My Husband Lent Our Money to His Mother Instead of Prioritizing Our Family

Mommy issues are a very real thing and many people, men and women, suffer from them. While every case is different, on many occasions, men have a hard time setting boundaries with their mothers, creating rifts with their wives. Instead of letting yourself fume with anger, be patient and show understanding. At the end of the day, everything can be fixed if you work hard enough.

A car accident created a whole new problem.

I was in a car accident, and the car I primarily drove was totaled. Despite having another car, it’s not reliable—a 2-door, which isn’t great for getting 2 toddlers in and out of a car. My husband primarily drives that car because he works full-time, while I go to college online and am a stay-at-home mom. We planned on buying another car as soon as we had the money.

Once we had enough, we realized that we couldn’t take $7.5k out of the ATM all at once because our account has a $500 limit on ATM withdrawals. So, my husband transferred the money to his mother's bank so she could get the money or a cashier's check-out for us. She is a business owner, and payday came around, and she was short on pay for her employees by $7k.

Turns out, she and my husband decided (without my input) to use the $7.5k to cover payroll, and that she would pay us back with interest when she gets the money. Well, they didn’t tell me, and my husband kept declining every car I sent him.

I had 2 conversations with his mom about "I don't know why he keeps declining every car I send him. He's not even justifying his vetoes. I don’t think he understands how much of my independence has been taken away because I don’t have a car. I can’t take the kids anywhere they need to go. We have the money. I don’t understand why we’re not seriously inquiring about cars and buying one."

Meanwhile, we really didn’t have the money, and they both knew why he was stalling and didn’t tell me. The fact that they made the plan together, didn’t consult me, and then hid it from me for a week really enrages me. It’s now been 15 days, and she still hasn’t paid us back. He says she’s waiting for a bank loan to come through. I feel like at this point, she’s more of his wife than I am.

He said his plan was to have his mom get the money out for us to buy a used car at a small lot. We use an online bank that doesn’t offer checks and doesn’t have any physical locations in our state. He chatted with the bank support, and they said that the easiest way to get that much money out would be transferring the money to a different account and pulling it out of a physical location (I saw the message receipts, so he couldn’t lie about that).

A day after he transferred the money, his mom mentioned that she was $7k short on payroll, and he asked if she had any money coming in because she runs an EI business and the state and county are constantly late getting checks out to the smaller service providers. He told her he’d lend her the money if she pays it back + an extra $1.5k.

The final update. Spoiler alert: It's positive!

She did apply for a loan a while ago and was approved days before this happened, so my husband figured the money would be back within the business week and that I wouldn’t even notice he lent it to her. He only told me a week later because he realized he was not getting the money back as quickly as he thought.

He originally thought she would pay it back, and he would surprise me by saying “We can look for cars in the $9k price range now” just days later. He said he realized that he messed up and should have talked to me about it and if he could take it back he would.

Finally, we got all of the money back and interest and bought a car today.

Relationships with mothers-in-law can be challenging, and many women struggle. For example, this woman lost it when her MIL referred to her home as her son's.