Just before we found out that my Husband was diagnosed with ADHD we decided that it was a mutual goal of ours to buy a house by the end of this year. Now that we know he has ADHD, I'm contemplating whether or not buying a house is a good decision for us. I know it's a huge responsibility and a huge commitment. If I don't feel like I can rely on him or trust him to get things done at all (like now), I can see it being a big potential problem down the road. I also know that it would likely mean more responsibility for me and I already feel very overwhelmed. On the other hand, we hate having to deal with a landlord, our current place is too small, and our upstairs neighbor is so noisy and rude. He is a musician and he plays his music pretty late most of the time. I don't think that either of us currently makes enough money to be able to afford to buy a house on our own so I don't think I will be able to just buy a house on my own. I know that I won't be able to continue living in our current place that much longer though because it depresses me and stresses me out so much. I hate not feeling like I have enough privacy and quiet time to myself. We can maybe consider renting a house, but the rent would be a lot more expensive than if we bought a house and we wouldn't have the freedom to do whatever we want with it. It also seems like most places in our area are apartments with upstairs or downstairs neighbors so we'd likely just run into the same issue of having to deal with a lot of noise on a regular basis. Since I'm contemplating divorce right now due to our problems, I'm very concerned on what would happen with the house if we got a divorce eventually.
Does anyone here with an ADHD spouse own a house? If so, what is it like? Do you regret the decision or is it going well?
I wouldn't buy a house now if
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
I wouldn't buy a house now if you're actively contemplating divorce. It will make things very complicated if you do end up divorced.
As for the ADHD aspect, my husband likes doing handyman-type things but he's very messy, and so home ownership has been a mixed experience for us. Also, anything associated with money has been very challenging for us, because my husband has been unemployed for many years of our marriage.
Thanks. I do think you're
Submitted by mrsg13 on
Thanks. I do think you're right. My Husband enjoys doing handyman things as well. Fortunately, we're in therapy for our problems now and my Husband is about to get on medication so hopefully things will begin to improve soon for us. If we're still uncertain and we can't handle living in our current place later this year then I think it might be a better idea for us to try renting a house even if it is a few hundred dollars more for rent.
I would not buy a house -
Submitted by By my fingernails on
I would not buy a house - especially if it would be together.
I bought my house just before husband proposed, and so the home is solely owned by me and I'm the only person on the mortgage. Every time I contemplate divorce that gives me GREAT comfort.
My ADD partner was part of the reason that I bought the house I did - we were clearly on the path to a committed relationship and he had so many ideas of what he was going to do to the 70 year old house with nothing that needed to be done in order to move in but a lot of deferred maintenance that we were clearly going to need to tackle over time... 5 years later... Couple issues - he's never been able to come up with the money to do the things he said he was going to do (due to hiding / lying about debt as well as under-employment and unemployment issues for the past 3 years) and when he starts a project he can't finish it, which is why our sunroom has been under construction for years and has been frozen at 90% complete for over a year now.
I had someone who could finish it out to the house in December, and hubby didn't like him, I told husband that he had a couple months to find someone else and then I was going to move forward. He found someone else (who I don't like) who is cheaper, and then that person disappeared. So I reminded him twice at the end of February that he had until the end of February and then I was taking charge of the process and using the person that I wanted to use to complete the project. Well, as of March 1st I've been in contact with my guy and he's likely starting work this Thursday the 13th. Of course, husband JUST got back in contact with this other guy - how magical the timing is! - and so now he's arguing with me again about how much we should be spending, etc. etc...
Wanted to give you a very concrete example of a husband who is handy and likes to do projects and what the pitfalls / problems can be.
You can plan on spending 10% of the value of the home on maintenance on an annual basis - given that, I would recommend finding another place to rent the costs a little more to retain flexibility, to improve your current living situation, and to avoid the ADD symptoms that are exacerbated in the course of home ownership. As long as you are with an ADD partner, I would keep your finances as separate as possible and make sure that you are always able to financially provide for yourself. A home is a HUGE commitment and I will never own a home with my husband. If he ever decides that he wants to live somewhere else I will let him buy the next house by himself, and if I ever decide to move I'll be able to pay for the down payment and mortgage on my own, without him. I will never own the place where I live with him to keep things cleaner in the event that we are not together in the future.
So basically you're saying I
Submitted by mrsg13 on
So basically you're saying I should NEVER buy a house together with my ADHD Husband? Even if he gets on medication and gets his symptoms more under control? I can see that being a problem that could potentially lead to divorce. Buying a house someday has always been a huge goal of mine and I already resent my Husband a bit because we're not going to be able to buy a house as we originally planned this year anymore. It is really tough having to put aside my goals because my Husband has a disorder and it makes me feel rather depressed. If I stick with my current job, it will really be awhile before I'd be able to afford to buy a house on my own and I haven't had any luck finding a better paying job.
After reading endless threads
Submitted by By my fingernails on
After reading endless threads and comments on this forum about how much trouble ADD/ADHD folks have with money management, I have set up my financial life to be as separate from my husband's as he will tolerate. I am a financial planner and financial security is the most important thing to me. I didn't realize that until after we were married and his hidden debt came to light and nearly destroyed our lives. He was a financial planner when we got married, so I naively thought that we'd never fight about money. Ha! He's on career #3 and job #4 in 3 years, definitely is not the financially astute person I thought I married. (He only had one job and was pursuing a career in it the whole time we dated, were engaged, all the way through the wedding - for a little over 3 years - boy did he flip on me after we were married!)
I spoke to a counselor in great depth about whether or not to stay with him. She helped me realize that once that trust around money was broken, it will never go back to 100% - ever, for the rest of our lives. There will always be a piece / a part of me that has a nagging fear in the back of my head about his finances. And I needed to come to terms with being married to someone who I will never trust 100% financially, because if I couldn't, then I also shouldn't be married to him. He's had a really hard time accepting that no matter what he does, it will never be at 100% ever again. I've told him that those are just part of the consequences. I'm still debating about whether or not to put a post-nup together... something that he will very much resist (though at one point in time when he knew how close he was to losing me to did agree to look into a post-nup, but he won't remember that now).
Picture this: medication helps to get symptoms under control. You feel a profound sense of relief that your life can move forward again, so you start to move forward with a home purchase together. Turns out that it's kind of a stressful experience, triggering a worsening of ADHD symptoms - triggering a more disappointed response from you - leading to continually stronger and more out of control ADHD symptoms, until you decide to count pills and realize that he's stopped taking his meds... now imagine if you've already purchased the house. Now you're stuck, literally. Because due to the ADHD symptoms he's not going to take responsibility or control of the situation, you'll have to. But you can't make him stay on his meds, and you can't help the inevitable stresses that come with home ownership and the unexpected expenses and how much they trigger ADHD symptoms and cause an ADHDer to flood with being overwhelmed. My first unexpected expense (again, I paid for by myself) was a sewer back up that caused some of the cement floor of the garage and the driveway to have to be dug up. $4,000. That was after putting 20% down on the home just 5 weeks previously.
Just a few months ago our fridge quit. It was old, so not a total surprise. Again, I had the savings to purchase a new refrigerator. If I didn't take responsibility for having savings (in an account with only my name on it) we would not have been able to buy a new fridge. I'm okay with the fact that he doesn't have all of the material things he wants so that I can have financial security. I've made it clear that as soon as he starts earning it he can spend it however he wants. (Though he can't really as he still has debts to pay off from his money lies.)
If I had not had that cushion, it would have caused never ending fights and we would've gone into debt - something I can't live with unless it's student loan or mortgage debt. I realized that my husband always looks to me to fix finances because he is not capable of managing them. (He was going to go back to school and wanted ME to take out loans - I told him absolutely not because it was HIS brain and HIS development - so it was HIS responsibility to pay for it and take out loans in HIS name and he blew up at me, got his parents to pay for a semester of school - this is post-undergrad, by the way - and then quit after that semester for a whole variety of reasons... his level of entitlement is truly astounding.)
Also, if you're so on the edge financially, (not being able to buy a house this year like you hoped / planned) I would not recommend buying a house. I would recommend saving up a 20% down payment by yourself and giving it time to see what happens with the ADHD and what happens in your relationship. If you think that putting aside buying a house this year makes you depressed, wait until you're either stuck in a home you can't afford with a significant other who cannot complete the handyman task and now that you have no money you can't pay someone else to fix it... or handing over the keys for a short sale or foreclosure.
I say all of this so that you have a sense of who I am and my values, as that skews my response, but I think that the more you read the more you'll find examples of non-ADHD spouses who were taken advantage of financially to the point of near financial ruin... but the process is slow and creeps up on you until you realize the full magnitude and then you realize that everything is destroyed - credit score, living situation, relationship, etc. I have set MASSIVE boundaries around finances and will never compromise on them for self-preservation purposes. So my recommendation, as part of trying to answer the question of whether or not to stay in the relationship, is to ask yourself if you can provide for yourself if things continue to go sideways, or if they move forward in a positive direction but then slide sideways or backwards in the future. That's the piece I would work on rather than a house. A home purchase is a huge deal and until you can both save money I wouldn't buy a house with someone with ADHD. Especially when you're already contemplating divorce.
By my fingernails, thanks for
Submitted by mrsg13 on
By my fingernails, thanks for responding to my post. It does seem like you have a very negative viewpoint due to your unfortunate experience with your Husband's ADHD. I'm really sorry that you went through all of that. Money is also very important to me, but my Husband and I have been more fortunate to not have a lot of fights about money. It hasn't been as big of a problem in our life as it seems is the case in many other ADHD relationships. My Husband doesn't ever make any purchases without asking me first even though we have a joint account that we both have access to. He has let me maintain full control over our finances which have prevented many problems from occurring. The only couple fights we have had over money were due to him making irresponsible mistakes with our car that cost us money. He got about 4 parking tickets in the past 2 years for parking on the wrong side of the street on a street sweeping day which angered me. We did accept Health Insurance at his job without fully looking into it and it ended up costing us waaaay too much which wasn't a smart decision. We ended up dropping it and going with cheaper insurance. He also backed into a truck which didn't cause that much damage, but we are going to have to replace one of our tail light coverings (which is $50-$100). My Husband has had a steady job throughout our entire relationship (almost 4 years) and he has been at his current job for 2 years. He actually makes more money than I do and has a higher ranked position, a supervisor position while I have a support position. If anything, that demonstrates that he doesn't let his ADHD get in the way of the quality of his work at least. We currently have about $8,500 in our joint savings account which isn't bad (even though it isn't at 20% yet). Unfortunately we both still have student loan debt and a car payment to pay which slows down the amount we can save considerably. I understand that a lot of people here have a more negative experience with their partner's ADHD, but that doesn't mean everyone has the same experience. I do think ADHD affects everyone and their relationships at different levels. I am not saying that I want to jump into buying a house with my Husband or anything, but only we can really tell based on our situation if that's the best decision for us. We started seeing a pretty good therapist who seems to understand ADHD quite a bit and he is starting on medication this week. Based on his history and willingness to try, it doesn't seem like he'll have a problem sticking to taking the right medication. The one thing that helps me to feel more positive and hopeful is the fact that my Husband accepts that his ADHD negatively affects our relationship and he wants to try to improve.