Throwaway account here. I’d like to ask those of you who are married what you would do in the following situation; imagine you have been married for
Years and then one day you learn that you spouse has incurred tens of thousands of dollars in debt without your knowledge. Aside from that, you learn that your spouse is not sorry and does not care how this affects you. What would you do? Would this be acceptable to you?
12 comments
I would seek a lawyer to make sure that I won’t be held legally responsible for debt they took on without my knowledge.
Hell naw
Long answer to your short question. I’m that husband, but I really give a fuck. I care more than anyone can imagine.
Mine is related to my manic episodes when I’d spend and spend and not be aware of my actions. You’d never know it. I’m incredibly responsible and taught my wife a lot of money management skills and how to get good credit. I had damn near perfect credit until last year. Last year I spent 10K.
I spent 6 months paying it off, feverishly. She was upset, understandably. I handed over control of a lot of our finances until things got better.
I cannot understand how he doesn’t care. I went into a deep depression when I saw the damages of my months of reckless spending during my rapid cycling. I told her I understood if she wanted to leave me.
How can he not care? I agree. Get a lawyer involved asap and keep evidence.
This is a betrayal of the relationship and either they need help or I need a lawyer that clearly makes it their responsibility to pay off their debts
Seek a debt management counselor. As for spouse, you’re going to have to think about how much you love them. Think about how their poor decisions are going to affect the direction you want your life to go. If your love for them is greater than the inconvenience that their actions caused, then figure it out. If the inconvenience is so great that you can no longer see a future in which you are happy, then you need to make the decision as to if you can make the relationship work, or if you’re going to part ways.
The debt is one thing. The fact that they don’t give a shit how it affects you is a whole other thing… I would be talking to a lawyer about how to cover my ass asap and getting out of that marriage before I was in debt for the rest of my life for someone that doesn’t care about, or respect, me at all.
Well… if the relationship is otherwise good and you don’t want to divorce over it or anything then work to separate finances.
Make sure you’re not liable for any of the debt and you don’t have any joint accounts or credit cards. Keep track of the assets so none can be repossessed for your partners debt. Then let them spend and go bankrupt, don’t bail them out and with bad credit rating they won’t be able to rack up debt again.
Trust is broken now. That’s a major amount of withholding information and lying. That’s grounds for divorce but not caring about how it affects you – that’s another level.
Agree with others. Time to get legal advice.
No. Not only does it show they are OK lying to me, it also shows they don’t care about our future
This is known as financial infidelity. You need to get a lawyer and prepare for divorce or expect your finances to go totally down the tubes.
Divorce. In terms of financial infidelity that is affair baby level. I have dealt with smaller scale financial infidelity. Its hard to gain trust. You will wonder how financially stable you really are for the rest of your life.
> Aside from that, you learn that your spouse is not sorry and does not care how this affects you.
This would be the deal-breaker here. If my spouse had hid the debt out of shame and was genuinely sorry for doing so, I think we could work through that. However, if they weren’t sorry and didn’t care how it affected us, I’d be done with the relationship.