Married the wrong person with dodgy financial history: grounds for annulment?

Lady_E

Felt really sad reading your post , it must be awful feeling that you have been duped. HOWEVER I do feel that you are putting an awful ot of emphasis on the financial state of your wife prior to conception and marriage. Do you still love her? Do you have fellings at all for her? I think she is very insecure and lashes out when she feels threatened. Have you thought about just sitting her down and calmly telling her that things are not as they should be (without mentioning finances) and that unless things improve between you , you might have to reconsider your options. Possibly the fright she will get from realising that she can no longer manipulate you will make her think long and hard about her behaviour.
At the end of the day , it is "for richer for poorer" but if you are so unhappy that it has a knock on effect on your daughter , then you may have to leave .
Good luck on whatever you decide but PLEASE dont be too hasty in your decision .

ALI1973

Has it occurred to you that she may also feel really bad about not admitting the extent of her debt? and that the way you are acting toward her is contributing to her feelings of depression? (thats what it sounds like to me). There must have been something good about her to attract you in the first place, and surely this would be something to build on?

Mabe you should encourage her and support her in contacting a doctor or health visitor in the first place to help her get her emotions stable before you consider a divorce. You may find that once she feels less pressured/distressed that the person you fell in love with comes back.

As far as going out and talking to women are concerned, she will feel vunerable, youve made it obvious that you are not happy in the marriage, and she will assume that you are looking elsewhere, quite frankly, I would be upset if my husband wanted to keep company with other women socially.

You are making her out to be a golddigger, (maybe she is), Marriage is a partnership, and rightly or wrongly you are in one, you need to try and work it out, you said you have 150K in savings, so why are you stressing over £10K, it can be paid off bit by bit surely, and as she is looking after (very well from what say) your daughter she IS contributing to your income (childcare is expensive) and therefore she will be repaying her debt.

I truly hope you can sort your marriage out, if not for the sake of your child.

Love Ali

elaine373

Sorry that you are unhappy BUT,if she is a great mum then why are you even thinking of pursuing custody on the basis of her financial problems.The child involved needs stability and your reasons for wanting custody of her are extremely worrying,If the marriage is an unhappy one then fair enough, get out, but dont make your child a weapon between you.You will always have some sort of commitment to this woman as she is the mother of your child, and theres no price to put on that.You do sound very resentful and i guess thats because you are unhappy, dont bring your child in to that.All the best to you all.

Mrs-Clements-to-be

The only thing I'd like to add is that I think it's unlikely the court will look at the issue of who your daughter lives with on the basis of your gender. What they will look at is the fact that your wife is a stay at home mum, and you work. Objectively speaking, if your daughter came to live with you, and your wife was not working, why should the court stop your wife spending her days with her child?

Also bear in mind that most people realise that where the child lives is no indication of how well they are being parented, or how much you care for her, even if you feel it is a slur on you that she doesn't live with you all the time.

Good luck with it all.

P.S. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A COMMON LAW SPOUSE IN ENGLISH LAW!!

katiepops_2

A lot of this sounds familiar.

Difficult childhood and desperation to have a child - sounds like she was longing for love and a family of her own so that she could make things perfect to make up for her own raw deal, whatever that might have been.

Saying that it didn't matter how much debt she had and when she told you how much it was - she's right, if you loved her then it wouldn't have mattered at all.

Lashing out verbally and physically, aggressive - sounds like depression.

'I still fall for her charm sometimes' - has she changed since your daughter was born?? Sounds like post-natal depression, with flashes of the 'old' her getting through once in a while.

Refusal to accept outside help/counselling - still sounds like depression. She doesn't want anyone else telling her where she is going wrong, because hey, she already knows she's a lousy wife without someone else putting the boot in.

Controlling behaviour - she's desperate to have the happy family she always dreamed of, and is trying her best to make it happen.

This all sounds very familiar to me. I've suffered with horrendous depression for several years - I also bury my head in the sand where money is concerned - hey, well the bills will get paid eventually and everything will be okay. I also get very aggressive (when in a depressive episode), and can fly into a rage at the drop of a hat over basically nothing, with language like you wouldn't believe. I can't control it, and yes, it's frightening. Mr Pops also went through a period of depression a couple of years ago and it was hell. I realised just how awful it must be for him living with me like that, and I felt that my life just wasn't worth living at times.

Marriage is supposed to be a partnership - both parties bring assets to the partnership, be they monetary or otherwise. The most important parts of a relationship are and always will be love, sharing, understanding, compassion, trust, faithfulness and forgiveness. Your marriage was obviously doomed from the start as you are obviously so very resentful that *your* money might have to be used to help pay off your wife's debts. No doubt if the situation were reversed and you were the one with the debt, and your wife the one with the money, you would be extremely hurt if she showed the same attitude towards it that you do now.

No doubt it would be relatively easy for you to walk away now, but if you are any sort of man then you should try your damnedest to make things better between you. If that means paying off the remaining debt and then drawing a line underneath it all and making a fresh start together then so be it. If it means getting Granny to babysit for a weekend while you go away to a nice hotel for some time out away from the stresses of your lives where you can talk and try to resolve things, then great. If it means telling your wife that you are worried about her and the way she has been acting, and asking her to tell you how she feels about things, and asking for her help in working out how you can both resolve things and move on as a family, then DO IT!

At least then if you still can't make it work you will at least know that you did everything you could. I hope it all works out for you both.

Kate

moongarden

i grew up with my parents using me as a weapon between them and as a result i have no real respect for either of them because of their behaviour in using myself and my brother and sister in their bitter power struggles.

a parent who really loves their child will bite their tongue in front of the kids. if your marriage is over then it is over however you must still act in a mature manner and be beyond reproach because if you do something now which is reproachful then the child will find out one day and will have no respect for you.

if you try to take the child away from its mother because she is a poor money manager its going to be viewed by them when they are fully grown adults as you trying to punish her for being bad with money. is that really what you are doing? is that really best for them?

also how much total debt are we talking here? the only figure i can see is £10k - the average debt in the UK is something like £17k i believe.

sorry to come on so strong on this but 34 years on this still touches a raw nerve.

perhaps what your wife really needs is to be educated in how to manage her finances and perhaps you are not the right person to do that because you guys obviously lock horns over money issues.

obviously she doesn't feel she can confide in you or she would have told you everything!
why do you think she might feel unable to open up to you?
why don't you introduce her to this site and let the guys here help her?

whether you are together or not something needs fixing here and typical to todays throwaway society the thought is to throw it away and get a new one!

best of luck to you - sorry for the rant!

moongarden

one more thing - did you actually ask to see her financial arrangements before you got married?

i would never consider entering into a partnership - be it marriage or business without checking them out first. having said that i am now engaged to someone who earns the equivalent of £1200.00 a year - i wouldn't let the bad state of someones finances prevent me from marrying them - i would put a wedding off for a year to see if they are prepared to make in-roads to dealing with them.

ahll

Hi,
From a domestic violence(DV) point of view verbal and emotional aggression is still regarded as abuse. I would recommend you keep a diary making a record of any incidents and recording the details. This can be of help if you need to go to court in future. Also I would recommend that if she hits you again report her to the police and have any evidence of wounds/bruises recorded. They take DV very seriously these days (as it should be).

I hope this helps

Bagpuss1973

drmr69 wrote:

I am in a marriage I never really wanted, but am afraid that getting out will have consequences that may be even harder to live with than staying in.

I would value any advice on my options/rights if I was to attempt going for an annulment, both in terms of financial impact and custody of our child.
.
In a nutshell: I ended up marrying a person who outwardly comes across as a very caring, friendly, positive person, but in fact is someone I now know can be very deceitful, manipulative, envious of others, judgmental, and capable of physical aggression. I am not sure if she suffers from some kind of narcissistic disorder - I still sometimes fall for her charm and often give her the benefit of the doubt, especially as I know she had a difficult childhood. But I invariably always come back to feelings of resentment at the way she controls me and takes me forgranted, and I'm not sure I can take the strain for the rest of my life.

I feel financially vulnerable, as I brought over hard-earned 150K+ net worth into the marriage, and all she has brought is debt. I am also concerned at the prospect of not being able to have a close relationship with my child.

Highlights of my story follow:

- She put pressure on me to have a child (before we were married) and never mentioned that she was on the brink of bankruptcy. She had debts totalling 10 times her income. In particular she had a self-cert interest-only mortgage at 9 times her annual income. To this day I do not know how she managed it, but I suspect someone committed a fraud somewhere.

- We had discussed marriage before I knew she was pregnant. But when we discovered she was pregnant she put immense pressure on me to get married ASAP. We had some really stressful arguments. I said I was not ready to do this so quickly, especially in view of things that I was learning about her finances. She threw up a tantrum, got very emotional, and bordering on aggressive. I was seriously concerned for the health of the child she was carrying, and eventually bowed into the pressure. Big mistake.

- Once I gave in, the pressures built up even more. With the wedding date set, and people travelling from afar going out of their way to make last-minute arrangements, it just made it harder and harder for me to back out. I was also afraid of losing access to my unborn child if I did not marry. I discussed it with some friends and most of them tried to calm me down and said that debt was a common problem these days, and I shouldn't make such a big deal about it. But they were missing the point - the point was that she should have told me about it earlier, certainly before raising the prospect of having children.

- I kept hoping that once the wedding was over we would be able to sort out the mess. The plan was to sell her house which (according to her) would have enough equity to pay off the rest of her debts. That assumption turned out to be completely wrong, as did many other naive assumptions she made.

- She admitted she is no good with money, but I did not need to know in advance of her getting pregnant, because if I loved her it would not make any difference! And anyway she would eventually get inheritance from her mum or dad which would cover it. Scary!

- After the wedding things got worse. She became very controlling, especially where other female friends were concerned. SHe wanted to know about my whereabouts every minute of the day. She started accusing me of flirting with other women, even possibly having an affair.

- At one stage I tried to get her to attend marriage counseling with me. She refused. I attended on my own. She said she did not want another female interfering in our affairs and I was to stop. As far as she was concerned there was no problem with our marriage, and I was just looking for something to moan about.

- Whenever we have an argument she has a really bad temper and swears and shouts abuse. On a number of occasions she has been slightly physical - mostly pushing and shoving, but on two occasions she struck out at me with her fist. ALso on two occasions I was actually holding our baby when she hit me.

One year on: I have been servicing her substantial debts for a year and we have only just sold her house - which turned out to have all sorts of damp problems due to lack of maintenance. So had to spend more money to fix the house problems, and ended up selling it for 20K less than we'd hoped. Which still leaves her with more than 10K debt - and of course she is not working now because she is a full-time mum.

Apart from the money issues, my life now is just work and family. On occasion I manage to get out the pub with some work colleagues (as long as they are male) but that's about it. I have put on weight and feel very stressed.

The only saving grace is our child, who I love to bits. I really do not want to do anything that would jeopardise our relationship or force me to spend less time with her.

I know I have made some big mistakes and rushed things that shouldn't have. At the time of making these mistakes I was vulnerable (for reasons I won't go into), but its pointless to make excuses. What's happened has happened and can't be changed. I can only think about what I can do in the future.

So the big question I am constantly asking is: Can I get out of this marriage without losing the fruits of my life's labour, and with full custody of our child?

Any advice / help much appreciated.

I really don't want to sound too harsh but to be honest all you appear to care about is your money and your child. Surely you loved this woman at some point??

Ok so she did not tell you the whole truth about her debt but that is not exactly crime of the century, I would imagine it is because she could not come up to your standards, you have 150k+ - that must feel quite hard for her to deal with in some ways, I do not know if you have ever had debt of any kind (before your marriage) but you do not appear to appreciate how it makes a person feel. I have a bit of debt and my partner does know the full extent of it but then I trusted him enough to tell him about it.

You say she pressurised you into having a child and getting marriage, I know people will slam me for this but you really need to grow up, you did not have to do either of these things - even with tantrums - surely that should have told you lots about her before you signed on the dotted line.

You say she is a good mother but you are complaining she doesn't work, well encourage her to get a job and pay someone else to bring up your child, you might even find it raises her self esteem and helps the overall situation. Have you thought that maybe she isn't that happy owing the money and having to ask you for everything right down to a chocolate bar or something. Also to be fair to her she said she would sell her house and she has done this, ok it didn't fetch as much as you both hoped but that is life.

As for your social life, why don't you invite some of your friends around to your home (both male and female) so she can get to know them and build up some trust between you - from what you say about her I think she has been really hurt in the past.

I think you really need to move on and try and build a future, I agree that she should have told you about her finances earlier, but she didn't but are you going to dwell on it forever! I would think very carefully because if you go along the separation/divorce route you could lose out big time.

fsdss

why not just pay off her debt of 10k quickly, if you have 150k assets then there should be no probs...that will reduce the arguements as i suspect that the debt is causing most of them (you are saving about this per year if you were paying childcare).
it sound as though her self esteem needs building....encourage her to night school or to work evenings. give her back some value to her life.
your child is the most important person to BOTH of you, beware of the psychological damage that you are both doing to her by arguing, this will lead to problems later on in life.
if you remove the child from her you risk the baby getting attachment anxiety which means REAL problems for the future.
you obviously still have feelings for her so there is something to build on
good luck