.

The child benefit forms are really simple. Could you genuinely not fill them in or has your DH over the years convinced you you're financially incompetent? I'm sure you're not.

You know this isn’t fair, don’t you?

You husband’s a dick and his attitude could be seen as financial abuse.

i find things like this very worrying. He absolutely does not have his own savings accounts. They belong to you jointly. You should have visibility to every bit of money that you both own.

So he expects you to pay half of his "mistake" but didn't contribute to your mat leaves for his own children?! My partner and I both saved the thousands needed to cover my loss of income for my 2 mat leaves. That's a partnership. You're being taken advantage of, OP. Don't pay him back, but come instead with the calculations of how much he owes you for the mat leaves (and you can add how much it would have cost in childcare instead, if you want).

For the benefit of those unaware of the history, child benefit was set up in part for precisely this situation: to give mothers some money for the children when the main earner kept most/all of the household income for themselves. The MP (Barbara Castle possibly?) insisted it must be paid to the mothers.

Why didn’t you put it in a separate account if you knew you shouldn’t have it rather than you spending it knowingly?

I agree he was lax and irresponsible with his tax return but you just spent it.

About 15 years ago I kept getting HB increased and I knew it was wrong. I knew I was entitled to about £8 a month as I’d get for months and then suddenly they pay me £100’s. I put it in a separate account. I spent months telling them they were wrong and then they’d realise and put it back to normal. After 3 years I got the shittiest letter about overpayment and fraud and it was very threatening.

I walked into the council offices the next day with the card for that account and wanted to pay it back then and there and said I’d like to speak to someone too as I had a email trail of evidence that it was their mistake and they kept telling me I was wrong and the payments were right.

They were initially only going to allow me to pay it back in instalments!

my concern with systems like this is that it leaves people who may not be able to understand the system vulnerable. But you, as well as me, knew the payments weren’t due and it’s immoral to spend them IMO.

You spent it jointly you pay it back jointly.

No it wasn’t. It was introduced to support parents of children. It was never introduced to support mothers any more than it was to support just fathers.

For one parent to take the cash and make the other one pay it back suggests something has gone very wrong in a relationship.

You knew five years ago that you shouldn't be receiving the money and you've both presumably spent it? Did you not put it aside knowing that it would need to be paid back?