Is this financial abuse? or am i over reacting?

april_hunt

thisisme2000 wrote: »

I get this, however this is a mutual agreement and that's the difference. Being told "I cant trust you unless you give me your entire salary to manage" Doesn't make me feel safe, it makes me feel scared..


On the other hand, if I get "an allowance" - then I probably stand to be better off in my pocket weekly than I am now and at least he contributes to half of all the bills - but at what cost to my mentality...?

my dad gets pocket money only because he has no idea how to use the card, my mum deals with all the finances and god forbid anything happened.
I wouldn't let anybody tell me that. I would personally sit down with your partner but right down your income monthly what you pay out for and what you have left then ask him what is his contribution to the house etc, my partner knows I may for a majority but him paying his debt is more important to get sorted but still manages to put money in where he can.
Give it ago and whats the worse that can happen he has a 5min paddy like a child better to be honest than anything else.

paddy's_mum

thisisme2000 wrote: »

1/ Being told "I cant trust you unless you give me your entire salary to manage


2/ at least he would contribute [my alteration] half of all the bills

1/ He is in debt himself and is secretive about where his money is going which kind of shoots this argument down in flames, doesn't it?

2/ You hope he would but actually, given his secretiveness and lack of transparency and lack of equality and disinclination to play honest injun, how on earth would you know?

thisisme2000

Comms69 wrote: »

Yes I get that, but again i'll quickly turn this round.


He isn't happy with your solution; which is why communication and compromise are key.


Neither of you will get what you want, as soon as you both accept that you might get something that you can live with.

yes communication is key - can only try!

seashore22

Comms69 wrote: »

I disagree; and we're all entitled to our own opinions.


The fact that you wont specify your concerns or discuss anything I've written; instead just repeating the same mantra, suggests that this isn't in anyway about what the OP wants, but rather what you believe they need.


That is disempowering towards the OP.


In any case, my sympathies for your difficulties in the past.

This is my last post to you Comms as it won't be helping the op one bit.

The situation is happening now and not in the past. Not me, but someone I love and care about. It's not my story to tell and justice hasn't happened yet, so if you don't mind I won't satisfy your curiosity.

I have zero interest in convincing you of my situation or the facts of domestic abuse, in all it's forms, which you seem woefully ignorant of.

I don't know, any more than you do, what is exactly going on here, but on the surface the op has some cause for concern.

Comms69

seashore22 wrote: »

This is my last post to you Comms as it won't be helping the op one bit. - I wont speak for the OP, but my impression is that she is someone keen to hear many perspectives

The situation is happening now and not in the past. Not me, but someone I love and care about. It's not my story to tell and justice hasn't happened yet, so if you don't mind I won't satisfy your curiosity. - I literally didn't once ask you what happened?!

I have zero interest in convincing you of my situation or the facts of domestic abuse, in all it's forms, which you seem woefully ignorant of. - I don't believe labelling every person in a difficult relationship as either victim or abuser is in anyway productive; clearly you think that's ignorant.

I don't know, any more than you do, what is exactly going on here, but on the surface the op has some cause for concern.

Indeed, so my default position is to not call people abusers; silly, ignorant me.

rach_k

He doesn't feel you can be trusted with his money, but he trusts you well enough to pay the mortgage and everything for the kids? That doesn't make sense. If he didn't trust you to pay for things, he'd make sure you were paying things that were less important.

If you don't want to pay him your money (understandable) and he doesn't want a joint account, can you at least split your expenses more evenly between you? If he won't tell you exact amounts, go for averages for your size family - if his bills are more, he can correct it! If he won't agree to that, I'd suggest a straight swap for 6 months of the year. He can pay your bills and you can pay his. See how fair he thinks it is then... and you'd only be paying a couple of bills so he'd surely be able to trust you.

tesuhoha

What is the difference between you two having a joint account and one which is in his name but you can see into it. The difference is you have given up any control of the finances over to him and the thing you have to ask yourself is, do you trust him to run the finances responsibly and pay all the bills? Do you trust him to keep you out of debt? Do you trust him to have your best interests at heart? Do you trust him not to do some kind of financial dirty on you? Do you know him well enough to know if he is up to anything? Is he better at handling money than you? What is the reason that he should be in control of the family finances, other than he wants to be?



It does sound controlling to me, because he doesn't seem to have handled his own finances any wiser than yourself.

financegeek

as someone who was in a financially abusive relationship, this does sound very controlling to me.

from an outside perspective this is how i see it:

• You are the main earner (or will be shortly)
• you are responsible for the majority of mortgage / household bills (committed expenses)
• you do the majority of the housework / childcare etc
• in trying to afford the committed expenditure you ran up credit card debt. you have declared this to your husband and have plans to rectify this

• Your Husband is not named on the mortgage / property deeds due to previous bad credit
• your husband has unspecified debt that he won't communicate to you about
• your husband contributes less than his share of the committed expenditure
• your husband does less than his share of the housework / childcare

yet despite all the above, your husband wants to take control of your finances as well? You're right in thinking that's not a good idea, he's not pulling his weight currently from any perspective, so why would that change when he has control?

If he's not communicating with you now about his finances, do you think he'll tell you what he's spent YOUR salary on?

You say he'll give you an allowance. What happens if he 'forgets' or online banking is down, or you want to buy something overbudget that's urgent? You will be reliant on him for pretty much everything.

If you decide to sit down and discuss finances i'd go further than a statement of affairs and suggest you both take the last 3 months bank statements / credit card statements with you, that way there's no hiding what you've been spending.

I'm not sure what the rest of your marriage is like, but if he genuinely refuses to discuss finances any further with you or see a marriage counsellor I'd be writing a list of pros and cons for staying together / splitting up.

You are in a much stronger position than he is, so although the thought is probably terrifying, don't let the rest of your life be compromised through fear of leaving him.

Everyone hopes for a happy marriage, but don't let that certificate hold you prisoner. unfortunately people do change and you only get one life, so spend it with someone who's worth it.

no matter what happens, i hope it all works out for you OP.Good luck

theoretica

thisisme2000 wrote: »

I had a word with him at the weekend around this request re him controlling all of the money - I said it feels wrong - he said I know but I think its the only way. I suggest the joint account as before re splitting everything, he says he would just feel better if it was all in his account and I could log in and see it. And that we would do a budget for both of us to stick to, but I don't see why this needs to be done out of his account and not a joint one? he says he is worried ill just go nuts and spend a fortune...?

Just going back to this - this suggestion might be useful to take up to get a budget for the two of you. You would at least have the budget/SOA details you have been wanting. And they should be the same for not putting any money in his account as if he did manage to get it all.

charlie792

Me and OH each have our own personal accounts our salary gets paid into but have always had a joint account for bills, everything split 50/50 except where finances haven't allowed or we've needed to sub the other one some cash throughout the month. same with our day to day spending, all on one credit card (additional cardholder) we equally pay any household expenses, days out etc and then each pay anything personal (clothes etc).


but playing devils advocate here, I am responsible for all finances in the household, not because OH goes nuts and spends etc but because he's not so financially savvy - he's just not interested and doesn't care what rate his savings are at he's happy as long as the bills get paid on time, plus he knows I'm a mega worrier about money so it's just easier for me to take control. He has his own access to his accounts but rarely does, I take the money needed for the bills, credit card etc and transfer to our joint account, I then split out the rest between his various savings accounts and put a bit (you could argue an allowance) to his day to day personal account for any spending he would rather keep private.
my point is, I wouldnt consider that financial abuse, nor does OH but someone from the outside could see it that I was controlling his money. Maybe the OP's husband thinks the OP is struggling and suggesting money paid into his account is his way of "helping"? but of course we don't know the way things were said.

admittedly I dont understand the reluctancy for a joint account but maybe he's been burned in the past?
regardless I think a frank conversation needs to be had about how it's making you feel and that some agreement needs to be made of joint expenses, because from what the OP has said it would seem that the majority of costs are being paid by only one party.