The Moneyist: we paid off my wife’s tyro loans — afterwards she filed for divorce after dual years of marriage


Dear Moneyist,

Before we married my mother dual years ago, she had outrageous amounts of debt to her name, including vast amounts of tyro loans. After we married, we diligently roughly paid all off, helped by my income being 3 times that of my wife.

She recently asked for a divorce, observant she was holding a residence and my retirement. My doubt is: Does a fact we paid off her debts she hold before get widespread evenly? Had we not paid all of her debts a net value would be nearby a same with a improved outcome for me.

Read also: Behold, a biggest financial tip to a happy matrimony

We’ve usually been married a few years, and honestly we can’t assistance feeling taken advantage of. The usually recommendation we can find discusses whose shortcoming a tyro loans would be, though now it only seems that she got me to compensate all of her debts, and got some new stuff, while we threw divided years of my life.

Please tell me there’s hope.

Squeezed in Fort Worth

Dear Squeezed,

I’m contemptible we feel squeezed or played. But we can’t disagree with that. After dual years, that’s a tough break, generally given all a assistance we gave your mother with her tyro debt. That’s a quite surprising kind of debt, in that it’s probably unfit to discharge. So if your mother was formulation to clean out some debts with your assistance before she filed for divorce dual years after your marriage, that was a one to clean out first.

The good news: Texas is a village skill state so, where we have not co-mingled your assets, we take out of a matrimony what we brought into it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t embody a income we gave your mother to compensate off her loans. But if we had a home before we married, for instance, we will travel divided with that. Document all your financial exchange with your wife. The justice has option to order village skill in a proceed it deems satisfactory and reasonable.

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Another growth in your favor: In Texas, judges don’t indoctrinate one celebration to compensate a other subsistence if they’ve been married for fewer than 10 years. There are exceptions to this order — if there is a teenager child involved, either there’s been domestic abuse and/or either a partner in doubt has a incapacity — though it’s doubtful that a decider will tell we to compensate your mother alimony. So whatever outcome we do get, from a financial viewpoint we will be giveaway and clear.

Also see: What should we do with a $300,000 we am about to inherit?

Typically, a justice will order retirement skeleton equally between a dual soon-to-be former spouses. Given a brief length of your matrimony and a assistance we gave your mother profitable off her tyro loans, we positively have a good possibility of fighting this sold rule. You competence not be wholly successful, though a good divorce profession will advise we on how to proceed this ethereal matter. Your mother is divorcing you, after all, and where there is coherence in a law, there is opportunity.

I posted your doubt in a Moneyist Facebook Group and a members also cited a brief duration of marriage, a significance of selecting a good divorce lawyer, a perils of intervention (given that we have a comparatively clever palm walking into divorce court) and a debate accountant to inspect your retirement accounts both before and during your marriage. All good advice.

The best thing we have going for we right now is your honest intentions going into this matrimony and your (good) function throughout. Having examined all a details, a decider competence not be means to contend a same thing about your wife.

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