need advice on how to tell the wife

[lrprn]

My husband was never able to tell me we were in serious financial trouble. In fact, he did everything possible to make sure I didn't know. I finally figured it out for myself, pulled the figures together, and after I started breathing again and stopped crying, started investigating what our options were. My husband was very resistant to talking to anyone about our financial problems, to the point that the night before we had our first bankruptcy lawyer consultation, he was STILL trying to convince me we could make it on our own. It took four experienced bk lawyers all telling him the same thing - there was no way we could ever climb out of the financial hole he had created on our own. It wasn't until then that he finally swallowed his pride and admitted we really did have to file.

You've been given some great advice so far, davie. My own advice is that in the long run, living a lie is far more damaging to your relationship with your wife than the truth will be. You are a team, so she deserves to know the reality of your finances so she can help you address and fix the issues. She will be hurt and angry at first....give her some time to absorb and accept. My husband says he will go to his grave regretting that he kept the truth from me for so long and if he could change one thing, he would have told me years before I finally figured it out for myself. That I had to find out on my own put a lot of strain on our relationship for many months, even after 27 years of marriage. Please don't repeat his mistake.

[wrinkleigh]

I have to say that I was the one who didnt want to hear it in our relationship. Hubby would try to talk to me, printed out reports to show me, and I just avoided him and the money talks. As long as I was able to charge everything -- I was ok. No matter we had absolutely NO money, my spending habits never changed.

Finally -- after the business started failing, DH cracked under the stress of trying to keep a failing business going and juggling our personal finances. I came home one day and there was this HUGE file, along with a jump drive that he had saved MS Money on. He said -- here are our bills and the checkbook, you take care of our personal finances. We have been together 14 years -- I dont think I have paid a bill since I was 16 years old, he ALWAYS juggled our money, all I did was spend it.

Well, I would say it took me one DAY before I was flipping out trying to figure our what to do and how to juggle things and looking at how much we really owed.

Lets just say that DH now sleeps very well at night and I am the one tossing and turning. By the time the business failed, we were both on the same page and in agreement on what we had to do.

Ignorance is bliss, I can attest to that -- but when one partner wont face the facts the other partner must shoulder it alone, it can tear a marriage apart.

Make him listen, good luck to you and please come here for support -- these are some wonderful people.

[davie20001]

Thank you all for the support and advice

You have all been great and i feel much more comfortable to tell her. All i need now is to put everything together and show her, most likely after the holidays and then i know she will blow a cork, but she has been telling me lately that she is to blame for the money issues and that we have to sell the house. I told her no, but we need to talk to soon. I think she knows that the news will not be good.

At least my mom in law, who is a saint, is supportive of me and tells me to just tell her and she will get upset, but will need to understand that is both of our faults that this resulted.

We owe a whopping $70k in cc bills and i have no idea how that happened. I was told by the ccc counselor that they want to see 27% of my salary go to mortgage, and i am at 50%...sigh....but if i get rid of the cc bills and one of the POS cars i have, they we will be okay...barely, but okay. and i expect to get some sort of raise in the new year.

Anyway, thanks again everyone...much appreciated. i will keep you all posted.
dave

[JollyGG]

My husband and I sat down and looked at our expenses and income and realized that we were in way over our head. I researched bankruptcy but wasn’t sure that was the path we had to take. He was convinced we could still figure something out. So we scheduled an appointment with consumer credit counseling. They told us that they couldn't help us and recommended bankruptcy. I thought on it overnight and concluded they were right. However I had to promise my husband a week to research himself and look for other options before doing anything. After 2 days he saw how stressed out he was making me and hadn’t come up with any other solutions. He concluded that bankruptcy was the way to go.

So like everyone else said. Lay out the financial situation. Then give her a little space and time to process the information and she will see that bankruptcy is your best option. Plus getting someone else (credit counseling) to say the same thing helps.

One other thing - I did make sure that my husband knew that our marriage was more important to me than anything else and that we needed to be a team to make it through this. He needed to be 100% on board and we had to agree that our mess was both our faults and we would work together to make the solution both our responsibilities.