Throw away account for privacy, but I need an outside perspective.
My wife (46F) and myself (48M) have been married 15 years, together for 20. Both professionals with fairly good salaries – $350k for me, $200-250k for her for the past 15 years, though I left a significantly higher paying position that I not enjoy about 10 years ago. During COVID, she started shopping at Hermes, Dior, Goyard, LV, (basically all the Rodeo Drive kinda places) and spent around $250k without my knowledge, while telling me she was only making half her actual salary. For several years, I lived cheap and kept the bills paid while not spending on myself. After the second year of this, I saw our tax forms and figured out she was hiding money. We did some counseling and she is seeing a therapist. We agreed that she needed to pay 1/2 the household expenses going forward.
She claimed to have the spending under control and her finances stabilized and that she took money from her retirement account to pay off debt, she claims she is depositing her entire paycheck into our joint account… which is still not nearly enough to cover 1/2 the household expenses and her debt payments. Recently I found she has about $20k in cash in a closet, but she is telling me she is broke and can’t pay for anything.
Do I confront her? Call her therapist? Take the cash and file for divorce? Just ignore it? Thanks.