DH has been making us cut back while paying his ex wife’s mortgage

[Wifeworries]

Have namechanged.

DH and I have been married 6 years, we have a DD5 and DS3. He has a DS13 and DD10 from his previous marriage who live with their mum and come to us alternate weekends and some holidays. I get on well with both of them, they are lovely children and this isn’t about them.

I knew when we first got together that he was paying the mortgage on the house his ex lives in with the older two. They had agreed she would stay there when they split because the children were little and he would carry on paying it for a while until she could manage it herself. He told me it had stopped before we got married and I honestly never thought about it again. I wasn’t going to interrogate him about it, I thought it was sorted.

DH deals with most of our finances because he earns more than me and is much better at that sort of thing. I can see the accounts and have my own account for personal spending, it’s just always been easier for him to deal with the mortgage, bills etc. I’ve never felt the need to check every payment because I trusted him.

We’ve been talking about moving for a while because the house is getting a bit cramped with the children. We were looking at somewhere with a bigger garden, or possibly getting the loft done and sorting the kitchen out instead. DH was quite keen at first but about 6 months ago he started saying we needed to be more careful with money and couldn’t keep spending like we were.

He was the one who brought up cutting back. He said the bills had gone up and we needed to prioritise things. He suggested stopping DD’s dance class and DS’s swimming lessons because they were too young to really benefit from them anyway. I wasn’t happy about it but agreed because I thought we were trying to save for the house. We also stopped putting as much into the holiday fund and put the kitchen on hold. I thought we were making sensible decisions as a family.

Anyway, I was looking through the accounts last week trying to work out if we could start saving properly again for the work and noticed a regular payment to an account I didn’t recognise. It was £1,450 a month and had been going out for years. I looked back through the statements and realised it was going to an account in his ex’s name.

I asked him about it when he got home and he said it was the mortgage on her house. I said I thought she was paying it herself now and he said no, he’d carried on paying it because the children live there. I asked how long he’d been doing it and he said since they split, so including the whole time we’ve been together and all 6 years of our marriage.

I was honestly quite shocked. I asked why he hadn’t told me and he said because it was for his children and he didn’t see why it needed to be discussed with me. I said well it’s coming out of our money isn’t it, and he said it’s his money as well and he has responsibilities to his older children.

I said I obviously don’t have a problem with maintenance and I’ve never questioned him paying what he needs to pay for his children. This is additional to that though, it’s paying their mum’s mortgage every month, and he’s been hiding it from me. He said he didn’t want the DC having to move house or potentially schools, and keeping the mortgage paid was the only way to make sure they could stay where they were.

I said I’m not asking him to leave them without a home, but I don’t understand why he’s been telling me we need to cut back on things for our children while paying nearly £1,500 a month for his ex’s mortgage. He said the children are settled there and he isn’t going to make them move just because I want a bigger house.

I feel really stupid now for agreeing to all the cutbacks when he apparently had no intention of stopping these payments. It’s not even that I begrudge his older children having a home, I just feel like he’s made a massive financial decision that affects all of us without telling me. And then to say it’s none of my business when it’s coming out of the money we use for our family is making me even angrier.

He says I’m making it into something it isn’t and that I’m being unreasonable. I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable expecting to have known about this or if he is right that it’s nothing to do with me.

Would you be upset if your DH had been doing this throughout your marriage?

But again the op doesn’t know if the 1450 is the full mortgage, half of it, or even a smaller percentage, or what the ownership of tne property is, it could be fifty percent his,

I said earn more money, not earn money.

‘ugh. So messy having kids with someone who already has kids.’

Where do people get off on this kind of judgment?! It’s not ‘messy’, it is real life and it sounds like all the children are well supported, cared for and looked after.
As a society we need children too.

What do you want divorced people to do if they meet someone with children? Or should they only meet people who don’t want more children and use double barrier contraception!

OP has done zero wrong and she is absolutely right that her husband needs to stop paying his ex’s mortgage.

"He’s earns a very substantial amount, 115k? The mortgage payment to her is quite small even adding on maintenance out of his pot so your own family unit spending must be pretty high?"

Is this a joke?

Take home form £115k is £6200 a month. He pays £1500 for her mortgage and £1800 for child support totalling £3300 a month and leaving £2900 for his current family and you say the mortgage payment is quite small???

And let's not even get into the fact that his ex works full time and lives with her current partner who she has a child with.

I think you need to be discussing why he is paying such a large sum towards her mortgage yet she now has a partner and child who also live in the house. How big is the house and is he paying the full amount of the mortgage? It seems a bit cheeky of the partner to be presumably living rent free and for both of them to be playing happy families without having to pay towards the house.
I would want to see paperwork from the divorce.

I completely understand how you feel. My husband is still paying the mortgage on his ex wife’s house despite them splitting up 11 years ago and us being together for 10 years, married for 4.

It’s even worse because he was meant to pay until the youngest was 18 - she’s 23 now!

We’re trying to get the ex to sell now because the mortgage is ending next year but she is using every trick in the book to get him to take out a new mortgage so she can stay in the house. I am absolutely sick of it.
He’s been a complete idiot about it because he felt so guilty at leaving but he’s been totally taken advantage of and now his daughter is piling on the pressure to keep paying because she doesn’t want to move. His ex would rather the house repossessed than get off her arse and sell it.

The rows it’s causing between us are really blowing up, and for the first time last night I found myself wishing I’d never got involved with him. We’re having to rent because he’s still paying her mortgage, and giving his two kids an allowance despite them both working. He has behaved like a complete sap and I could kill him!

Dont let your husband keep making a fool of you like mine has. It’s gotten back to me that his ex is openly laughing at me because I’m putting up with it all. I hate her guts.

Had you never looked at the outgoings from your accounts before? 6 years is a long time to not have noticed £1400+ going out every month.

I would want to see paperwork from the divorce.

Call me a cynical old gimmer but I'd want to know if they are divorced.

That's financially abusive behaviour.

She said the house was signed over to his ex wife.

ooops I didn’t notice a quarter of million pounds going missing, silly me.

His first wife must be laughing all the way to the bank, he’s paying her mortgage and giving her maintenance. The fact that he told you he’d stopped paying but then carried on would be too deceptive for me, he obviously knew it wouldn’t go down well hence why he’s kept quiet. I’d be fuming.

I realised later that he might have taken his equity out. Or more, leaving him with a debt to the ex which his payments are servicing. We just don't know. I do hope @Wifeworries finds out, and comes back to tell us. He's not good with money, that's for sure.

Not a sap when it comes to pushing back against you - his wife- though is he?

Renting while he pays his ex wife’s mortgage…

Fucking hell. DH can really piss me off but this thread has made him look like an absolute saint.

Where has the OP written that she begrudges her DH financially supporting his older children? What she is upset about -quite rightly - is that her DH has concealed the mortgage payments for his ex wife's property. Had she known that this was going to be ongoing she may well have decided not to start a new family with him.

Given that the ex now owns the house, he's basically just giving her a huge amount of the marital income, without having disclosed it to you. For 6 years, a significant part of your joint income has gone to increase her equity in HER asset. This is money that was taken from your children and the effect was negative as you can tell by him saying that (a) you can't upsize to a house that fits your family needs and (b) you had to cut back on your own children's activities to fund his ex's asset.

I would consider this financial infidelity. I don't see how you come back from this. It's not just the deception. It's that he treated you, and your children, like you are less important to him than his first wife and her children. Now that it's in the light, he's expecting you to just submit like your own life is less important than hers and that, after you having gone part time, at the expense of your own career, to support his children, he's now acting like you have no right to object that your joint money is going to fund another woman's life.

I'd be pretty angry he'd lied about it tbh.

Not that he's paying for his children's home until there around 18-21. But that he alleged he stopped years ago. So the things he talked about with you in terms of the house or moving were never on the cards while he was paying this and he knew it. So he was stringing you along.

OP needs to do some very deep diving into the finances, that's for sure, and be damned to this 'he's better at this than I am' business

Surely this was all sorted with his divorce? Im confused as to how this has gone unnoticed and why it's still a thing if their divorce has been finalised.
She should've bought him out or downsized, surely.

Is he controlling in other ways?
It seems a bit... financially abusive...

I'm sure she can do maths and work out that having two families was always going to be expensive - especially if you are trying to be very reasonable and take your responsibility seriously.

I maintain, don't have kids with a man who already has kids with someone else and expect a walk in the park financially.

You don't need to see bath statements to work this out.

So your dc go without dance classes and swimming lessons whilst your dh hands over 50% of his salary to subsidise his ex and her new partner and child. You don't say whether the new partner works also, but I suppose he doesn't really need to. They must be laughing all the way to the bank.
He barefaced lied to you when he said he stopped paying the mortgage before you got married, that's no way to start a marriage.

No it’s not a joke, my DH takes home not a dissimilar amount to the amount her DH amount he is left with. I work PT and we own our house (mortgage) have 3 children etc and I would hazard a guess a lot of families are similar.
Her DH sometimes earns more based on his bonus… to say that his wages are insubstantial is a joke when he can have paid out that amount of years and OP hasn’t even noticed…

The OP has said the house is signed over to his ex wife so not only is he paying the mortgage on it he handed her all the equity as well.

I actually just dont believe it. He is either lying where the money is going and its going to a house for him to rent out or his pension or an isa etc?

However i do think that if say he earnt 115k 10y ago when cots were less and before his other newer kids it would be much more than its worth today. I would say housing, and child related costs are ridiculously higher now.
My eldest is 15 and everything is so much more now.
So he couldnt have forseen the costs of food or petrol or gas/electric going up so much. Most of these have doubled in 10y.

I was on the fence about the principle of the mortgage payment until I read that she shares the property with someone else now. Once his ex wife's partner moved in, did the payment reduce? I cannot think why someone would agree to any of this. This is why all these things should be sorted properly on divorce, a mesher order would have protected him, it seems his ex wife protected herself adequately.

Outside of that I'm afraid the deceit about the payment would be too much for me, and I would want to separate.

This is the only response needed