SAHM SHOCKED when husband blindsides her with divorce; 'I had NO WARNING. What do I do??!' UPDATED 3X

"Husband surprised me with a divorce. How can I find an attorney with no money?"

Tonight when my husband got home from work he informed me he wants a divorce and will be leaving until it's done. This is not a huge surprise honestly, ever since our daughter was born we've just not been getting along. What is a surprise is it's suddenness.

I've been a stay at home mom since our daughter was born two years ago, it just didn't make sense to work and spend 90% of what I made on day-care.

So in talking to him before he was finished packing he told me "Good luck with the mortgage and bills, I've taken MY money out of our bank account and turned off your card on MY credit".

I would say I was shocked, but I really am not. He's very mean when he's angry and never has seemed to connect with his daughter, he wanted a boy and from the day we got the word we were having a daughter he's been distant.

I obviously need an attorney, I logged into our bank account sure enough it's at $5. What resources can I begin looking into to get an attorney for free to help at least make him pay the bills and food until I can find childcare and a job?

Is there anything I can do myself with the courts that is semi quick to at least have him pay for the necessities since he cleaned out our joint account or at least money for an attorney? I understand it's all "his" money but we are married with a child. I don't see how he can just leave us with nothing all of the sudden.

I'm in Wisconsin, I've tried to Google up the best could since the little one went to sleep but I can't find what I'm looking for or even really know what I'm looking for. Thanks for anyone who helps

Before we give you OP's disturbing updates, let's take a look at some top responses:

long6 writes:

The courts will use the last few years of his salary as a guide for support. His quitting, depending on where you live, could mean a split of assets more in your favor.

If he disappears and lives off the grid or something weird the judgement would still be there waiting for him... but won’t really do much good if no one can find him. That would be... unusual though.

I’m sure men and women do leave their children and don’t care if they see them ever again or not...but it’s odd. The more I read your responses to the other posters offering suggestions... the whole scenario grows even stranger.

If you’re a real person and your spouse has left you and his child with cleaned out accounts, bills, quit his job, said goodbye to his friends...best of luck to you.

mmmspaghet writes:

Not a lawyer, but my son went through this. Just to clarify, what he did was a HUGE problem for him. When another poster said it will come back to haunt him, it's because it is very illegal to move /hide marital assets prior to divorce in order to keep them from the other party. When you get into court this is potentially going to prejudice the judge against him.

Going forward keep all your communication with him via text or email. From what I was able to find, Wisconsin is a one party consent state so you can record phone calls without telling him.

Get yourself an app to do this and test it before you need it. Also get a voice recorder app, clear your phones memory card and be prepared to record any time you even think somethings going to happen.

For yourself, it looks like this is going to be ugly. It's going to be awful and hard. Take a deep breath, get your support network in place and make very sure when you text him you stay calm. Imagine the text being read in court. Imagine the recording being played in front of a judge. You will get through this. Get a lawyer and do what that lawyer tells you.

jleft4 writes:

Many local bar associations hold family law “clinics” for free. Most state bar associations have a hotline to call for referrals and you can usually get a free consultation from an attorney by using the state bar referral.

Perhaps a free consultation will lead to an attorney filing the emergency motion for access to marital funds free of charge or free up front. Finally, try your local Legal Aid. They provide free or low cost representation for individuals who qualify based on income.

fleek writes:

The thing about situations like that is that the state will NOT let it go. My husband's father did that shit. Dipped and fell off the radar as soon as she divorced him. He worked cash jobs and lived with his girlfriends so his name was never on anything. Wouldn't file taxes so they couldn't take his tax return.

He thought after his kids were grown he was safe. So when my husband was almost 30 this idiot applies for a job at Walmart and starts working. Immediately gets scooped up by the IRS and tossed in jail.

Now he's getting watched like a hawk by the government, still has to pay his back child support and now he also has to pay back taxes and interest. His wages are garnished to hell and he's almost 60. He'd have been done with this decades ago if he'd just acted like a decent human.

lezbeh writes:

My mom did something similar before I got engaged. She asked me for a few thousand dollars and invested them into a house with her. In my culture, women usually become SAHM with the husband bringing most of the money. Separate bank accounts really aren’t a thing.

My aunt’s situation taught her better. Aunt was a shrewd businesswoman before marrying. Really, really good job. Had 3 separate houses in her name.

She got married, he locked her out of ALL the financial aspects, and lost all her houses in a series of bad investments. The sad irony is my aunt still makes more than him and when she plays the stock market, she succeeds where he always fails.

gra9 writes:

Ex husband did something like this to me, but the difference was he took ten grand of a personal injury settlement I’d recently received and stopped paying the bills.

He changed the parents name on our sons insurance to his name and I had to fight to get my name added back because he claimed I wasn’t my sons biological mother.

I ended up working three jobs to pay the bills and my ex lied and told our son I was “out partying” and didn’t want to be a mother anymore.

I finally got full custody six years later. The custody crap, using law enforcement and CPS/DCF to harass me continued until my son turned eighteen.

Got me fired from three jobs by calling them all the time to accuse me of doing drugs, being a drug trafficker, etc… Jobs just said they didn’t want to deal with the never ending drama he brought into their lives. I didn’t have any peace.

It was sixteen years of hell with that man. He’s a terrible human. I’m so glad I left, but it was hell.

place8 writes:

A trap a lot of women, including my sister, have fallen in. Sit down with husband, realize she can only take home maybe $2300 a month but childcare is $2100 & would require them to juggle pick ups and dropoffs & daycare owner sick days and on and on.

Decide the $200/month cash flow isn't worth it to the family and she should stay home.

Then once her first car insurance payment is due, they decide she doesn't really need a car since she isn't working. Husband gets annoyed with her when she reminds him the family account needs money in it so she can get groceries and diapers.

He gets mad at her when she "lets herself go" because she is full time mom-ing and can't go to the gym, get her hair done, or do her nails like she used to.

Even if she could find someone to watch the kiddos, he makes her feel like shit for asking for money so she just focuses on the kids who have both come down with severe asthma from the moldy basement that the husband refused to let any professsional come look at.

Then when the husband cheats on her with her former college roommate in their bed and suddenly my sister has no job, no money, no meaningful work history. All those years she could have been working up the food chain and getting raises are gone.

She can't afford two kids and a place to live on the shit pay of an entry level job. Luckily she could fall back and move in with my parents who took over most of the child expenses for healthcare and food or else I don't know how she could have gotten by.

Her ex husband ended up with the house, and the car... My sister assumed there was no money and that they were flat broke, but during the divorce found out he'd been hiding most of his income from her and spending it like crazy in ways she couldn't see (like buying expensive figurines, online games, etc).

So there was still no money upon divorce, but at least some child support that she could use to support their basic needs while she went back to training in hopes for a higher paying job.

She only found out about the money because my parents hired her an actually decent attorney who had an accountant dig into his shit & found he was splitting out the majority of his pay to an account my sister never knew about.

I don't care how good my relationship with my husband is... I would never consider being a stay at home parent just because it puts you in such a vulnerable situation if things ever changed.

Edit: also shout-out to the ACA. This all went down before that went into effect which meant my sister couldn't afford healthcare for herself the kids because it was over $900/month and her husband stopped paying it.

So she had to let my parents claim them so the boys would get their work insurance. Then my sister would sometimes have to use the kid's inhalers because she couldn't get her own Albuterol to control her own asthma.

It was a huge blessing when I caught swine flu & ended up in the hospital & they sent me home with enough Albuterol (inhaler and nebulizer) to last a lifetime, but it didn't actually help me so I never touched 90% of it.

Turns out that having an adult sized inhaler & nebulizer helps a lot more with the asthma thing than just trying to survive with the ones made for toddlers.

Once the ACA went into effect the following year, my sister was able to get back on my parents' plan as well & actually get her own very necessary medicine. Silver lining happy note: at least one thing has gotten better since 2009!

Update 1:

I wasn't able to get much done over the weekend except sell the wedding ring for some food/diaper money. Today however was really busy, I spoke to a few people I was able to get in contact with through legal aid!

I'm told by the end of the week I should be with an attorney who can begin helping me file everything I need to begin doing and hopefully begin tracking down where he's put all the money and get some back so I can continue to survive until I can be approved for childcare through state benefits and begin working again.

I'm really surprised about how often this happens, there are entire places dedicated to helping men and women who have their wives/husband's do this to them.

I am filing for divorce, before he can hopefully and for the return of the money into our account and an order to continue assisting with bills, child support and other necessities such as diapers, mortgage etc.

I probably will not have another update to this for a good long time but so many people wanted to make sure I was going to be OK and with everyone's advice to contact legal aid etc it looks like it hopefully might get better soon!

I also contacted the bank and other bills that are coming up that I won't make and explained the situation. They are somewhat understanding and hopefully I'll be back at work soon to keep current.

Update 2:

I did all the lawyer stuff they needed providing things like bank statements to prove the money situation and everything and we did the filing with the court.

Turns out he did quit his job and before he left tried to make things worse by removing his card from the bills that he could and had the cellphone bill go-to a paper bill instead of paperless and tried a few others but when they wouldn't let him it now makes sense why he cancelled his credit card and mine.

The bill still comes but since those were in his name I guess I don't need to worry about that just yet.

Now the bad news sadly, since they don't know where he is nothing really changes at all and now I have to wait and see what happens.

There is another date over a month away to start the divorce but apparently that's going to become an issue too since he needs to be found or we wait longer again from what I was told.

One final fun thing I'm pretty certain he did but they won't tell me is I had two CPS people showup and inform me of allegations that I cannot take care of my child/provide diapers or food etc.

Once I explained it all to them, and showed them what I had from my lawyer they seemed to just let it be. I guess partners trying to use them as a way to harass the other isn't anything new to them, except they will still be checking in apparently to make sure.

Update 3:

So it's been an extremely rough couple of months and seems to only keep getting worse honestly and I'm sad to say there is no happy ending here. I didn't even want to do an update but so many people seemed to be interested in the original and update.

So where to start, still haven't found him and the legal help I have is really great but they are also very overworked and the resources needed to track him down just take time to get and more time to find him. As a final parting gift it seems he claimed our child on his taxes from last year so he could get that tax credit.

I was hoping we could track him down that way but again sometime that takes time and resources. Which technically since he was the one working and did live with us for over 6 months of the year he is technically entitled to in a legal sense.

The bank was somewhat kind of understanding during the holidays but the calls are getting to the point where I'm fairly certain they will begin foreclosure soonish I really don't know that for certain but when you don't pay a mortgage for 4+ months they get kind of upset and the circumstances don't matter.

Finally managed to get on SNAP for food and it helps a lot but it's crazy how quickly you realize how much food you eat and your kid eats and before when money didn't really matter for necessities like food, soap, water bills and electricity.

I managed to get a job that somewhat works for childcare hours but you quickly start to realize childcare costs as much as you make so it's like working so you can pay you have your kid watched.

Trying to avoid paying all the bills attached to the house I can so I can save up enough to hopefully get us the smallest cheapest apartment around and keep working.

Sorry for the negative update everyone but it's just life I guess. Unless things extremely and drastically change for the better this will be the last update. I'll keep doing my best of course and thanks for all the kind words in the other posts about the other updates.