My Husband Expects Me To Fund Our Entire Divorce

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. This January I filed for divorce after 19 years of marriage from an emotionally abusive spouse and also come to find out how he's been neglecting our eight-year-old autistic child. So I've basically just had my wits end and called it quits. He refused to help, not to mention we had a whole bunch of marital debt that when I asked him, can you please step up? Can you work extra shifts? Can you get a side job? Can you help in this manner so we can pay off credit cards, medical bills, cars, trucks, all the stuff that people get? He refused to do it and basically said that I've worked hard my whole life. I'm not going to step up anymore. You're the breadwinner. You make the money. You work. So I'm a PA, so I make $170,000 a year. What did your attorney say? How did you guys battle it out in court? Yeah, so we haven't gone to court. We had a date originally, but that was canceled by his counsel because they wanted to, quote, settle. But his idea of a settlement is my paying him an exorbitant amount of money, plus $2,000 a month. We are going to continue on to make sure that you're protected. Not to mention pay him $2,000 a month. He lives in an alternate universe. He doesn't get to decide. That's the good news. My attorney said basically that's not going to work because I have full custody of our child and we have split 70-30, so I have him 70% of the time. I've been paying the child on my health insurance. I pay for everything. I arrange all his child care, his appointments, everything. His father has not helped with any of that. What does he make? He makes $80,000 a year. Okay. And what do the debts look like? So we've owned a house that I financed solely under my name last year and decided to sell it because I wanted to get out from underneath the debt and moved into a rental. Has it sold, Jamie? It has, yeah. So it's sold and I paid off like $90,000 in debt. I just don't want you paying off this debt if it's going to be split eventually because you're throwing a lot of money at it. Have you figured out what the split is and what's his debt versus yours and how that's going to shake down? That's what we're waiting on. My attorney said we're going to go before a judge and let them figure that out, but so far it's like his debt is a 401k loan that he took out to pay for his attorney and then his student loan, which is like $19,000. Okay. What else is left? What's left is my debt, which my student loan is $115,000. And then there's credit cards and consumer loan debt that I've had to take out in my name because he refused to help when I was trying to consolidate everything. I fell for the consolidation thing. So I'm going to be stuck with those. Say those totals again for us. You had $115,000 in student loans. $115,000 in student loans. There's two consolidation debts. One's at $40,000, another one's at $35,000, and there's about $15,000 on credit card. Okay. And remind me or clarify this. You said I had to take this out, pay forever, or what was the cause for these? Well, I was trying to get one lump payment by consolidating everything. I took out the loan up by myself because he refused to step up and help. And this was just living above your means. This was all in the marriage and there was nothing specific. It's not like there was a small business that one of these loans went to. No, no businesses. But yeah, I would say that we were living well above our means. And he got grossly comfortable living that way. Sure. And now that I filed for a divorce, he thinks that he deserves to continue to live that way. Sorry, there's a helicopter outside my house. No, you're fine. How much do you make, Jamie, in your job? $170,000. $170,000, okay. And what's your rent right now? You said you're renting after you sold the house? Yeah, my rent is $1,400,000. Right. Okay. So you have plenty of margin. Once the dust settles and we know exactly how much debt's going to be yours, now we can formulate a plan as to how we're going to pay it off. Okay. Is that what you're wondering? I started doing this on my own without his help or input. I have $3,000 saved in a high-yield savings account that he can't touch for the emergency fund. And I've been doing every dollar to put everything towards paying my debts. And I had three credit cards originally down to zero. But now that I happen to pay frequently for the attorney... Yeah, I would just stop the whole debt-free journey, which I know sounds crazy coming from us. I would too. But you're in the middle of a storm. We've got to pay lawyer fees and anything beyond that. I would just stack up on a high-yield savings account. And once the dust settles, we're done. There's a divorce decree. There's a judgment. We know exactly what's next. Then we can start pushing play on Jamie's new plan for her new chapter. Yeah, Jamie, the $90,000 that you got out of the sale of your home, did that all go to pay off debt? Yeah, so it paid off. The truck, he borrowed money from his truck. That was nice of you. Yeah, I know. It paid off money that his mother gave him. You need to document all of this, Jamie, because these are his assets. I would use that to negotiate $90,000 less that you're going to pay him. Yes, yes. All of that needs to be used. Yeah, my attorney has everything. And the bank record says everything that was paid, that was his. Listen, your number one priority is to take care of you and your son and get through this divorce, okay? The debt-free journey, it will happen for you. But you have had your heart broken. You've been in a horrible marriage. Gosh, the amount of energy, even with your son having autism. I mean, all of it. You have a lot that you're carrying, okay? So you need to just don't make any more big moves financially, okay? Stay current where you can stay current, and that's it. You need to be stocking up cash on the side. That $3,000, you need to keep adding to that. So when these attorney fees hit, you have the ability to pay them and that you have money saved. Right now, cash is going to be your friend more than anything because everything is just so chaotic. Does that make sense? That's going to give you stability for now. And then what George said is exactly right. Then once everything is settled, then you can say, okay, now I'm going to take that amount of cash after attorneys are paid and everything. I'm going to apply it to my debt for what's left because that judge may give him some of that debt, Jamie. So don't be paying on stuff because it may be going to him. And then you'll have a ton of cash sitting in the bank, hopefully, that you can actually throw at this debt and get some big progress starting it. And then you're going to just chip it away little by little. But yeah, there's a lot swirling for you. So I think simplifying and just stacking up cash is going to be huge for you right now. And I'm so, so sorry you're going through this. It's horrible. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.