Argument over a £1

[ForGentleBeaker]

Years ago my best friend and her husband ran into severe financial difficulties and were going to lose their home. I was pregnant, hormonal, emotional, my head was all over the place, and I desperately wanted to help them.
At that time I had no money but we owned a property in an absolute rundown part of London - my husband purchased it with a gift from his parents and I was added to the deeds after we were married.
Long story short, my attempt to help my friend went awry, and my husband had to sell the property. The property is worth an absolute fortune now. The whole area has undergone gentrification, and we missed out on the crazy London property boom.

My husband doesn't ever want to discuss and I had thought we had put it behind us. I have immense guilt.

Last week, whilst grocery shopping with him, I exchange a premium product for a store brand, and he went ballistic. He started mumbling about why I was saving pennies when I happlynlissed away so much trying to help my friend.

In the car, I was called a jumped up bitch, and he spent the journey home ranting at me for making him sell the property; being a SAHM when the children were younger; spending money; and diminishing his role and magnifying mine.

He is refusing to speak to me because he doesnt want to listen to the verbal diarrhea coming out of my mouth - his words.

I don't know where we go from here. We have 3 children, and he is an excellent father, and husband, till now. It seems he has been harbouring this resent towards me but there is nothing I can do.

We're all thinking it though

Leaving aside your utter foolishness in borrowing money to give to a ‘friend’ and everything else that PP’s have said regarding the abusive language. I fail to understand why your husband had to sell a property to pay off your personal unsecured loan OP? The worst that could have happened is that you defaulting on the bank loan would have resulted in a CCJ? You would have then been ordered by the court to make some sort of minimum repayment each month to the bank in respect of the loan. You wouldn’t have been able to borrow any more money for a while after a CCJ (probably a good thing) and your credit rating would have been poor. It therefore seems that your DH selling a property to bail you out was actually unnecessary? I think he is probably very angry at himself for making the wrong decision at the time. It’s all a bit ‘coulda,woulda,shouda’.I have no idea how you both move on from this.

Well, they might have been able to afford to send the DC to nursery if OP hadn’t, you know, taken out such a massive loan without her husband’s agreement that the only way to repay it was to sell the house that his family enabled them to live in.

The aside is irrelevant to the shitshow that the OP’s misplaced generosity has created.

I also agree with PP who are curious as to how a SAHM with, therefore, no income managed to get an unsecured loan of multiple thousands of pounds; enough to require the house sale to pay it back 🤔

Did you actually try to do anything, though? Take friends to court? Get a job? Anything?

You took out a completely unnecessary loan that you couldn’t pay back, he could (and many would argue should have) have divorced you when you were pregnant but decided to do the right thing by the child and stick around and sell the flat
to bail you out. With hindsight he probably would have been financially better off now he’d divorced you then. Based on your description of the flat I imagine the flat could have easily gone up by £100-200k if not more ..

Now he faces losing is job and he would have a much more secure cushion except for your previous actions. You can’t underestimate how stressful it is to be facing potential redundancy or loss of job, the market is terrible right now in most sectors, So given that extra drip fed info I’m not surprised he’s exploded with resentment given job stress and pressure, which he wouldn’t have if he’d not sold that flat.

Presumably you are working now? If he loses his job can as a household manage on your wage? If not I would suggest sorting that out asap and you make some real sacrifices to sort out your household financial situation, cos based on everything you’ve written above you haven’t taken responsibility for your previous actions.

It's difficult to tell what contribution OP is making now to restore the family's financial health. From her posts, I formed the impression that she was sitting at home fiddling whilst Rome burned when her children were young but was (probably) now working again.

Could be wrong though. She was pretty scant on detail.

Are we talking more than half a mil? He's got every right to be pissed off. Even if you had the money to lend them it would've been a bad idea but taking out a bank loan for them was sheer lunacy. Best get tonight's lotto ticket and cross your fingers!

I completely understand why your husband feels the way he does. For you to attempt to trivialise what happened as "an argument over £1" is outrageous. The consequences of your actions have been colossal and are ongoing. He wouldn't be human if he wasn't furious, worried and very resentful.

The friend should have never expected the OP to take out a loan! Why didn’t the friend take out a loan? And if their credit ratting was so bad they couldn’t get a loan then why on earth lend them money. You were never going to see that money again OP.

You also went against your DH’s wishes for a huge financial decision.

I think if OP were working now she would have said

Her DH is focussed on the actual money that was lost as the house could have been rented out and they would have a cushion. And it was his inheritance

That's different to not taking a job with shares that are now worth a fortune. Your DH didn't risk his family's financial stability and then just shrug there's nothing he can do.

The "nothing I can do" is very upsetting. Oh well what's done is done instead of owning this then by working to repay the loan or working since to get some cushion back.

And in the meantime you try and save money by lowering your family's outgoings from his salary

It beggars belief.

I was actually thinking how engrained misogyny is in our society that so many women made negative comments about a mother staying with her nursery age children.

Being at that stage, I’d welcome anyone to work through the income someone would need to have 2 children in a London nursery pre tax. There is a massive flaw in our society’s set up here.

Re: comments on value of the loan taken out, I think you’ll see I said that…..

Things you could do:

Get a job.

Get a second job.

Get the friend to agree to a payment plan.

Had a bit of common sense in the first place. Someone who the banks won’t lend to isn’t a good bet.

Not tried to, as they call it where I come from, play the big lad flashing the cash and coming along like Lady Bountiful to help her poor friends. Which was easy to do with money that wasn’t hers?

My brain can’t process that someone would actually ever do this. And then be shocked that their partner was angry that you’d handed his family money to someone else. His family’s money that should have been in place for your kids. And the poor bloke is worried about job security and you’re policing what he puts in the trolley when you fucked thousands and thousands of pounds of not more up the wall because you wanted to play nice with a friend.

genuinely all I got is fuck me.

Easily. Probably more.

My assumption is that, at the time of the friend's request, she was working and pregnant with their first child, so she did have a job/income with which to secure a loan. But she then stopped working when she had her child and was unable to pay back the monthly loan payments because the friend wasn't paying her.

He absolutely does get to berate her every single day they are married. I would, and then some. She deserves his rage. She hasn't done this to me and yet I am furious, so I can't imagine how he must feel.

If he divorces her pitiful ass, i doubt he will be worse off as he will no longer have to carry her financially in terms of bills and food etc. He will be free of her. Once youngest is 18, he won't have to pay anything ( I presume, i don't know), to her. I doubt her earning potential is great so she will be far worse off.

Oh, and he can also put what he wants in the trolley.

Sounds like the straw that broke the camels back. You made a mistake and your heart was in the right place but it had cost your husband £1000s & that will take some getting over. Plus you’re a SAHM so the financial pressure is still on him I assume? I feel bad for the guy. You need to talk to your husband.

I was thinking this too.

The personal loan can’t have been that massive as OP was a SAHM and the loan wasn’t secured. So it can’t have been more than £15k surely? Why would you sell a property to clear such a small loan that’s not even secured on the property? Far better to default on the loan.

Some bad financials decisions all round I think.

Make your own 'rules' up for your ie. Life if you want, but you don't get to tell everyone else what to do, or not do.

Definitely. Still, an effort to pay back as much as possible might have gone some way towards easing the resentment, if only as an acknowledgement of what it cost him. Did he agree to her being a SAHM? Did she do anything to try to make it up in any way? Guilt is a totally pointless emotion if you don't do anything about it.

I’m going to wager that the ‘unpaid financial labour’ contributed is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of a house.

I agree with you that the current societal set-up that disempowers women disproportionately is broken. But it isn’t what’s caused this mess.

Not true. OP said after they married DH added her to the deeds of the house 🏡 in question… they woulda gone for it once OP couldn’t pay loan. Verbal abuse never acceptable but sounds like he snapped. Would like to know what was said before he said that as if it was invalidating waffle as to the seriousness of the impact still affecting their lives etc whilst not ok, does explain it a bit better. Especially as OP doesn’t seem to care too much about impact on him (long time main breadwinner/cash cow) as much as down line on their DC. Like some have said might be a drop in ocean but OP shoulda got a couple of jobs at the time to at least try and make up for her own actions. Been pregnant, hormonal and all the rest but doesn’t excuse such a serious lapse of judgement. As newlyweds, to go against her husband’s wishes with such devastating consequences being felt even now is a dreadful situation. Title of this post says it all, it’s not about a £1…

Usually a sign of "details will only paint me in a worse light". I think she is being tactical and not including the whole truth because then this will be the only thread in the history of MN where people advise that the husband leaves her OR find another woman/ affair partner rather than divorce her because he truly doesn't owe her any more money

@SoScarletItWas

I was trying to think through the financials for myself. I know this is very minimal, but gives a bit of a reference.

You’re going to have to apologise and atleast say you’ll make it upto him somehow even if won’t be the same but you’ll work hard. I just don’t understand why you would drown for a friend and drag your family with you.