I am 34 and my husband is 36. We have been married for seven years, and have a five-year-old daughter. Our family life used to be quite stable. Both of us worked, and our combined incomes were enough to cover living expenses and raise our child.
My parents own an apartment they bought many years ago. They kept it as their retirement asset, earning VND7 million (US$271) a month from rental income. When I got married, my parents said they would leave the apartment to me but keep its legal title. I never brought up transferring ownership, because I thought it was the property my parents saved up for their whole lives, and they had every right to keep it for their retirement.
Three years ago, my husband decided to quit his job to start his own company. He said he didn’t want to work for someone else his whole life, and wanted to build his own career to give his wife and child a better life. I was worried but still supported him, thinking that if we worked together, we could overcome any difficulty.
|
Woman struggling with debt. Illustrative photo from Pexels |
In the beginning, his business did quite well. But then the company ran into one problem after another: clients delayed payments, loans became due, and revenues were not enough to cover expenses. He secretly borrowed more money from outside lenders to keep operations going, and only when he could no longer manage did he confess to me that he owed more than VND2 billion.
I was both angry and sympathetic. Even though I was disappointed that he kept things hidden from me, I still believed that a married couple should find a way to solve the problem together. I suggested selling our car, cutting down on expenses, and selling the apartment we are currently living in to pay off part of the debt, after which we would rent a place for a while.
But my husband did not agree. He argued that selling our current apartment wouldn’t solve much because there is still a mortgage on it. Instead, he wants me to talk to my parents and ask them to sell the apartment they are renting out so we could use the money to pay off our debt.
I told my husband that I could not just ask my parents to sell their house to settle a debt he had created. It would be a different story if they offered to help, but I did not want to turn a promise of a future asset into an obligation that must be fulfilled right now.
My husband immediately got angry. He said I was being too calculating: my parents had already said they would give me the apartment, so I’d get it sooner or later. He asked why we shouldn’t sell it now when the family was in trouble, and blamed me for only caring about my parents’ asset and not about my husband and child’s future.
I explained that I had no intention of abandoning him. I am willing to sell our assets, rent another place, and take on extra work to pay off the debt. However, I cannot make decisions on behalf of my parents regarding a property that does not yet belong to me, nor do I want my parents to lose their support system in old age because of our issues.
Since then, the atmosphere at home has been tense. My husband rarely talks to me, frequently loses his temper, and claims that I am not supporting him in the hardest time of his life. Once, when I brought up the need to be transparent about the debts and find a step-by-step repayment plan, he brushed it off, saying I only know how to make things more complicated.
I don’t know what to say to my parents. If they knew their son-in-law was in such deep debt, they might try to help, and even agree to sell the house out of love for their daughter. But I do not want my parents to give up the property meant to support them in old age to clean up the consequences of a business decision that I was never fully informed about.
Should I continue trying to work things out with my husband to repay the debt together, or firmly hold my ground and refuse to ask my parents to sell their house to bail him out? I look forward to readers’ advice.