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I'm so upset with my husband I can barely control myself right now. My husband and I have been separated for 3 weeks after he assaulted me. He has DUI charges pending and he has court in two months but the police said he could take our car for now because it's marital property and I could get it later if his license is suspended in March. The car he left in is registered in both our names. It's primarily his car but it was financed with me as the buyer and him as a cosigner. It has always been insured in my name only because he has 4 DUIs and it would have cost a fortune to put him on the insurance. I know. Very stupid of me but there's a reason I attend Al-Anon. The insurance was going to be canceled for non payment tomorrow. I'm completely broke since I've been paying the bills on my own. I have no idea where he's been staying but I heard he's been sleeping in the car. I've been telling him for the past week I was going to take the plates off the car today if he didn't get insurance in his name or give me money to pay the premium. He's been avoiding my calls and text so I had to go to his job today since I have no idea where he stays now. I really didn't want to but I had no choice. When I got there he said I was harassing him and trying to get him fired. He was telling his coworkers how crazy I am. I did my best to remain calm and asked him to prove he has insurance or give me the keys to the car so I could park it somewhere safe until I get insurance. He showed me a printout from geico with his name on it. He wouldn't hand me the paper because he said I was acting crazy and I might tip it up. Stupid me I didn't look at the coverage dates. I should have known there was a reason he held it far away from me. I came home and canceled my insurance. I checked his email later and he had one from geico saying he had canceled the scheduled payment on a policy that wasn't scheduled to begin until 2/1. I can't get insurance back in my name until payday a week from now. He drives drunk everyday. I have no idea where he's at. I'm freaking out because he has accidents often and the car is in my name so I'll be liable. He's very irresponsible when he drinks so he doesn't care that he's driving uninsured or putting both of us at great risk. I'm so angry at him for doing this to me and I'm angry at myself for not insisting he hand me the insurance card so I could look at it. Everyday he stoops lower and I shouldn't be suprised at this point by anything he does.
Alcoholics really live in crazytown, don't they? And they drag us there with them if we're not careful.
I don't pretend to be an insurance agent, but I did find some things out about insurance after I got hit by a drunk driver. (Thankfully, I was not injured). Since the alcoholic's chaos tends to infect our thinking, it's worth checking out your reality with an insurance agent. You can call your company without giving your name. And/or you could ask the police. But I believe that you cannot be held liable for his driving without insurance. The car is registered in his name too, as you say. If it were in your name alone, I believe you could report to the police that he was driving your car without your permission. But in this situation, the police actually gave permission for the car to go to him for now. Of course it is illegal for him to drive without insurance, as well as extremely unwise. But I believe that is on his head, not on yours -- as well it should be. When the guy who hit my car turned out to have no insurance, the police arrested him on the spot. Who knows, maybe that was a consequence that led him to go into recovery down the line. So maybe everything is happening as it should in showing your husband what his bad choices lead to.
Whatever happens, we need our own recovery and road out of crazytown. Do you have meetings and a sponsor? I hope you'll get all the support you can and take good care of yourself.
Is there anything preventing you from going to his work without his knowledge and taking the tags off and turning them into Department of Motor Vehicles? He can't drive a car with no tags. You could also get it towed, but that costs money.
I went to his job yesterday to get the plates. He parks the car directly in front of his office window and came running out as soon as I pulled up to prevent me from doing anything to the car. We have a history of domestic violence so I try not to upset him too much when we are alone. We were alone in back of the building. This was when when he showed me the fake insurance card. I left thinking it was insured. After finding out last night there is no insurance I decided I would ask for police to accompany me to get the plates and prevent it turning violent. The police looked up his information and informed me that hs license is currently suspended so there is no way he could get insurance. This was another lie he told me. He said he was given a temporary license to use until his court date in March for DUI and I believed him because our state does that sometimes. He actually showed me the license the police gave back to him so I had no reason to doubt it. The officer today advised me that taking the plates was probably not the best course of action since he is irresponsible and will probably drive it anyway and then the car will be impounded and cost me a fortune to get out. He recommended that I get a new key made from the delearship and just come take the car when I am able to get the insurance back. He said it was simple and all I had to do was call the dealership and they would look up my information and make me a new key. He told me I would have no liabilty if he had an accident and I would only have to worry about paying for the car if he totaled it. That sounded like a good idea so I left the plates on the car and went home. I called the dealership and they said they can't make a key without the car being there. It is a new car with the push start and it has to be programmed so I would have to pay to have it towed to the dealership and then pay $300 for a new key. Ughh. I can't afford any of this and now I wish I would have just taken the plates while I had the police there. I can't think of any solution that I can afford to do right now. I guess I am going to just have to wait until he goes to court in March, if he shows up, and hope he goes to jail and take the car then.I'm going to have to find a way pay for the insurance in case he crashes it. This car is a huge financial burden and I just want to do a voluntary repossession even though it will destroy my credit. I'm so angry at him for putting me in this position and not caring what he is doing to me or himself. And I'm angry at myself for being dumb enough to finance a car in my name for him. I'm so tired of all the insanity he brings into our lives and I just want to be done with it all.
Reading your story reminds me of about the place that I was in this time last year. Not exactly the same but I can so relate to the being angry about the position he has put you in and the hurt that you feel because he doesn't seem to care. At that time, I just tried to take things one day at a time, one step at a time. I did a lot of venting and reading here and leaned on the people in my life who understood. The book Getting Them Sober also gave me lots of resolve to take care of me.
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"Just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all seems hopeless." - Dave G Llewellyn
