will this be a safe action?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-14-2005
will this be a safe action?
3
Sun, 09-04-2005 - 6:57pm

My 19 yr old dd lives at home goes to a community college and works part time. My husband who controls the money, (I work FT, but don't see much of it) has attempted to control her money too. He says he is trying to help by offering to "deposit" it for her (she has an account at the same bank we have our accounts at and also that is where both my husband and I work), and he also checks her account balance and questions her "spending" whenever he sees withdrawals, etc.

He is seeing a psychiatrist for OCD and this issue of his looking at our daughter's bank account was brought up before in one of his sessions. I had asked my husband to bring this up at his next session and see what his doctor thought of this. My husband said he would if only to humour me, since he felt the psychiatrist would agree with him. Well to his surprise the psychiatrist sided with me as well. Like a typical abuser he said he would stop interfering but that only lasted 2 months and here he is at it again. My daughter was quite upset about this and told him that she had it under control and he should stop harassing her about it. He of course immediately said he wasn't, and it started to turn into an argument so she walked away.

When she mentioned this to me, I told her the best bet would be for her to close the account she has at our bank and just open one at an entirely different bank, where he can't access the account.

My concern is that he will flip out when he finds out and I am concerned that he will come down hard on my 19 yr old dd, and I am wondering what to do to prepare for his reaction.

I don't know what to do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Avatar for shloimele
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-28-2005
Mon, 09-05-2005 - 1:26am

Hi,

This problem sounds familiar to me because my husband also likes to control our bank acounts. My dauther does not have her own bank account yet but I wonder from time to time what will happen when she does.
About your problem. I was thinking that maybe your daughter just should not close the account at the bank and live some money there so your husband will have something to control and parallel to that she can open another bank account and keep it only for herself. If he founds out and gets angry about it than maybe she can tell him why she did it and show him that she is capable of taking care of her money.
If your husband agrees to go to therapy that is a good thing so maybe he will learn to deal with this over therapy.

take care

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-15-2004
Mon, 09-05-2005 - 2:17am
Safe? I am not sure. No one really can know his reaction. But, if this were my dd, i woudl absolutely encourage her to close her account & open her own, that he cannot access. She is an adult & he has NO right, as he has no right to do it to you, to try to control her in this way. I would hope that she is strong enough, & had not lived under his tyranny long enough, or seen how he treats you as a woman, to have overcome the beleif that being treated like this is ok. But living under him for 19 yrs ... i cant imagine that some of it hasnt ingrained itself, even if in the deep recesses of her mind, that this is ok, & that she deserves to be treated this way.

Photobucket

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2003
Tue, 09-06-2005 - 2:19pm

I agree with R.

CL-Blueliner4