I'm just curious......do you act like the irresponsible child that he's treating you like? I hope that even if you read the papers he wants you to sign that you UNDERSTAND what you are reading & don't JUST READ it.

A marriage is a partnership. You should be acting like a partner, not a helpless wife just as much as he needs to be acting like a partner, not a father who feels the need to take care of you & not let you know what is going on financially because it might worry you too much.

I was married to a man I have later realized is ASD. He had no idea how to communicate & got us into so much debt that even on a 2 engineer salary marriage we couldn't qualify to buy a new home. I took over whether he liked it or not at that point. I also have a BS degree in Accounting. I forced him to be an active part of our getting out of debt. I showed him exactly what was getting paid off each month & how much money was available for spending (basically NOTHING). I honestly thought that he learned something, but when I truly needed him to take over the finances, he totally destroyed us financially after my career ended. He was the one that was the child in our marriage & honestly, I resented his behavior beyond what any words can express because I believed that a marriage should be a complete partnership & the other person needs to be completely CAPABLE of taking over if the other one has something that happens that causes an inability to handle the finances.

Honestly, he never did get his act together & after my mom died, I sold her house & got out of the marriage. Moved 2100 miles away. Only to end up getting bit by the IRS for a mistake he made doing the taxes on my inheritance & it wasn't just a little mistake....but he didn't tell me about it. I didn't find out until I had the mail forwarded to my own farm & I got the second notice 10 months later. His comment. Oh yes, got the letter just before we went to look for my farm. Then he couldn't figure out what the problem was so HE JUST IGNORED THE IRS .....really how stupid can someone be???? I forced him to take a retirement fund to pay for the mistake while I was the one dealing with the IRS & all the irritations that causes but I didn't TRUST HIM to be capable of dealing with them as he had already proven that he wasn't capable. I ended up overpaying the IRS & got a check back....it took about 5 years to pay them back & I had even gotten the penalties removed. When I went to cash the check it could only be in a joint account. That was when I learned from the joint account that he was living on overdraft fees to pay all his bills & he had over $1100 in overdraft fees in about 4 months. He had also quit paying the property taxes on the house that we owned together. They added the property tax to the monthly payment amount & he quit paying that so the house went into foreclosure & he lied to me about having talked to the lending company because I talked to them & he had NEVER responded even once to their calls. The lending company was the one that called me to find out what was going on because my name was still on the loan & no divorce papers to show divorce & he was the one keeping the house.

I thought I remembered your husband being a different nationality & culture than you are also. If that's the case, that may have a lot to do with his behavior because in some cultures, women are thought of as property, not partners in a marriage so you might be dealing with a cultural issue.

I'm not sure how you could have stood being treated like that for 20 years.....but then I look at my marriage & wonder how in the world I tolerated his crap for 33 years before I finally had enough ability put together to get out & ESCAPE (which is really what it feels like)