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My bipolar alcoholic husband relapsed 2 months ago. I wrote about it here before. I removed myself with kids from the house. Now I found out he is smoking crack. Never used drugs when we were married. I am terrified. I know this is the end. Crackaddicts commit fraud, steal, sell the things. YestERDAY when i was checking online my credit card statements I saw that my 12,000 dollar card was maxed out. He obvioulsy stole the codes from out family computer because I have the card in my wallet. We are still officially married but living separately. I still have belongings in the house but I am terrified to go in. He is violent while i have spoken on the phone. Probably having some type of drug induced psychosis.
I need help. I need my things out of the house and my name off of everything. Where to start? What to do first? Should I call to police and go with police to get my belongings from the house. Tell my husband is high on crack in our house.Then what to do wit the credit card issue? I am afraid he will be oredring credit cards on my name.
I am absolutely freaked out. Since he has chosen to abuse drugs I doubt he will get any better. But how I can get some of my belongings out, how to file divorce we have two little girls.
it si a mess, i need advice where to start. I will not be going back to him but need to resolve the financial mess not to be responsible for his damage.
So many of us have experienced financial catastrophies due to addiction.
If it were me, I would contact the police first. This will help document things for any future incidents in court.
Try contacting any of the supports in your town for an abused women's shelter / services.They can help with an action and safety plan..
If you can afford a lawyer...I'd get one...
One thing I wish I had done ...is keep a little notebook in my purse and every time something happened with my A..I should have kept a log...because when things got dicey in court...my memory was foggy about what happened when. If I had to do it over again, I would keep a log or a diary of day to day incidents...Plus, I have found that my memory goes down the tubes when I am under stress...especially stress like this!
I took out a loan for my lawyer...and am now paying for that loan monthly...it stung because I'm so broke...but it was worth it...
I agree protect yourself 100x over. I completely agree with Reprof that you need to contact the shelters around town and find out what your rights are and so on. Then you can make better choices on what your next move is .. first thing first and the first thing is you need to protect yourself financially.
The reality is it doesn't matter what kind of addict they are and they don't have to be drinking or drugging to cause financial devastation they just need to be active in the mindset. The disease of addiction takes everything away from them. So you are already not dealing with a rational person so don't try and pretend you are.
Knowledge is empowerment .. find out everything you can about services in your area. Something I have learned to do when talking to someone is ask them .. if you were me what would you tell yourself or what services (in this case) would you do first .. I have found that opens a whole new wave of information that I can act upon or not .. I am responsible for my own actions and choices .. it gives me a new direction to look in though and that helps a great deal. I always ask nurses at the hospital if they had to go to someone who would they pick.
Keeping the facts straight WOW .. that is priceless!! Soooo important especially when dealing with someone who is just over the top. So sorry you are going through this it does get better, you have to take care of yourself and your kids.
Hugs P :)
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Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.- Maya Angelo
Remember that you do not have to accomplish everything right away. You can wait until he's not home to go into your house and get your things. (It sounds as if it would still be wise to have a policeman with you. But you don't have to do it right away -- you can wait hours or days until you know he should be out.)
I believe it's best to consult a lawyer about the credit card. It may involve canceling the card. You may also want to protect any bank accounts you have.
You can call the three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and Transunion) and get them to place a hold on your credit accounts so that no company can issue a credit card to you (or to someone else pretending to be you) without you being notified and giving explicit permission.
I imagine your bank will also tell you how you can separate your accounts and make sure yours can only be accessed by you. You'll probably want to change your passwords for everything you had.
I hope you can also get to some face-to-face Al-Anon meetings. There's wonderful support there and many people who have been through the same things. Hugs. Keep on taking good care of yourself.
Yes call and "freeze" your credit today. Open your own accounts, stop putting your money in the joint account. Legally the bank can't close it without both signatures but my ex did do that.
Get the police to go with you, tell them he "could" be on crack as you know for sure he is using.
Protect yourself and keep safe.
I can relate to this Tuesday. This is all so overwhelming. You have to break this down in to smaller steps and work on it some each day until the picture starts clearing up. First things first, call the police and work on separating yourself from him financially to prevent further wreckage. None of this is going to get solved in a day. I know it would seem like you have sooooo much to do right away now, but it can all get done bits at a time.
I went through this and it was very frustrating to separate everything. Even a couple years later I was still finding my name forged on financial documents and such. I was able to separate most things fairly quickly, even though he begged me to not turn his cell phone off. You know what the reward for that was? A purposeful overuse of minutes and a 600 dollar phone bill that he refused to pay of course. So...separate everything you can but do 1 thing each day. Perhaps even make a list of everything and just check off as you go. This will help you stay focused and not get so overwhelmed.
Definitely, call the police and tell them you need assistance getting your stuff out of the house and tell them about the drugs. They are more likely to help you if they know of the potential danger. Please protect yourself. Call the women's shelter if there is one - they can advise you on such things and they do it for free.
