MSE News: Are you secretly hurting your spouse by looking after the family finances?

Imp

I used to look after our finances but my wife and I would argue due to her excessive spending so now I never look at the current account but maintain a savings account to bail her out every now and then.

duchy

Strange question with the assumption that the partner dealing with finances is deliberately stopping the other person's involvement. Like most of the posters - most couples I know the non involved partner just isn't interested rather than there is something controling going on.

(Sometimes these "from MSE" questions tell you more about the age and level of life experience of the person asking the question than anything else.)

buglawton

No mention in Martin's article about whose name the accounts are in and how that affects individual's credit records. Very remiss.

onlyroz

Errata wrote: »

Some couples very sensibly play to their strengths. The only time a partner can be "hurt" is when there's skulduggery going on.

Or when a partner dies or develops dementia.

missyrichards

I handle the financial side as my husband used to do it but it turns out I'm much better at it.:D I have worked in (very basic) financial and bank jobs so it suits me more and we are both frugal anyway. I keep him informed on everything though.

fairy_lights

We both take an equal role in dealing with our finances, we couldn't have it any other way really as neither of us would want sole responsibility for our money, and wouldn't want to be kept in the dark either.

Pincher

It's a lot of responsibility. I think a lot of people chicken out, because they think they will mess it up.


It's relatively easy to transfer the assets to the survivor for a married couple TAX FREE. The problem is, the concentration of wealth in one person will be subject to inheritance tax when the survivor passes away, and he/she does not have a clue!

BigAunty

I recall many posts on here, overwhelmingly from women, whose male partners took total control of all of the household income and expenditure, usually as part of a pattern of domestic abuse.

This forced them to be totally financially dependent on their partners (which the abuser desires in order to better control them), ruined their confidence and made it harder for them to end the relationship. Quite often, the male partner would prioritise the spending on their hobbies, gadgets, social life or vices like alcohol or gambling. It's good to see that financial violence is considered part of defining domestic abuse.

In one case, the woman was forced to be a stay at home mum and wasn't permitted to work or study. Her partner also refused to let her receive the Child Benefit which meant that in the many years that she lived with him, she received no contributions to her National Insurance and this would greatly impact her entitlement to a state pension.

In another case, the unemployed male partner forced his girlfriend to work as a cleaner but collected her salary, plus all the other benefits.

In another case, the affluent male partner with a high salary and high savings would not pay the stay at home mum any housekeeping money, nor pay anything towards clothing/expenses of their biological child and she was forced to survive on the child benefit alone of around £20 a week. She was verbally abused for spending 30p on a donated item for a foodbank.

BigAunty

In contrast, there was a female poster whose mentally ill and unemployed husband utterly refused to have anything to do with the household budgeting so would not look at any bills or statements, for example.

He suffered from severe social anxiety and OCD, I think, and one of his pre-occupations is that she would pre-decease him and he would not be capable of raising the children on his own. His illness made him very controlling towards his wife - he did his best to sever all her ties with family and friends, sabotaged her social events and attempts to study and find work. He constantly phoned and texted her. He didn't want her to leave the house.

So on the one hand, he feared any kind of domestic responsibility, even basic stuff like being an account holder or looking at a bank statement, so he shunned this. But on the other, if he could have participated in basic household responsibilities, he would have more confidence about managing things without her.

He made himself deliberately dependent on her and ultra needy. He had a social life, was studying at degree level and was a competent father yet when it suited him, he just shrugged off other lesser responsibilities and made out that he wasn't capable of simple things and that's why she had to indulge his behaviour.

SingleSue

The ex husband left everything up to me to sort out because I 'was better at it'...his way of saying he couldn't be bothered doing the research, paperwork etc. I tried numerous times over the years to get him involved in the financial decisions or even to do some of it himself but he always refused/gave excuses.

Any bonuses he received however, a portion of it (he decided the amount) was transferred to his own account to do with as he pleased, so he had freedom to purchase items for himself or to surprise me with and without me seeing how much he had paid on our bank statements.

It hadn't always been that way, he decided to turn over the control just after eldest son was born and he messed up the bills because it took too much time to look after the financials, he decided it was less stressful for me to do it!

It did come back to bite him when we split, he was still expecting me to sort out his car insurance, council tax (in his new place) and credit card payments and was quite surprised when I said no ("but you have always done it for me, I haven't got the time")...although I did give him a few pointers on how to do it, he still wasn't happy though because of the time it would take.