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.

I wasn't sure form the original post but with your updates I think you are reasonable to expect him to pay the £10k.

I also think it's very unfair you are being expected to pay 50/50 if he earns 3 times what you do. My husband pays double into our joint account as he earns much more, mainly as I am part time for childcare.

Well you should each be contributing equally to your lives together but that doesnt mean each paying exactly 50:50 to each other. Think about it, if he had had to pay for 50% of 24h care for your children how much would that have cost him? Etc etc. Most people don't have to think about this because they care about each other and see themselves as a family unit. It's fine to have separate accounts, it's not fine to charge for things you feel like and not others. If he wants to be so transactional make it so, but I suspect he will come off much worse after yoy add up all he owes you for. He doesn't exactly sound loving, caring and respectful.

Big alongside this you do need to rearrange your finances so you pay proportionately.

The set up you have is unfair but that doesn’t change the CB thing that you both spent.

Tbf I wouldn’t be married to someone who financially abused me.

This.

@Bakersdelight you sound like you’re quite passively accepting your husband’s unfairness and lack of care for you and his children.

He’s abusing you financially.

Yes this is right. When it first started, it was claimed by and paid to the breadwinner. Government analysis showed that men were generally keeping it for themselves.

Agree with the above. The money was spent jointly and should be paid back from joint funds.

Another thing you could have done is saved the CHB in a joint savings account until he completed his tax returns. Then you'd have it on hand ready to pay back if needed.

He is an arsehole. There is no way you should be struggling to pay 50% while he’s sat on savings and doesn’t share his salary with the family. What does he even do with the excess? You actually might be financially better off if you divorce. No doubt you pick up all the childcare to allow husband to have high earning job as well.

I have had a salary discrepancy with my husband for years. Both of our incomes go into a joint point and we plan our lives on that basis. There is literally no way he’d have allowed me to scrimp and save on maternity leave like yours made you do.

This. Barbara Castle made precisely this argument.

I claim CB and my husband pays almost all of it back - I still claim it because it covers my gap in national insurance whilst I’m at home with the kids, and I believe it means that each of my children will get their national insurance numbers at 16 automatically, rather than having to actually apply for it. Just what works for us!

they do. But it’s pointless. In the event of a separation all the money is pooled together and split. No one cares which account it is in. things like this are just unnecessary mental gymnastics and cause stress. This couple are having an argument now about a joint bill about which bank account it comes out of. That’s the sum total of this argument when all the money belongs to them jointly. I don’t have the mental headspace in my marriage to be arguing about something completely moot.

And for those posters saying finances should always be blended in a marriage: the actual tax system doesn't work that way.

He “charged” you 50% during mat leave when you were getting SSP when he earns 3x what you do??

Fuck him, that’s financial abuse.

I wouldn’t pay half of the Child Benefit based on this attitude. It’s his responsibility, he claimed it and should have done the tax return. I’d pay a nominal amount based on the ratio of our earnings and also the fact that he should have supported you during SSP seeing as you were doing it to give birth to his children!!

If you get to the point where you'll pay it all back and don't wish to have the faff, there is a box you can tick to keep the national insurance counting but not receive the actual money.

And yes this. OP maybe you’d be better off divorcing him!

Do you think she would have had access to enough money to put it into a separate bank account given their unequal financial set up? The husband being stingy might not have agreed with such a course of action and could have insisted she make up anything she took out of the joint account from her statutory maternity pay.

She did what she could by harping on about it for 5 years.

Couples argue all the time about totally shared finances too - it’s not just something that happens when people have their own ‘pots’.

And ‘well it would be split evenly if you got divorced’ - well, most married couples aren’t assuming they’ll get divorced - and that alone isn’t really an argument for not being allowed any individual oversight / privacy over individual income and savings.

Women are always told on here to have some savings in case they want to leave - hard to do that if everyone has 100% oversight over everything that is happening 100% of the time.

husband should pay it all back imho
if the OP only received her salary, she would qualify for CB
once the husband’s salary increased they nolonger did, so his wages are expected to meet the shortfall. So either that money exists for the needs of the kids from the government or from the dad’s wages. If they have effectively received both and the excess family wealth now resides in his savings account, then that’s where it needs to be paid back from.

OP

Just be thankful you are not being prosecuted for fraud.

thank you! I actually forgot about that. I’ll remind him when he does his next return, pretty sure we’re not at that point yet but thank you for the reminder.

🤔 it wouldn't be the op who was prosecuted. It'd be the person who claimed ie dh.

She couldn't have been, her husband could have been. As the higher earner and the one earning more than the limit he is responsible for declaring so and paying it back to hmrc.

If he earns multiples of what you do, why on earth are joint expenses 50:50? We split different things a little differently but my husband (who earns 2+-times me) fully accepts that a lot of things (childminder costs eg) are split 2/3 him 1/3 me. Agree with others that if you fully funded your mat leave, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. But this feels like a bigger messier financial reckoning.

No, OP pays the same amount into the joint account as her high earning DH. She also has to pay the same amount when she is on maternity leave and funding herself out of her savings. He is financially abusive and yet people have told OP that she needs to pay him back. The child benefit was claimed by him and went into his account.

How charming.

No we didn’t reality realise. When we did we paid it back.

Happy now? We didn’t ‘profit’ from it. Why so aggressive?

Yes they do about how to spend their joint money. This is purely an argument about which notional pot.

no of course people don’t assume they will get divorced which makes the whole separately pots things even crazier. I have full visibility of every penny of money and every month we discuss our finances in full. Why get married if you want to live separate lives?

if someone needs to have a separate account of money then a) I’d question your marriage that you feel you need it or b) if it is an account in your own name you would have to disclose it so best keep it in someone else’s name or in cash.