Husband 'steals' from SAHM wife's bank account to pay for the computer she destroyed.
When this man is angry with his wife, he asks Reddit:
'AITA for taking money from my wife's account to pay for my computer she broke?'
My wife is a stay at home mom. She works hard taking care of our kids and maintaining our home. I do what we have agreed is a fair portion of the housework and all of the yard-work.
She has full access to all of our accounts except for my personal spending account. I put the exact same amount into her personal spending account but I can only deposit not withdraw.
I have a home office but I do not work from home it is just a place I can go to sit and catch up on anything I might need to from work and also play video games or play with my toys.
My wife also has a room that is dedicated to her and her hobbies. I have asked her multiple times to please leave my room alone. I clean it myself. I take my dishes to the kitchen and either wash them or place them in the dishwasher.
I take out my own trash. When I play with my kids in my office I clean up after all of us. When my wife joins me in my office for video games I clean up afterwards. There is quite literally no reason for her to do anything in there when I am not in it. I do not have a lock on my door but I do have my laptop password protected.
I like to line up some of my collection of Lego Minifigs by my screen on my laptop. I like to imagine that Batman and Spider-man are watching me work. I know it is silly but I like it.
For some reason my wife decided to go clean my office. I guess she needed to move my laptop so she closed it. Not all the way because my Minifigs were in the way.
When I came home she told me what happened. The screen was not working at all. I had to get my old monitor out and hook it up so I could check and see if anything else was busted.
It was just the screen. I checked and it would cost about $250 for parts and labor to replace my screen. So I decided to replace the laptop and use the old one with my old monitor for the kids. It was fine other than the non working screen.
The cost to replace my laptop was only $600, Yay Black Friday. So I took $350 from my account and I took $250 from the money I was going to deposit into her personal account for December and I got my new computer.
This will in no way affect our budget for anything other than our own personal side projects and hobbies. I was looking forward to getting myself a new Lego set to work on with my kids over the holidays but now I will have to rebuild one of my old ones with them. Which is also fun.
Well now she is pissed at me because she has to cut back on her fun stuff for December. She likes to have a spa day with her mom for example. I said that I wasn't responsible for my computer being broken and that she 100% was. She said it was an accident and that I should forgive her.
I said I wasn't upset, but that if she felt I should forgive her then I fully forgive her but she still has to help me pay for a new laptop. AITA?
Let's find out.
218APARTMENT98 writes:
YTA. OP also fully admits that it only would have cost $250 to repair the screen, and the computer works just fine otherwise.
He's the one that chose to go for a full replacement rather than a repair that would have fit much better in their budget right now.
I also have to confess, I do not understand the 'she has to be financially responsible for what she did' stuff. I really don't. If we are looking at things on a technical level, sure, she accidentally did damage. He's 'right' about that.
But I simply cannot imagine living in such a tit for tat, score keeping kind of marriage. I want a partner in life, not a parent or a manager. I want someone who has my back, not someone who is keeping score.
It was an accident. She didn't do it maliciously. And she's not a child that needs to 'learn a lesson.' Do people really live in such 'you owe me/I'm going to get you back' marriages? That sounds really awful to me. Things break. People make mistakes. Accidents happen. Keeping score like this just seems really sad to me.
OP is also complaining about things like not being able to buy LEGO this year. Well, he absolutely could have if he didn't decide to use this as an opportunity to upgrade his computer.
That isn't on his wife AT ALL. That was HIS choice. It really seems to me that he chose that route to really prove a point to his wife, and that's just not a healthy recipe for a happy marriage.
IMO, OP seems more concerned about being 'right' and making his wife learn a lesson than he is with how attitudes like that affect the marriage overall. If you're treating marriage like a set of scales that always has to be fair, you're already failing. Wouldn't it be so much better to say 'I know you didn't mean to.
S*it happens. Let's get it fixed and move on' than making it into some object lesson and make her 'pay' (financially or emotionally) for her mistake?
IDK. I understand why people think OP is right, but I think that attitude of tit for tat is just destructive in a marriage.
saronthiawincester writes:
Completely fair OP! Just a thought, as someone with low vision who has accidentally closed her laptop with a black pen on the keyboard. Not hard enough to break the screen mind you, but still.
I know Minifigs. They're small, yes, but brightly colored? Especially Spidry, you know? This doesn't feel like an accident to me.
You'd had to either close the laptop really hard to break the screen, at the slightest bit of resistance, from the Minifigs.. or she tried to get in, couldn't, got pissed and slammed the screen down in frustration/anger? Take that as you will. Ran through my mind reading your post. NTA either way.
pandapandamonium writes:
OP is NTA and has every right to have her pay the $250. That's the cost of the damage she caused and cost of putting OP's laptop into the same state it was before she broke it.
But the rest of what you wrote? Ummm hell no, she doesn't need to pay the entire cost ($600) since it's OP's choice to upgrade and buy a new laptop instead of fixing the screen in the old one ($250).
Accountability of her actions means fixing it to the state it was before. What you're suggesting is punitive damages that are petty and vindictive. OP handled this perfectly.