This user argued with her husband over his family wanting him to co-sign on a $1,000,000 home. He said he wouldn’t, but when she returned from a trip, he revealed he had!
Blissful Marriage
OP (Original Poster) is a 39-year-old woman happily married to her 38-year-old husband of two years.
They own their home and are financially well off. Her husband is the one responsible for maintaining the finances of their family, but she clarified that they bring in “roughly the same income,” so he doesn’t have “full control” of their financial choices.
Troubled Past
Their perfect life is only marred by the fact that OP’s husband has an abusive family. What’s worse is that his mother and older sister both live a few hours away.
Whenever they’re around, OP has noticed that his mother and sister tend to talk down to him, treat him disrespectfully, and, in general, make him feel responsible for cleaning up their financial woes due to poor choices.
Living the Good Life
For a while now, OP’s husband’s mother and sister have been renting a home from a family member.
They’ve had it good because they’ve been paying rent far below the market value. As in, they were paying about $3,000 less than what they should have been!
Disrespecting Others’ Property
The mother and sister duo neglected any attempts at maintaining the property and managed to completely trash the house. OP said, “They have little to no respect for the fact that they have had it so good for so long.”
After some time, the family member renting this home to the mother and sister finally got fed up and decided to sell the house.
Go Anywhere but Here
The family member renting to them gave them 90 days to “vacate the premises.”
As soon as this happened, the sister and mother knocked on OP’s husband’s door, demanding that he help them buy a home.
Unqualified and Undeserving
To top it all off, the mother and sister of OP’s husband live and work in the most expensive housing market areas in the United States. They don’t come anywhere near qualifying for the type and amount of loan they’d need to purchase a “modest home” in the area.
They also have adamantly refused to move to a more affordable area that better aligns with their low credit scores and lack of major assets.
Expensive Tastes
After discussing what they wanted at length with OP’s husband, her mother-in-law and sister-in-law finally asked that her husband co-signs on a “very basic older home” that costs $1,000,000.
OP couldn’t believe what she was hearing and decided to put her foot down; she was absolutely against this arrangement and told her husband as much. She wrote, “My immediate reaction was to tell them absolutely not, and I voiced my concerns to my husband.”
From Reliable to Questionable
OP noted that usually, her husband is a very “level-headed and financially savvy” kind of guy. However, this time, she had to be the one to keep pushing for him and his mother and sister to come up with a plan for how this would all work.
She doubted that his mother and sister could handle paying well over $6,000 a month in mortgage when they’d barely managed to scrape by paying $1,000 a month at the last place. OP felt that this decision was “questionable at best,” and her instincts were affirming that this was definitely a “terrible decision at worst.”
Let’s Be Reasonable Here
She asked her husband why exactly it was that they couldn’t simply move into a modest apartment. After all, while staying there, they’d have time to plan to buy a home in a year or two.
To this, her husband had no reply. He did, however, agree that his mother and sister definitely needed to come up with a plan before he’d engage with the notion of co-signing.
No Care in the World
Several weeks passed of OP’s husband going back and forth with his mother and sister. They had still failed to devise any plan to afford the mortgage and bills and avoid defaulting on payments.
It was an older home and would require a bit of fixing up, so had they looked into who could handle said repairs and how much that’d cost? Nope—not in any way!
Standing Firm
Finally, right before OP had to leave for a work trip, her husband informed her that he definitely would not be co-signing on the home. His mother and sister had done zero planning after all this time, and it seemed he, too, was fed up.
OP was immensely relieved and left for her work trip feeling as though their troubles were finally behind them, and she could relax while away.
Relaxing in the Shower
After the work trip, OP was home by the end of the week and relaxing while taking a shower.
In strode her husband, and he bluntly proclaimed that he had co-signed for the home.
Like a Punch to the Gut
OP said, “To say I was taken aback is an understatement.” She went through a wide range of emotions in a very short amount of time.
However, it wasn’t until the following day that it truly started to sink in what her husband had done.
This Spells Trouble
Her husband had made a high-risk investment with people who didn’t respect him, and to make matters worse, he had done it behind her back after assuring her he wouldn’t. He tried explaining to OP how she’d be safe from any “potential impact,” but she doubted that claim.
She asked him to walk her through the conversation he’d had with his mother and sister, their plans, and what assurances he had that she and his assets would be safe should his mother and sister default on payments. But as she expected, he couldn’t say a word.
Emotional Breakdown
Her husband then had the “audacity” to tell OP that she should just be happy he’d decided to tell her what he’d done at all. That’s when OP “lost it.”
She felt like her husband had not only betrayed her trust but also disrespected her as well. She cried and screamed at him, told him she couldn’t understand how he didn’t see that his mother and sister were using him and that now she was “questioning his integrity” and their relationship.
Difficulties With Pregnancy
OP was also in the middle of the IVF process, which had been very hard on her both physically and emotionally. She told her husband she now felt like he didn’t deserve to be the father of their children.
She added that if they did ever manage to have children, she would want his mother and sister to have “limited contact” with him and not be allowed around her children at all.
Past Troubles
There had been incidents in the past where her husband’s mother and sister had treated OP disrespectfully. This had led OP to distance herself from them long ago.
It was also part of the reason why OP and her husband had decided to move away from them.
Spiraling Out of Control
OP’s husband seemed remorseful at first, but as the argument continued, he soon turned defensive of his family. He refused to see how abusive his mother and sister were, no matter what OP or others ever tried to tell him.
OP then gave him an ultimatum that if he wanted any chance at making their marriage right again, he needed to immediately work out with his mother and sister some contract that’d ensure he maintained majority ownership in the home so that if his mother and sister defaulted, he could then sell the house. Unsurprisingly, his family refused these terms because they believed living in the home was more than enough to solidify the house as theirs, and now OP’s seriously considering divorce, though she “loves him dearly.”
The Community’s Two Cents
The community was swift to stand on OP’s side and advise her on what she should do to try and protect herself.
One user said, “Not the a**hole. He has just committed you and your family—consisting right now of you and your husband—to a $1,000,000 debt in an asset he has absolutely no ownership stake in. This is not an ‘investment.’ It’s assuming the responsibility of paying for their house. It’s grossly irresponsible on his part, and here is the worst part: your husband has incurred a debt. In many states, California and New York included, and I’m assuming from this description the home—and therefore the debt—is in California or New York, debt is a community property. If you go out and finance a car, your husband is responsible for half that debt, whether he signed on the dotted line or not. Put another way, if your husband dropped dead tomorrow, you would still be on the hook for that mortgage. This was a historically bad decision on his part. You need to contact an attorney to protect yourself—to say absolutely nothing of any community property assets you and your husband own.”
“The husband and OP are on the hook for this community debt he has brought into the marriage as soon as the loan closes, for an asset neither he nor she will have ownership of. OP should absolutely be getting life insurance on her husband, but she should also investigate this loan and whether it has already closed, and if not, make sure that it never closes. And she needs to file divorce papers ASAP, on some, at least, initial basis, like tomorrow. If she files for divorce before the loan closes, she may avoid any possibility of being held responsible for the $1,000,000 loan, as that debt doesn’t exist until the loan closes. Her filing for divorce before the debt even exists may significantly increase the probability of it never being included in the marital estate, even if the loan closes before the divorce is granted. People who incur unnecessary debt during the pendency of a divorce proceeding will find it very difficult to make it a community marital obligation,” added another Redditor.
Do you think OP went overboard by threatening to divorce her husband? Should OP take out a life insurance policy on her husband and work on getting a divorce?
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This post first appeared as She’s Gearing Up for Divorce After Her Husband Secretly Co-signed on a $1,000,000 Home That Isn’t Theirs. He’s an “Idiot” Blinded by His Family’s Abuse, and She Won’t Tolerate It! on Quote Ambition.
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