Husband filed taxes separately without me - what to do?
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Anonymous
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Just adding another vote for huge red flag. Agree that you need to do whatever you can to protect yourself financially now. If he refuses to share his financials and get into counseling, you need to cut your losses and divorce him quickly. There is something very shady that he's not telling you.
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Anonymous
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You are incredibly stupid for getting married to someone without discussing finances (ESPECIALLY debt) first. You do know that financial disagreements are the number one reason that people divorce, right?
You either need to sit down and have this conversation ASAP, or file for divorce before it's too late. I assume you didn't sign a prenup, right? That was dumb. Bye-bye all your savings. |
Anonymous
| Wait - did OP say that she does not now how much money her husband makes????? |
Anonymous
Filing separately is a requirement of IDR. |
Anonymous
| Geez, what a train wreck. Too bad your financially savvy family is not financially savvy enough to have told you to talk about finances with your husband before you got married. |
Anonymous
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I shared this post with my husband. After reading your comments, he broke down and told me he had $10K in credit card debt that he was too embarrassed to share with me and had hoped to pay off before the wedding. He was apologetic and said he'd open up his books and let me see his accounts. I was stunned to hear the news because I had asked about debt before and he had only mentioned the student loans. I am seriously hurt and feel misled. I feel like I can't trust him to be honest or to be smart with money anymore. Luckily it could have been worse, I guess. We are working on setting up a more detailed budget now with all our financial info and I'm trying to determine next steps. I'm open to your ideas on how to tackle this. I plan to take a look at all of his accounts online. I believe the interest rate on the credit card debt is very high. I have enough money to cover the debt and have no doubt he would pay me back if we stick to a payment plan because he has always been responsible when it comes to contributing to our joint expenses. But I'm not sure if that is a good approach.
I agree with folks who posted that I should have demanded this kind of transparency from the outset. I feel like we could have worked through this issue together earlier. I also feel like I married him not knowing the full extent of his situation. I just thought we could be responsible for our past finances separately and move forward with the new savings account together. He is otherwise a very responsible, caring, and put together person so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Evidently that was not the right way to handle it. |
Anonymous
No it isn't |
Anonymous
Make sure you get a credit report, otherwise there may be account he just doesn't show. I still don't understand what the taxes have to do with the debt. I have credit card debt and it does not get indicated on taxes at all. |
Anonymous
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Early in my previous marriage I cleared off the debts of my husband. Kept a close eye on things for a few years, and figured he had matured and had become more responsible. A few more years down the road he started getting credit cards I was not aware of.
The slippery slope began. He knew I did not agree with spending beyond our means, so hid the extras - many extras. He was a very nice person, but ruined us financially with this constant itch to spend. We are now divorced. He still has not changed, but I can slowly save for my retirement and for our child with a feeling of security now. |
Anonymous
| He may not want to show his taxes as he does not want her to know how much he makes. |
Anonymous
| Our car loan is through chase which has Credit Journey. You can check it weekly for updates. Capital one has Creditwise. If he has credit cards through one of them you should get the login and check weekly |
Anonymous
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OP you sound insufferable! I would hide stuff from you too.
My husband is extremely controlling about money and doesn’t spend at all. He prides himself on being frugal but in reality I cover the difference of what he “saves” because I make twice as much and I realize that grown ups can’t live like they are in high school any more. I’m sure you’ve made him feel terrible about this and I doubt that you treating him like a child will stop any time soon. |
Anonymous
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Op I saw your update and I’m glad you all have had these discussions. I had a similar situation with my husband though a smaller amount of money. But the same feelings were happening - me being controlling about money and maybe too frugal and him not sharing everything out of fear and shame. You have to get at the heart of this - I would go to therapy stat. That’s what we did and we are thriving now and have fully joint accounts and are successful financially. You will have to take some responsibility for whatever part you made in potentially leading him to feel scared to tell you this. He will need to take responsibility for letting his shame get the best of him and breaking trust in your relationship. You’ll have to figure out why he is scared to tell you things. In my case we discovered a pattern in my husbands family of wanting to keep everyone happy and being scared to share things that might upset someone. It’s difficult to fight against your families patterns.
My husband has had to work work work at this over there years since and it hasn’t been a straight line. Empathy from me has been huge. Empathy that this wasn’t intentional (but doesn’t take away the hurt and he needs to be 100% responsible) and tbat it was the result of patterns and fear. But I also held him to a very high standard that he has to figure this out with me and take responsibility. That this wouldn’t be acceptable in our relationship and I was very clear it could ruin it and lead to divorce. I hope this gives you some hope that it can be done. For us we learned it didn’t work for one person to be In charge of finances or savings just because I enjoyed it. We both have to have ownership, be involved, and be checking in with each other and communicating regularly. At first this meant a pretty rigorous budget we both agreed to in YNAB that felt good to both of us with lots of check ins. Now we can do it without that. But we still do a yearly check in and I check in on how he’s feeling and him vice versa. You can get through this. |
Anonymous
But that is nuts for a married couple! |
Anonymous
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OP, thanks for your update. I'm glad that he came clean about what's going on, and that you have a path forward.
Nonetheless, I highly suggest that you consider couples counseling (which can be short term and focused on a specific issue). Reading between the lines of this situation and your posts, it sounds like you both (like most people) have emotional issues related to finances, and they are quite different. When people say that financial issues are the #1 cause of divorce, I think it can be a little misleading (even though it's true). I think most people have some kind of emotional baggage around money, but over time they develop a rational framework to justify that their approach is the "right" one. This can make fights about money much more heated, because both people have convinced themselves that their approach is "rational and right" so an alternative approach is wrong. In my own marriage, DH and I definitely have conflicting emotions around money. I grew up in the richest tier of UMC, while also being the extremely neglected middle child. Pretty much the only way my parents paid attention to me was either to criticize me about something or to give me lavish gifts...so I was trained to see material things as the currency of affection. DH also grew up UMC (in a way), but his father would squander his otherwise high income on risky investments that frequently left his family without fairly basic things (like a functioning car for him mom to take him to school and soccer practice). For him, providing emotional security is tied to always saving for a rainy day so that you never go without the basics. We work because our general spending and saving habits are similar...but it's taken years of talking and understanding each other to be able to have discussions about financial topics where we differ without thinking the other person was deliberately doing something mean or irresponsible. In your case, you equate financial openness with emotional openness (so do I), but I'm guessing your DH does not. You will likely always have some financial disagreements, since your approaches to finances are very different. But counseling will allow you to talk about these things rationally instead of emotionally. |