I’m writing this on father’s day. My boys gave my ex a pair of sneakers and they both designed t-shirts for him. I used a coupon I had from DSW to buy the sneakers and I spent the last of my Amazon credit on buying white t-shirts. I literally spent my last pennies to ensure they had nice gifts for him.
In return he is going to baseball game without the boys and informed me that I have the boys overnight tonight (I found this out yesterday). I have approximately $23.50 to survive the week. I have food to feed the boys at home, but not to give them lunch for camp tomorrow. My littlest one will be fine as he only really eats bagels and pasta and I have those, but my oldest is going through a growth spurt and I cannot feed him enough fresh fruit, tortillas, or raisin bread. I have no fresh fruit, I’m down to two tortillas and no raisin bread ($4 a loaf).
Last night I went out with a friend for her birthday dinner with a bunch of other Moms from school, she knows my financial situation and was treating me. It got a bit awkward when it came time to pay the bill as everyone wanted to treat her, my part was $45 – she came to the rescue and got another Mom to pay my part. It was frankly humiliating, but I’m used to that now. I also gladly accepted $40 from her on our ride home. Beggars can’t be choosers.
I can’t complain too much because I live in a lovely house in a beautiful neighborhood (he pays the rent). I do get spousal support which he pays at the very last minute, and I work so I have health insurance. But the costs of leaving the family home (which I co-own), divorcing and enduring over a year of financial abuse has left me with crippling amounts of credit card debt. As soon as any money comes in it goes out, if I’m lucky I can pay off the interest payments each month. This month I had to pay for car insurance, so the credit cards will have to wait.
But here’s the kicker, we have plenty of money.
I have plenty of money. Our house was worth over a million dollars, we sold our old house at an enormous profit in 2014 and my ex makes a decent salary. But over the past 2½ years (or really 5), he has managed to hide away all of our assets in his own accounts. The first time was in November 2014 when he transferred pretty much all the money we made off our house sale into his personal account.
Then he found out I went to a divorce lawyer and he cancelled all my credit cards and withdrew all the money out of our joint account. In March 2016 I went abroad for my brother’s surprise 50th birthday party against my ex’s wishes and he withdrew all the money from any accounts I had access to, other than my own personal account, and froze our investment accounts.
In the summer he gave me a credit card with a $650 credit limit and then gave our au pair a credit card with no limits. My card has now been cancelled. In the past year I have subsided on gifts from my mother, friends treating me, and going through every purse I have looking for loose change. There was one day where I literally could not afford to get to work.
In every other part of my life I am happy.
I was so relieved to get out of a truly horrendous situation of living under the same roof with my ex as he emotionally and verbally abused me daily in front of my kids. I am in a much, much better place, I don’t regret leaving at all. But I cannot look forward right now, as I have debt collectors calling, I am unsure as to whether or not he will pay my rent or spousal support next month because our temporary divorce agreement has expired.
I’m not interested in going on a spending spree when we finally get our divorce finalized, but I am looking forward to the day when my son asks to go to GameStop that I can say yes, or when he asks for raisin bread I have a whole loaf ready for him. I want very little for myself, except the financial security to know that I can afford an emergency, I can pay my own way at a restaurant and once in a while a steak dinner would be nice.
Until then, I’ll be counting out my quarters, nickels and dimes to go buy some blueberries, oranges, bananas and raisin bread. My Costco run in January is running out, so hopefully we will reach a financial agreement before I run out of toilet paper.
I’m going through a second divorce and ended up paying my ex-husband’s back taxes and am now facing issues with my name being on the house we leased together and having potential creditor issues with that due to the $2,200 bill he left there. The only reason I kept my name on the lease is that my son considers my ex his “dad”, due to the abuse he endured from his blood father. Very difficult situation but after counselors told me my son needed to have someone to call “Dad”, I allowed the relationship.
In the beginning (two years ago), ex-husband #2 and I had a friendly relationship. As time went on, he grew bitter and turned the tables on me. I am now looking at FINALLY getting my credit back on track and him potentially ruining that for me.
I give this up to God. I’ve been through two divorces in 10 years and I’m finished with poor choices with ex-husbands! I refuse to let my healthy peace of mind get ruined by a jerk of an ex-husband that cannot handle life in a grown-up manner.
I wish you best. I’m learning things the hard way and just doing the best I can and count my blessings for finally meeting a healthy man. No marriage plans in the near future, though! At least, not until all of the kids are out of the house! Then, and only then, will I ever consider Marriage #3! Cheers and good luck to you. I truly feel your pain and am completely empathetic to you. All the best!
Kindly,
Monica H.
Hi:
Your story is so eerily similar to mine. As you said, we have plenty of money, yet, the children and I are living with my parents with no money, and no support while he has possession of our house and all of our things. I’m learning to say ‘his’ money, because that is what it is until a judge says otherwise. Who knows how long that will take. I’m angry at myself for allowing this to happen. The funny thing is, I never felt comfortable with him being solely in charge of our finances, but anytime I tried to discuss a different financial arrangement which would have provided us both equal access and decision-making over our resources, he accused me of having ulterior motives, or of being a gold-digger or he would argue that I was bad with money. It was hell. Later, he would say that I didn’t need to worry about such things, that I was well taken care of. Yeah, I had a Nanny and after helping him build his business, I no longer worked. Everything looked great on the outside, but now I know that it was just a well-composed scheme to take any power or leverage I had in the marriage and hoard it all for himself. Why? So that it would be more difficult for me to leave the marriage and ensured I’d regret it if I did. Well, I left and things are hard right now, but I am determined for my story to have a triumphant ending. I’ll endure this and learn from it and grow wiser and stronger in the process. I accept that I won’t win every battle, but I’ll stay woke and take good care of myself, my babies and my mind. The battle may be his, but the war is mine.
So your ex husband knew you would exit the marriage if things didn’t go your way. Now you’re upset he’s not catering to your selfish demands after you broke your wedding vows. If you leave a marriage relationship, you’re no longer entitled to the benefits that go along with it. So go ahead, dig in your heels and be a stiff-necked, rebellious woman. If you don’t repent before you die, you’re going to find too late you’re only in charge of the battle. The war belongs to the Lord.
Not sure how you can even speak Gods name when you are trying to put down the weak and helpless. Yes a woman has every right to leave an abusive marriage . You need to go pray and repent to the God you claim you know .
This is horrendous and no parent should ever have to wonder where, when and why they will have money to feed their children! I think it depends on which state you live in. I moved from Texas to North Carolina because of the economy in Texas and landed a job in NC paying far less than what I made for years in Texas. Needless to say, my ex has decided to take advantage of how in North Carolina he can find ways of severely reducing his amount of child support! He and his new wife make close to 400k a year but according to my lawyer, the judges here don’t care they simply go off of a formula!
Single moms need to unite together and work with our state governments to make higher earning parents pay! I’m not looking to make my ex pay more than what he pays today but I do believe that states need to honor child support decrees from other states!
Whores should be punished.
Have a feeling your name might be Mike instead of Monica. And if it is Monica why don’t you try living in a physically , verbally and emotionally abusive marriage for years and see if you don’t get your but out of it !! Stop abusing the abused . God in heaven is listening to your cruelty .
what does it matter? My ex wife beat me and pressed charges because my face and ribs bruised her knuckles. I owe her money for the bruises I endured while she knocked my teeth out.
I am going thru a divorce now with a cop. Whole different hotter hell in my situation. I stopped working 10 years ago because our 2 kids have autism. I was assigned an income anyway. I was hired 4 times, but let go at the end of each probationary period because I took off too often, text too often and was on my cell phone too much…all these days off phone calls and texts were school related. I went back to court with all of this documented…didn’t make a difference, I was told to work from home- become an entrepreneur, get initiative. So I did. Within 6 months our kids were each suspended twice and our daughter began harming herself. I went back to court again. I showed the judge what happens if i am not available at all times for our kids and I wanted to point out that ALL kids, but especially kids with special needs, need a lot more support than just money. I asked to have my assigned income removed, and to increase my exs income only to meet our bare minimum nesscesities. Denied.
I don’t have any family I can rely on, I have no friends I can trust or even hang out with…having kids with autism changed all that. I wish it wasn’t that way but it is, no one understands…not even thier father. But I have to be there for my kids. All the time. That means I cannot work. The kids eat the same foods every day because it’s all I can afford, I eat once a day- thank God I’m friends with the owner of our corner store, for $5 he gives me a large hot sandwich (w 1/2 of meat), a milk and a side salad. That’s what I eat every day, bc its all I can afford. I sold my car for Christmas bc I couldn’t afford the gas or insurance anyway. Taking the bus isn’t so bad… but not being able to eat til I’m full kinda sucks. We only do free things on the weekends like library or the park- but I love in a city where the are a lot of libraries and a lot of parks so to them it seems like we are doing something different every weekend.
I just wish court would do what they are supposed to do…look at the whole picture and create equitable justice. I don’t know why I wrote all this shit. I’m just venting bc today was a bad day and I happened upon this article when I did a search for “I think me and the kids will end up homeless after the divorce”
I am in the process of a divorce from an abusive husband of 38 years (physical and emotional). We have a special needs young adult child that I have been the caregiver to for 26 years along with a college age daughter. I do not have a income – only the goverment payout for me to care for our son which is not much. My husband is retired and makes plenty of money between multiple pensions and SS not to mention a large anunity. He is trying to get away scott free and not give any spousal support of any kind except for a mere $136 per month. He has run up over $5000 in credit card bills on my credit card along with signing a contract at $1000 a month for unnecessary work to be done on our main house with no assistance in paying for any of that. Not to mention he has spent $32000 in the last 15 months from our savings. He is living at our lake house mortage free while I still am paying all the bills. He is looking to move out of state; I think he has hooked up with someone online – he is a sex addict (this is not an opinion it is a fact – I have begged him to go for marriage consuling in the past but he refused). My stress level is out the roof. I am trying to hold down the fort but feel hopeless. I always knew my husband was evil but I never imagined how much. He is looking to move out of state and just abandon our son who does not understand. My son is terrified I will leave him and keeps asking me if I will always love him; I am crying as I type this; it truly breaks my heart how cruel someone can be to such an innocent child (he is about 5-6 years of age mentally) He has threatened to kill me in fount of our son and thankfully the guns had already been removed from our house so he could not get to them. My son and I both have an OP against my husband. I honestly can’t believe I am opening up about this to someone outside my therapyst but I just feel so hopeless and terrified of being left destituet. I don’t know which is worse living in hell or on the streets.
Michele, I hope you have a good attorney who is staying on top of all the financial stuff. A good attorney will not let him get away with fraudulent behavior. Keep in touch with your attorney, don’t just trust him/her to do the right thing. Know what their plan of action is and tell them you want to be included in every step of the process. After 38 years of marriage, you should be able to get lifetime alimony, half of his retirement benefits and repayment for any marital assets he spends during the separation. It’s imperative that YOU be proactive during the divorce process so that you and your son are not left destitute. Good luck!
Thank you, I am told I have one of the best attorney’s and he just told me it is too early to start dividing up assets that we have an emergency relief hearing tomorrow due to my husbands behavior. I am very good a documentation and keeping very detailed records of what he is doing/spending. His last stint last week of wiping out saving/checking I was at the food bank with my son and daughter and was not available for my attorney to contact me – he later told me that was one of the best things I could have been doing. It was not a planned ‘look good’ event just a lets go to the food bank for the good that it is for community; something we like to do.