Childfree Woman Threatens Divorce When Her Husband Reveals He Has Two Kids & Wants To Fight For Custody Of Them
The news of his secret children has her issuing an ultimatum — it's the kids or me.
puhhha / Shutterstock If a marriage is going to have any chance of success, you've got to be on the same page about certain things, chief among them whether or not you want to have children.
For one woman on Reddit, her and her husband's differing views on children became a huge surprise, and "not on the same page" doesn't even begin to cover it.
The child-free woman's husband revealed he has two kids he kept secret, and now she's issuing an ultimatum.
"Childfree by choice" is a growing trend among women who have decided they have no desire to ever have children. For some women, this choice is so deeply held that they go so far as to be surgically sterilized via procedures like tubal ligation, and this woman is among them.
Describing herself as "vehemently childfree," she explained in her Reddit post that she was "sterilized and [had] no intention of having or caring for any child."
So imagine her shock when after a year of marriage, her husband revealed he has two kids he never spoke a word about previously. "I … did not know he had any children until five days ago," she wrote.
"My husband sat me down five days ago and told me he hadn't been completely honest with me. And revealed he has two children, 10 and seven." And the story only gets worse from there.
Her husband revealed he wants to fight for joint custody of his kids because he can't afford his child support payments.
It seems her husband planned to simply… continue the lie indefinitely or something, but the child support payments threw a wrench in his deception. Or, well "it dips into his fun money," as the woman put it, "and he wants to be able to have fun like I am."
So what is his solution? "He said he would fight for 50/50 custody." Oh, okay! Easy peasy! (he wrote sarcastically as his jaw hit the floor and shattered into a pile of dust that blew away in the breeze).
How actually having to raise your kids could possibly be cheaper than child support is a mystery as arcane as the origins of the universe, but whatever! The stupidity of the scheme is nothing compared to how presumptuous it is.
"I was furious he had lied to me and was even more angry when he told me he wanted 50/50," she wrote, because "he works 12-16 hour shifts as a nurse and that would mean I would have to take care of the children when I'm not working or [am] working from home."
So to sum up: He lied about having children for the entirety of their relationship, changed his mind, and wanted custody of his children, and he assumed his "vehemently childfree" wife, who was so uninterested in child-rearing, had the ability to even get pregnant surgically removed from her person, would help care for them.
My, the things we could all accomplish if we had even a fraction of this gentleman's unmitigated temerity. Just imagine!
The woman told her husband that if he tried getting custody of his secret children she would immediately divorce him.
"We have a prenup, so a divorce will be rather simple," she said, so she was absolutely not messing around. Her husband, as you might guess, wasn't seeing things her way, however.
"He… told me I should step up so that he can have more money in his savings and for fun." Excuse me??? She should STEP UP?! To help with the children he LIED about having?! Am I the only person who feels like he is losing his entire MIND reading this story?
But don't worry, it gets dumber! He also said she should lighten up "because the kids won't be much hassle due to their ages." Ah yes, kids are famously easy to raise, and a job that only gets easier with time as the children enter their teen years! A cinch! Someone take this guy to the brain hospital because he is DERANGED.
People online felt like she should divorce her husband immediately whether he asked for custody or not.
It is a testament to this woman's character that she was even questioning whether or not divorcing her husband was the right move because, personally, I'd have built a catapult in the driveway with which to fling him into the sun.
People on Reddit weren't feeling quite that extreme, but they were adamant that she needed to part ways with this guy ASAP. "I’d be divorcing him just over the lie itself," one person wrote. "He married you under false pretenses and is now looking for a nanny / sugar momma," another added.
And many couldn't believe how delusional her husband was in thinking that joint custody would be cheaper than child support. But one person sussed out the mental math he's likely doing: "He is imagining his 50% of the care is going to become 'their' bills," meaning he expected his wife to help pay for the kids.
It seems likely that the only reason this woman was even entertaining the notion of staying with her husband was because she was reeling from anger and heartbreak. How could a marriage possibly survive a breach of trust on this level?
It's worth noting that while divorce is usually an easier process, fraud and misrepresentation, though often thorny to establish legally, are grounds for annulling a marriage entirely. It is an institution that is supposed to be based on trust and honesty, after all.
Hopefully this woman will tread carefully, even if her bonkers husband does accept her ultimatum and agrees to drop his custody claim. As Dr. Maya Angelou famously said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.