We're both late 20's and have been married a bit over 6 years. We closed on a house in May and he has had basically chronic underemployment since I met him, things were promised to be better with the purchase of a house and when I got him a full time job that he seemingly purposely lost within weeks. That among other things led to a separation at the end of July. We have no kids, no joint assets outside of the brand new house with no equity (VA loan), and so we were set for a relatively non-contentious "easy" divorce in October and remained civil and basically no contact in between. Individual debt would be handled by the party responsible, I would keep the house (again, no equity - I'm the only one with an income), all property split and that was that. We didn't even involve lawyers, everything was agreed upon. Real simple from a legal standpoint, what's yours is yours and mine is mine, basically.
Days before the divorce he convinced me to back out with the promise of change, so since then we've been working on things and they were going quite amazingly. He enrolled in trade school, contributed to finances, and on the emotional end picking up his slack there too. He eventually moved back in and things were very much on the up and up, until a couple weeks ago.
Anyways, this isn't r/relationships so I'm going to stop there, that's not what I'm here for but I feel the background info was probably necessary. Anyways a couple weeks ago something snapped, I don't know what but it's alarming. Started having an abrupt, and very heavy, drinking problem, missing payments on multiple debts, letting things go to collections. VERY frivolous spending, thousands monthly on really unnecessary things - he has a decent student stipend (long story), but is unemployed and the stipend ends in a couple months. He has never been great with finances since I've known him, but has NEVER let a payment go. I have no idea what happened, but after my very low key (read: we barely drank) I took a nap, and woke up to a very angry, very drunk person. I left to go have coffee with a relative to get away from the situation and when I came back he had packed up all his belongings and disappeared.
I'm going to try to keep this simple but it's hard to elaborate over text. As of right now he has four credit cards. Credit #1 has a $4,000 balance @ 20% which he hasn't paid since November, they recently decreased his available credit so he can't charge much more to it. Credit #2 had a missed payment in November but is current now, but because of the missed payment went from 0% to incurring interest (don't know the %). Credit #3 is at 0% but also promotional and nearing a missed payment and I don't have a lot of faith that's going to get paid.
Credit #4 is the real issue. It's a 0% balance transfer card I suggested/helped him set up a bit over a week ago to help tackle the debt from 20% interest Credit #1. Some weird mix up happened and instead of paying off Credit #1, it got deposited as a check to his checking account. He proceeded to withdraw $3,000 of this as cash. I don't know what he was thinking but I don't think he realizes this was for the balance transfer. I have no idea why he withdrew it (he has a vacant family rental property he's staying at rent free, he has a working vehicle, etc) because we haven't talked much since he's left. I'm pretty sure the credit company is going to catch this at some point and go back and consider this as a cash advance, but even if they don't he still doubled his debt with no way to pay it off. His credit score went from 745 down to like 550 in a month.
All of the above is just giving a picture of how unstable he's being right now and nothing I need advice on (I don't think) because luckily none of the above is (currently, legally) my responsibility. All in his name solely as individual responsibility. Obviously with all of this craziness going on, I'm kind of going into private detective mode and monitoring everything in both names. So this brings me to my main point.
What right now can I do to financially protect myself? The facts:
- NO joint accounts. Checking, credit, savings, etc. are all individual.
- He has absolutely 0 idea of what my financial picture is like beyond he knows I'm good with these things, I work in finance (this is from lack of interest, not lack of transparency).
- ONLY joint debt is the house. There's literally like $1,000 worth of equity at this point. I don't think there's any way I have to worry about losing it, he can't afford the monthly payments alone so I don't think he'd ever go after it.
- I have frozen my credit and am still monitoring my credit and accounts like a hawk, even though he has no access (no login info, no POAs, etc.)
- Outside of the mortgage I only have $1,000 personal debt (all 0%, just promotional things that have monthly payments to pay off before interest). I'm not going to be SUPER comfortable financially but I'll be ok.
- I downloaded all of his financial transactions between all of his accounts since we've been back together. They show literally nothing but alcohol and restaurant purchases (90% I was not involved in) and other really dumb purchases mixed in with a couple of minor bills (internet at a house we don't live at) that have nothing to do with me. If he ever tried to pin me for being responsible for this debt in court, I can't imagine a judge would hold me liable.
- Already planning on lawyering up, hitting the gym, deleting Facebook. Contact is blocked as of today.
I think I've taken a lot of good steps and I've been trying to think as logically as I possibly can, but given the whirlwind of a week I've had of being left on my birthday, and between the lack of sleep and the stress and trying to keep appearances at work I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.
Thank you. I'm sorry if this is all over the place. I am very frazzled right now.
Submitted February 01, 2019 at 10:04PM by glassmatter http://bit.ly/2UBdP8R
