A husband wondering if his wife should use part of her inheritance to help pay back his student loans is kicking up some drama on Reddit this week.
u/sloanaita said that his wife, who is a stay-at-home mother to their two children, recently received an inheritance of about five times what he currently owes in student loans (which he later said is around $41,000 of debt). After things were settled and the money received, he asked his wife if they could use some of her inheritance to pay off his loans to put them in a better financial position moving forward.
“She refused to give me any of the money and said the inheritance belongs only to her,” he wrote. “I told her that, yes, legally that’s true but we are a family and we should share our resources to make our burdens easier. She disagreed and said my student loans pre-date our marriage and are my sole responsibility.”
The Redditor was taken aback by that, and decided that he would continue to pay all their family expenses as the solo income earner, but anything extra or fun his wife wanted would now be her own responsibility to pay out of her inheritance so he could use his extra income to pay down the debt faster.
“She accused me of being controlling with money and abusing my position as the income earner but I don’t see why I should be responsible for all that when she has her own money now,” he wrote.
It was a surprisingly controversial post, with some readers accusing the original poster of “financial abuse” for withholding money for extravagances from his wife while others felt she was the one failing to be a team player.
But one thing most people reading seemed to agree on was that if the two can’t get on the same page about finances, there’s something a lot deeper going on here, and it’s not going to end well.
