Newlywed Furious After Discovering Husband Is Paying for Her Engagement Ring Out of Their Joint Account
"I was just taken aback and honestly put off by the fact that he is making me pay for a GIFT he gave to me," the wife wrote on Reddit
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A stock image of an engagement ringA newlywed was shocked and angered to find that her new husband has been using their joint bank account to pay for her engagement ring.
The 28-year-old woman shared her story in a recent post on Reddit's "Am I the A------?" thread, explaining that the discovery has sparked "a huge argument" between the pair. She wrote that when her husband, 30, popped the question, he presented her with a two-carat lab diamond ring that cost around $8,000, which he financed with a payment plan.
They married one month later in a no-frills wedding — as they want to save up to buy a home together — and proceeded to merge their finances. However, the wife soon learned that her spouse was withdrawing funds from their shared account to pay for the engagement ring.
"I was just taken aback and honestly put off by the fact that he is making me pay for a GIFT he gave to me," she recalled of her reaction.
"We have been having some arguments lately and he feels that ring is a wedding expense and it’s only fair that I contribute towards it too, and that as a woman of this day I shouldn’t hesitate to be an equal partner. I call bulls---," she continued, before outlining the reasons why she thinks the situation is not right.
"First, you don’t make the recipient of a gift pay for the gift. An engagement ring is considered a gift in most modern societies even today, and I don’t care if you disagree with that," she wrote. "Second, I’ve unintentionally partially paid for two installments now which makes me a part-owner of the ring."
"If I knew my husband was going to be making me pay for the ring, I wouldn’t have agreed to 'buy' it," she continued. "Mutual consent is essential when a couple is deciding to invest in an asset. Owning a house or a car jointly requires two yeses, and I certainly wouldn’t have said yes to jointly owning a ring he was SUPPOSED to give to me as a gift."
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A stock image of a man and woman working on financesShe said she is so put off by what she described as her husband's "tackiness" in expecting her to help pay for her own ring that she is now demanding that he return it to the store.
"This whole situation has left a very bad taste in my mouth. He expects me to apologize to him because I called his actions tacky and decisions scammy and in bad faith," she wrote, inviting fellow Redditors to weigh in with their opinions.
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Many commenters took issue with the wife's expectation of having separate finances when she has willingly entered into a marriage and merged accounts with her husband.
"When you’re married there is no 'his money' or 'her money' — it’s 'our money.' That’s like the whole thing about being married," one person wrote.
"Receive and give. My husband and I have one joint account. That is it. It isn't who pays for the gift, it's the thought that went into it," added another.
Yet another commenter suggested that the husband was in "a no-win situation" with his wife.
"What he did seems relatively... normal? Buying the kind of ring your partner wants and financing it if you're saving up for a house seems pretty standard, definitely not a 'plot to get back at you,' " they wrote.
"It seems like he's trapped in a no-win situation here," they continued. "If he got you a less expensive ring, it might not be what you feel you deserved, and you'd be upset with him for that. If he spent a chunk from the house savings, you might be upset with him for dipping into that. On a one-month engagement, he didn't have time to finance it by himself before your finances merged, and afterwards all his money becomes your money and is suddenly off-limits for this purpose. What am I missing here?"
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A stock image of an engagement ringRelated: Bride Refuses to Wear Wedding Dress Her Stepsister Handmade for Her
Still, other commenters said they understood the wife's point of view, considering the significance of an engagement ring.
"While it's true that finances merge when you get married, the expectations around significant gifts like engagement rings should be communicated. If OP was under the impression that the ring was a gift from her partner, it's reasonable for her to feel blindsided," the person argued. "It's less about the financial technicality and more about the expectation of what an engagement ring represents and the surprise of discovering you’re indirectly funding your own gift."
They added: "A conversation about how large purchases are handled is clearly needed in this relationship to preclude further misunderstandings like this one."
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