Sorry- long read. M/45, F42. My wife and I have been married 21 years. Throughout most of our time I have been the one who has worked full time and I was also active duty military. We have 2 kids who are now M/19 and F/17. Early on she would call me or need help with seemingly simple issues, but it was our first time living in a house and other first times. I felt that she needed things to help her stay busy so I let her take care of the bills. Over the years we incurred a lot of debt, some of it was due to my spending but I also feel like a lot of it was due to her spending. We have just about paid everything off, but we’re still spending money like it grows on trees. Also over the years I have frequently (2-4 times a year) asked and begged her to sit down with me so we can “look at the bills” and our debt. Typically she would put up a stink until we argued about it. My feeling was that we would go 2 steps forward and 1 step back, regroup, and then another 2 steps paying off bills and debts.
My wife and I are on the verge of divorce for other reasons not mentioned here, but everything with her is contentious and a battle. I feel like I am trying so hard to be amicable and she is purposely looking for reasons to be mad, simply because I am breathing. In that sense I have been exploring ways to divest myself and prepare for an exit. Recently I noticed that she made a $10,000 payment on a shared credit card we’ve had open since 2003. That payment was in Oct and then another payment of $7,500 was made in Nov. I believe these payments appear to be total balance payoffs. So I started getting curious about why are we spending so much money on this shared credit card. I looked through the card (Capital One) and I am just an authorized user so I can only see my charges and payments. If I added everything correctly, we have paid over $100,000 in credit card payments for 2025 alone.
I will say that I take responsibility for not acting and paying attention sooner. But part of it is I gave up asking due to her excuses and arguments when I would ask. I periodically look at the accounts and make sure everything is in order and nothing is crazy. But seeing all this made me start to ask more questions. She is also dealing with 2 sick elderly parents and refuses me to help her, traveling back and forth between 2 states every 2-3 weeks. The argument started because I said I would like to discuss the bills and how the money in our checking account was being spent (Bank 1). She gladly explained all of our debts and bills. But she made many excuses for why she couldn’t sit down with me to show me how our money was being spent. For reference, there is some money going to other accounts outside of our bank. Then I called our credit card company and they confirmed I could be placed on the account as a manager to see everything she sees. I asked her and she flat out said NO!
I think her feeling is that she has been “doing it all by herself for so long and why am I suddenly interested and asking questions”. I guess that’s a valid point, but it’s also valid that she had the option a long time ago to set me up as the manager and to be open. Everything is super secretive with her. Example – We have a shared bank account with Bank 2 that we’ve had for 7 or 8 years at least. For whatever reason she said she didn’t realize or know that I’ve had access to it….now she’s suddenly talking about closing it all because I have access as well.
Bottom line is she put a $10K payment on the shared credit card in Oct, another $7.5K payment in Nov, and our balance is now $4.5K. I went through all my transactions and over 2024 and 2025 all my transactions were about $6500 for each year! So she is apparently spending that each month if not more. I am considering putting restrictions on our bank account (bank 1) to prevent her from paying off this credit card since I am the only one working and she refuses to allow me to even see what she is spending this money on.
TLDR – Wife is refusing to share the data with a shared credit card account. Claims she’s too stressed out dealing with her parents and looks like she’s spending tens of thousands of dollars on it for 2025.
Edit – I should add, although we’ve had a lot of debt and it appears our spending is out of control, we always pay are bills and have done so for every bill for the last 21 years.