Who is wrong in th is situation?

He is wrong. He should not have access to any of your accounts as you should not have access to his. What you two do is go to the bank and sign the accounts to a POD that's pay on death so either one of you can obtain the funds should one of you die.

I have been married for over twenty years an have had no financial arguements because of this.

You are right in wanting to protect your investments and income. The real problem here is that your husband needs help in learning how to manage finances. There are programs that can help him. My guess is he will not be willing to agree that he needs help. This is a serious problem because you are married to him and share a home and bills and expenses with him. It must be a strain on you! I would do as you are doing now, keeping my money away from his grasp. This is not good for the marriage but what else can you do? Him blowing the money is not good either. So the obvious is he needs to take classes or something that will teach him how to manage money better and then you both have to agree to work through the finances as a team. There is no reason why he has to alienate you from the finances unless he does so to hide from you on what he does with the money and that is not good. Good luck to you hun.

I would think the husband is wrong because he sucks at money managing and obviously the wife is trying to gain a secure future. They need to go to counselling and agree on something. They need to communicate to eachother and/or possibly seperate their funds because the husband is just going to spend spend spend and they both will have nothing. The husband must understand his problem and get help to learn how to manage money. What the wife could do is try to put extra money in an account called a "CD" at the bank which lets her put money in but not take money out for a certain amount of years and it'll builds interest and gets bigger.

I would never have gotten into this situation in the first place.

By all means, set up separate savings and, since it seems necessary, also separate checking accounts with ONLY the wife's name on both. Husband is FREE to do as he chooses with HIS bank accounts.

Make a very basic budget -- rent or mortgage payments, utilities, phone (if shared), taxes & insurance (property, car, whatever), groceries -- and post it prominently. There should be a monthly figure (pro-rate tax & insurance fees) which must be met. Then meet it. Since you say husband refuses to stick to a budget, the wife may need to consider moving to a place she can afford on her own. Or the husband, if he places any value on his marriage, could get therapy to deal with his spending issues (among others!).

This is far beyond a right/ wrong situation. Stealing, even or especially from your spouse, is a crime. Constantly overdrawing a bank account borders on criminal.

This woman needs first to protect herself financially, and then, as you say husband can be emotionally abusive, she also needs to strengthen herself against that.

If the husband was accustom to managing finances for six years and the wife sat back and watched him make a mess of things, she either didn't care or was scared to approach him about the financial disaster he was creating.

There is nothing wrong with separate finances.

If the guy is abusive, why are you with him?

It's clear from what you've said that the husband is wrong. The 6 years prior being such a failure is evidence to the fact that he should relinquish financial control. The wife should not allow the husband access on principle.

There are so many types of abuse, and economic control can also be a type of abuse. He could say you are being abusive because you are not giving him what he needs, but in truth he is putting your finances in danger. You could go to couple's counseling where he will learn the ugly truth, he needs help with his compulsive shopping and learning about the abuse he is inflicting in the relationship with his spending habits. Is there gambling in the ecuation?

He's wrong and she's a fool for putting up with him.