My Husband Left Me And Our 4 Kids (File for Bankruptcy?)

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I am a stay-at-home mom and I'm trying to get out of an abusive marriage, an emotionally abusive marriage. My husband's basically abandoned us. I've got four small children. They're five years old and under and I'm trying to figure out how to create some margin, hire a lawyer, and I'm just trying to figure out what's the next best move to file bankruptcy or take out a second mortgage on the house or something else. And I've got all my financial information written down if you want that. Is there any support near you, family, friends, church? My family all lives about three hours away and they're doing what they can to help me. I live in kind of a unique area where there's not like, I can't just sell the house and go rent. There's nothing for rent near me and jobs are few and far between. Is your house in your name? Yes, it's solely in my name. I bought it before we were married. Okay, how long have you been married? Since 2018. And what's your household income? Right now I'm a disabled veteran and I'm receiving disability benefits of about $2,600 a month. Okay, and then is his income covering any expenses for you guys or has he kind of cut off access? I think he's rerouting his paycheck someplace else. He's an over-the-road truck driver. He's an owner-operator. I've done his taxes forever. He'll gross about $225,000 from last year and I was only able to move over $29,000 to help pay household bills out of the last 13 months. I've paid for the entirety of the bills six months out of the year. Okay, so he just kind of up and left, is that? Well, being over-the-road, he's gone a lot, but he's not called me since September. He's showed up at the house unannounced a couple of times for a few days at a time and it's just been weird. Like just to crash? Yeah, like over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Otherwise, he usually parks at a friend's house a couple of hours away. Oh gosh, I'm sorry that you're going through this. So tell us more about, so you've been covering the bills just out of your money? Correct. And is there any margin? Sorry, say it again? Oh, I received a lump sum back payment from the VA a year ago. How much was that? $42,000. Okay, and what did you, has that allowed you to be current? What did that allow you to do? I was able to, I put six months worth of bills in savings. You know, I had a cushion of six months. And then I paid off some debt and I started a business in May and that's actually been helping a lot. Okay, so how much debt do you have left? Meet EveryDollar budgeters, Christy and Steve. Their life is chaotic, but their money is simple because they budget with EveryDollar. Budgeting with the spreadsheet took a ton of time. But now with EveryDollar, I can do a budget in five minutes. And tracking purchases is just as simple. It's so freeing to know exactly where your money is going. It just takes that stress out of the day-to-day life. You got this, Hannigan Family. EveryDollar. Create your free account today. Okay, so how much debt do you have left? I owe $34,000 on the house with about $58,000 in equity. I've got $41,000 in student loans, $22,000 in credit cards, and I owe $6,000 on my vehicle. Okay, and how much is in that emergency fund? I've got enough to fund February. How much is that? I'd have to look. I think it's down to $4,000 right now. So you burned through the emergency fund. So you've got $4,000 left to your name, essentially. Yes, sir. Okay, $58,000 of equity, $41,000. Okay. And tell me again, did I hear you say, I wrote down a lot of numbers. Did I hear you say your income at this point, is it $2,600 a month? Is that what I heard you say? $2,600 a month. And then my business, I just started it in May. So the numbers have been different about every month. But right now I'm grossing about $1,600. Good. And moving about $1,000 to $1,200. And I'm hoping that it just continues to grow, especially as we get into the summer. Okay. So fair enough. Like around $3,600 is what maybe you could count on per month. Do you have your own bank account that is not at the same bank your husband has? I do. Yes. Okay, good. Is that what you've been routing all of your money? That's correct. Good. What do you pay? What's the mortgage every month? What do you pay? $933. Good, good. Okay. So tell us right now, what's on fire besides your marriage financially? What's the thing that you're like, help me understand this, Jaden and George? I don't know how to pay bills after February. And I need to hire an attorney. Okay. So I think that you can pay the bills after February. Tell us how much the deficit is. When you take your $3,600, you pay the $900 in the mortgage, you pay your debts, you pay for food and transportation. Is there anything left? I've got life insurance payments and then, oh, geez, what else? Oh, electricity and propane and normal stuff. So it's usually about, my budget's about $4,500 to $5,000. Okay. Okay. And that's in every dollar? I'm using, you need a budget at the moment. Okay. I want you to pop into every dollar because every dollar is going to help you find margin anywhere possible. You'll be able to tell it about your specific situation and it's going to work over time to find you money anywhere. So right now you're a thousand dollar deficit every single month. So that's why this is dwindling so quickly I can see, but there's also a path to get your income up, right? Yes. It's been very slow. I mean, it keeps changing, but I see it being capped at some point with the market becoming saturated. Okay. So what I don't think you should do, and I don't think that you need to sell your house right away. I think you're actually, you're paying a little less than 900 bucks a month. I think I heard you say, you're in a good equity position with it. You don't owe a ton on it. I don't think you're going to find anywhere cheaper to live for a family of five. Do you agree or disagree? I completely agree. Okay. What I would do is change the locks. Once you file for divorce, I would change the locks so that he's not just coming up in there willy nilly. Right. Okay. And then is there anybody in your community who can set you up with a good attorney or who could recommend a good attorney? I've been shopping for three months now, and we live so rural. I've been told that I live too far away. What's that mean? The attorneys don't want to drive to the courthouse in my location if they had to. And are all the debts in your name solely or is anything joint or is anything in his name solely? The ones that I named are either in my name or are joint. He's got his own mess. He's been opening up credit cards for the last two years. Have you frozen your credit yet? Because my fear is he's opening debts in your name. I have frozen it and I check on it. Well, here's the truth. The faster we get through this process of divorce, the faster we can hope for some alimony and child support, which means you can breathe again, and that'll get you to fight another day and hopefully clean up some of these debts. Okay. Yeah. I wouldn't try to pay anything off just yet. I wouldn't try to sell your house or anything like that just yet, because once this goes to court, who knows how this is going to get split, including the house, unfortunately. I'm not sure what the laws are in your area. He's been living there since 2018, so I'm not sure if any of that will be up for grabs. But yeah, change the locks, freeze the credit, and file for divorce and figure out how to pay for it because you got to divorce this guy. Great. I can't imagine. I'm so sorry you're going through this, Emily. This fact that this guy's not even covering the expenses for his own children and just abandoned the family just breaks my heart. I know you'll get through it. You're a survivor and a warrior, but it's going to be a process to get to the other side of this and see some light. Yeah. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.