Protect My House from My Husband's Bad Decisions?

If your private student loans are in default, you're not out of options. Go to whyrefi.com slash Ramsey. I recently discovered my husband has been opening credit cards, maxing them out, and only making the minimum payments each month. Should I put my home into a trust to ensure it cannot be touched by his decisions? All of our assets are in my name since I owned them before, because I owned them before we met, and we both agreed that they need to be protected for my children to inherit. I fully understand the bigger issue of him hiding debt, but first, I need to take steps to fully protect my children's future before addressing the elephant in the room. Would a trust protect the home? I don't know Alaska law. In most states, if you enter a marriage, owning a piece of real estate, you will exit that marriage owning that same piece of real estate. Now, then the question becomes if he takes out a bunch of debt, can they put a lien on the house that she owns because he's married to her? And in some states, they can. So in some states, they could lien. In the event it's an unpaid credit card debt, for instance, could become a lawsuit. They would become a judgment against any real estate, and his marital rights to that real estate in some states would be, it would cloud the title for her children. And putting it in a trust probably won't change that. You'd have to ask an attorney about all that. Here's the thing. When we're talking about in, when I'm teaching leaders in small business, and we coach, in Entree Leadership, we coach about 10,000 small businesses. And when I'm teaching, for instance, business legal issues from a business perspective, more than a legal perspective, I remind those guys that contracts are useless when you are contracting with a crook. You can't sign a contract with a crook and then yell later, I have a contract, because it's not worth the paper it's written on. You've heard that saying. And the reason is, is you just did a deal with someone who doesn't have integrity. And so you could put the house in a trust, and according to Alaskan law, that could protect it, that's possible. But then he could just decide to sue you in divorce court because you fraudulently did the trust without his permission. Even though you didn't, he could just make that crap up. And you can make up crap in a lawsuit in any state and just file a lawsuit and just make up crap. It's called pleadings, okay? And so what you do, just make up crap and file a lawsuit. And the only recompense the other party has is to spend thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars to disprove the lie that was in the pleading. And that'll be coming out of her pocket. By the way, that's gonna cost you the house and legal fees to defend against a crook. So the problem is you can't anticipate the moves of a crook except that they're gonna be a crook. That we can establish. And now I'm talking about your husband. And so you can't fix this problem with a legal document, ultimately. You might make it somewhat safer, but you'll be under the illusion that it's done. And it's not done until the crook quits crooking. Until the husband quits being a jerk and hiding and spending like he's in freaking Congress and running up credit card debt. So you have to deal with the problem. The elephant in the room is gonna crap on whatever you try. So you gotta deal with the elephant. Because 100% chance you're gonna have elephant crap if you don't. There's 100% chance. And no matter what you do, it's gonna have poop on it. So I mean, you really have to deal with it. So you gotta go, there's no legal maneuver that makes this guy not be a problem. Except divorce. And he's still a problem until the divorce is final. And I'm not suggesting divorce, but I am suggesting that you could go do everything exactly right according to Alaska law. And he could make up a big story and file a lawsuit and you will spend the cost of the house defending it. That's my point. Can you tell that's happened to me? Yeah, and so, I mean, people make up crap. Okay, they just lie. And the court system allows them to get away with it. Yeah, so for you, Allison, I mean, honestly, yes, if you wanted to go and do it to make yourself feel better, that's great. But the elephant is in the room, just like you're saying, is the thing that it does. It has to be. Call the zoo. It has to be addressed. Come get their elephant. He's lost, yeah. Yeah. It's really sad. I mean, it's a- It's horrible that you're facing this, but you're trying to fix the problem without fixing the problem, and you can't. You're gonna have to fix the problem. You got to deal with the dude. The dude is the problem, not your legal structure. That's gonna be, yeah. So you can't get the- A lot to unpack. Sorry, Allison. So an example of that is, okay, you do a will and you do a full estate plan. That doesn't keep someone from suing. They might not win, but by the time you finish paying- It'd be harder for them to win, right? It'd be very hard for them to win. You can put a very detailed thing in place, but by the time you finish writing checks to lawyers so they can send their kids to Harvard, by the time you finish writing all those checks, you ain't gonna feel like you won, although you won. And so you're still dealing with entitled little trust fund baby brats who didn't get what they wanted, and so they sued the estate. And so the problem was not how the estate was structured. The problem was you raised entitled trust fund baby brats. And so you suck as a parent. That's what that was. And so you gotta go back and deal with the issue because the legal system does not, there's not legal processes or systems that protect the righteous from being sued or from having to run up legal fees to offset it. But it will, and I mean, that stuff holds up in court for people out there to get a will in place and to get these things. You need to get a will, and it will hold up in court. But if you have crazy, if you have crazy in your family, you might spend $100,000 making sure that will is upheld. You might spend $100,000. But still do it. So yeah, do it anyway. It's your only shot. But don't do that and say, this fixes the crazy in my family because you still hadn't dealt with the crazy. That's the problem. You've got to go to the root behavior when you're dealing with this. And so when I'm teaching these small business guys, I'm like, don't sign a contract with a crook. Here's an idea. If he's a known crook, the guy's doing cocaine, I'm kind of worried about him. Well, then quit using him as a sub. Hello? No kidding. He's going to steal everything off your job site, dumb butt. He's doing coke. Hello? Have some sense. You know, this is the stuff I get. All these questions on Entree Leadership all the time. It's the same thing. So you got to fire the sub. That's a lot of cocaine. You got to get rid of it. Well, we got it. This is a great segment. We got elephant poop. We got cocaine. We got elephants in the room. Lord have mercy. There's so many metaphors here. Now there's an elephant on cocaine. All because of Allison's question. Oh, poor Allison. Question of the day. Poor Allison. So yeah, you got to deal with the husband. The husband. Wow. If we could, you know what? We'd be out of business if the husbands would behave. We wouldn't have any callers. Money and marriage, that's a real. We wouldn't have any callers. It's a real thing. Yeah, we'd have people. We'd be reduced to boring 401k questions. All tax and estate. Tax and estate law. That's all we'd be doing in 401k. How do I admit to my 401k? This is so much more fun. We've got elephants and cocaine and just a lot more stuff in this question. It's a lot better. 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