Hi Jen, you are right, sadly we are all familiar with the emotions you experience right now. It is pretty common for addicts to replace one substance/behavior with another because the gap ***** to be filled. Meaning the gap that lead to the addiction in the first place. A lot of substance abusers and addicts turn to gambling unfortunately. As to your legal situation, Michigan is not a community property state as far as I know. So if you get a legal separation, you are no longer responsible for his debts. But you need some kind of legal advice to sort out the details and to make sure you do everything the right way. Like Adele said, the first visit w an attorney is usually free so you can get the most important questions answered. It would be a good idea to get a hold of the documents you will need to fill out and file. Some are available online and sometimes you can find the whole package in a book store. That will give you an idea what you are dealing with before you talk to a lawyer. The health insurance is important and a tricky issue. I think that depends largely on the insurance your hb has, maybe just call them and ask if you can stay on his plan in case of a legal separation. Do you have any idea how your hb will react? Can you stay in the condo if push comes to shove? From my own experience I can tell you that I should have had all my ducks in a row but hindsight is always better, right? In the meantime, make sure that you protect yourself. Take his name off your account if you have one, same with credit cards. Change your pin number for the ATM, good idea to do this frequently. Sign up for credit score monitoring so you know what is going on, you can do this for both of you without him knowing. Who pays the bills? It should be you to make sure your essentials are covered. And again, this is just my own opinion: it is not good to make decisions when your emotions are running amok. First and foremost protect yourself financially because that takes a big chunk out of the daily stress. Think about what you want your future to look like and what you are willing to accept or not. F&Fs need to be strong to take on the addiction and knowledge is power. But you already know this from your hb’s prior struggle. You can do this, I’m sure. Call us legend for we are many. I wish you the best! 🙂
