My Brother Threatened My Family. My Husband’s Solution to “Keep Us Safe” Is Worse.

Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!) My husband inherited a home from his parents. When my disaster of a brother and his family were left homeless due to some extremely poor decisions, my family put a lot of pressure on us to allow them to move into my husband’s “spare” house. My husband was understandably reluctant, but I buckled under pressure and begged him to help out. He agreed under very strict conditions. He insisted that there was a contract, and he said he would not hesitate to throw my brother and his family out if there were issues. And, boy, were there. Within two months, my husband had evicted my brother and submitted a claim for nearly $100,000 in property damages. My parents eventually paid that rather than allow the matter to go to court, but in the process, my brother turned up at our home and threatened my husband and our children. My husband called 911 from the doorstep. My brother headed off and was picked up by county police and arrested on a DUI. It’s a mess, which I am all too familiar with. What I didn’t expect is that my husband bought a gun in case my brother came back (he’s a blowhard, not violent). He also handed me a postnuptial agreement with detailing a number of conditions under I which I would forego any rights to our children, including if I ever allow them to be in their uncle’s company again. I signed in the moment because, while I felt hurt, I love my husband very much, and I do not want our marriage to end. A few weeks later, though, and I am starting to feel really hurt. I want the gun out of my home. My husband isn’t open to couple’s therapy at the present time. He is still really angry with me because I talked over his objections about letting my brother move in and pressured him to do something he thought was a terrible idea. How do I save this situation? I get that he’s angry, I even admit that I was wrong and knew I was wrong, but I feel like I am paying a very high price for trying to help someone I love, and the fallout of that kindness has been devastating. Before we get to logistics, I wonder how you and your husband are each feeling about your marriage. A marriage requires two people owning their part and working back toward each other. You’ve done that—you’ve admitted you pushed your husband into something he warned against, and that his anger is earned. But has he done anything comparable? Or has he used his anger as license to extract something from you no loving partner would ask for? That postnup is concerning: It’s an agreement that threatens to take your own children from you if you ever allow them to be around their uncle. That’s leverage aimed at the most vulnerable thing in your life, handed to you in the aftermath of a terrifying event when you weren’t in a state to negotiate anything, and it sounds as though you didn’t. It also puts you in an impossible position, policing your children’s relationship with extended family under threat of losing them yourself. People who love their partners don’t reach for that, no matter how terrifying the circumstances. Please see a family law attorney about whether it’s enforceable. Provisions like this are unlikely to survive court scrutiny, especially given the duress under which you signed. And please see a therapist, with or without him, to understand how “I love him” and “he threatened to take my children” ended up in the same sentence without alarm bells going off. The next step is to talk with your husband about getting the gun secured or out of the house. There can be no negotiation around something so deadly with young children running around. If he won’t secure it or get rid of it, you’ll have learned something very important about the man you married and the state of your marriage. And finally, you need to have a serious conversation with your parents. They pressured you into this disaster and then let your brother detonate your marriage. Tell them plainly: If you ever push me into something that isn’t in my own family’s best interest again, I’m done—with the pressure and potentially with contact. Your brother is their responsibility, not yours, and they need to know you won’t risk your marriage or your children for him again. Even if he and his family are homeless. (Which, if your parents had $100,000 to spend fixing up your house, they didn’t have to be, which is the root of all your problems.) “No” is a complete sentence. You made a mistake. A bad one. But, it should be forgivable. What your husband is doing makes me think there’s something else going on behind the scenes. Keep talking about it and see if you can figure out what actually set him off. I never cared about getting married, but I wasn’t opposed to it. So when my boyfriend proposed, we decided to go for it. We each took on about half the responsibility for organizing the wedding, but I think I was pretty reasonable about compromise when he really wanted something. My only hard-and-fast rule was that he would not rub cake in my face at the reception.

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