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16th Mar 2024

‘My new wife never told me she’s £125K in debt, now she wants me to clear it’

Joseph Loftus

It’s not what you want to hear after just two days of marriage.

A man who was recently married took to Reddit asking for help on how to handle a tricky situation.

The man explained: “I just got married yesterday and last night my wife drops the bomb on me that she has $160k in debt between school, judgements, cars, and credit cards.

“I have 120k in investments and 30k in savings. She’s pressing really hard that it’s ‘our’ money now and she’s expecting me to withdraw everything and put it towards her debt.”

The man added: “Not gonna lie, had I known this I wouldn’t have even thought marriage to be an option. How should I approach this?

“We’re filing with the court later today if that makes a difference. Admittedly, I was incredibly p* when she told me this last night and we haven’t talked since.”

The man added to the post that when he brought it back up with his wife she “left in a firestorm, broke a lot of things on the way out and was telling me she plans to sue me for wasting her time and pain and suffering.”

When asked why they didn’t discuss their finances before getting married, the man said that they did but that she had told him she was debt-free.

Recently there was another story in the news about a woman who spent £40,000 on her credit card before realising she had to pay it back.

Maddy Alexander-Grout was 18-years-old when she received several credit cards during her freshers week at university.

In the subsequent years, Maddy became addicted to spending online, and would often pick up the tab for her friends on night’s out.

She was unaware that she was slowly and steadily building up thousands of pounds of debt.

The now 40-year-old Mum told the Manchester Evening News that it was only when she moved out of her university halls and had to pay her own way that she realised she had gotten herself into severe financial difficulty.

“I was hooked on shopping,” she said.

“I didn’t realise why I’d splashed out £40k. I took out credit cards and overdrafts. At one point I even got a university hardship grant, a hardship loan, store cards all sorts. I genuinely had a spending addiction.

“It was my low mood, lack of dopamine. Now I know it was because of my ADHD I got diagnosed in 2021. It was out of control.”

Maddy lived in constant fear of debt collectors knocking on her door and couldn’t cover her living expenses, which caused problems with the people she lived with.

She eventually managed to secure a job in recruitment, but regularly found herself spiralling again into unnecessary and reckless spending.

A low point for Maddy was when a banking client asked her to run a credit check, revealing her county court judgements and debt relief orders.

She was forced to own up to her financial issues to her boss, and luckily managed to hold on to her job.

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