The estate attorney asked me whether my husband had been involved in my mother’s finances before her death. I said no, not once. Then he asked whether my mother had left a will, and I told him she had, but I hadn’t received the final copy yet. He went quiet and said the attorney handling the estate had already contacted him because someone had requested information about the property. I asked who had made the request, and he said my husband’s name was on it. My husband had apparently told them he was helping manage the estate.
The next day I obtained the estate file myself. My mother’s will left the money to me alone, with no conditions and no mention of my husband. Then I found a document showing that he had already received an estimate for the addition and had given the builder my mother’s house plans. The builder assumed he was authorized because my husband told him I had agreed to the project. I confronted my husband, and he admitted he’d already planned the entire addition. He said it would increase the value of our house and that my mother would have wanted us to use the money for the family. Then he admitted he’d also promised his brother that the new room would be his when he came to stay.
I told the builder to cancel everything and told my husband the money was mine to decide how to use. He became angry and said I was treating him like a stranger after twenty-six years of marriage. I told him a stranger wouldn’t have spent someone else’s inheritance before the funeral flowers had even wilted. The estate attorney later confirmed that my husband had no authority over a single dollar of my mother’s estate. I kept the money in a separate account and eventually used part of it to renovate the kitchen—but only after I chose the plans myself. He had already built an entire future with money that wasn’t even in my account yet, and the first decision I made with it was deciding that he didn’t get to make the decisions anymore.
