u/Former_Syllabub_9019

My situation is very complex. My wife has not been acting like a partner for many years. She has been sleeping on the couch for 6 years, nearly 24/7. For many of those years, she was not showering, not taking her various medicines (for diabetes, heart disease, HBP, overweight), and she was even pooping and peeing on the floor and leaving it there for me and her two young children to find. Our house was an unlivable pig stye with her garbage everywhere. She had one stroke in 2024 and recently she had a series of other strokes and, at the moment, she is in a nursing home in rehab.

She can't walk, can't take herself to the bathroom, must eat pureed foods and has trouble communicating, but she is mentally competent. We also discovered while she was in the nursing home that she had run up 30K in debts on secret credit cards she didn't tell me about. This isn't the first or even second time she's secretly spent us into major debt. She decided to quit working shortly after we got married and hasn't worked in nearly two decades, because she didn't feel like it.

The situation was very bad for our children and, now that she has been out of the house for a few months, things are better. Our 14 year old, who has a lot of emotional problems, says he wants mom not to come back. He has nightmares about her coming back.

We are currently trying to get her onto Medicaid. The application process is taking a long time.

I had considered divorce for a long time before this. And recently I consulted a couple of divorce lawyers. My number one concern before actual divorce is how do we keep her from coming back to the house when she is released from rehab? Even if we stay married, I would want her to stay in a facility. I think this is best for her and definitely best for the kids.

Divorce lawyers I spoke with told me it would be difficult to have her barred from returning to the home. They said I would have to prove that she's a physical danger to the kids and that this would be difficult to do. The very last thing I want is to be going through a divorce with her and have to be living under the same roof as her, possibly overseeing her medical care.

I was advised by a Medicaid lawyer that it would "look bad" to Medicaid if I filed for divorce before she gets accepted into the plan. I have been holding out, hoping that we can just keep her in a nursing facility permanently. In that case, I don't even need to get a divorce necessarily. If we get divorced [NYS] she would be entitled to half the value of the house, even though I paid for it and it is in my name.

Unfortunately, her sister and sister-in-law have taken a great interest in getting her out of the nursing home. They are accusing me of "colluding with my mom" to keep wife in the nursing home. They are trying to take over as her healthcare proxy and to have her released into the house as soon as possible, even though she can't take care of herself.

They want me to hire aides to come to the home a certain number of hours per day (perhaps 24/7) to care for wife and they claim that my insurance covers this (it does not). Wife's sister-in-law took the liberty of calling my insurance company on her own and claims that they cover 12 hours a day of care.

Even if at-home care was perfectly covered, which it is not, I don't want our home turned into a convalescent home for my wife at the expense of the kids. She can't even climb the stairs to the master bedroom so she would have to go back to sleeping in the living room. If I file for divorce, she can still come back to the house and be living under my roof and they would probably encourage her to do so.

Am I obligated to take her back into the house when she also needs a bevy of in-home care. Am I obligated to coordinate this care for her? Is there any way to keep her out of the home?

One divorce lawyer I talked to this week suggested that I take the kids and leave the house empty. This is our only home, it's in my name, the kids go to school here, and leaving would be very bad. Do I even have the authority to take them away from the home?

I've always had depression, but kept it managed with medication and weekly therapy. I always spiral and fear for the worst and now some of the worst seems to be happening in my life and I just can't handle it. I'm not able to give my young kids and my work the concentration and presence that they deserve.

So much shit is going on in my life. My wife, whom I had many problems with when she was well (she refused to sleep in the same bed with me for 6 years, she wouldn't bathe or take her meds or eat), recently had a series of strokes and is now in a nursing home. Our insurance is refusing to cover the nursing home, even though they had approved her stay, and now we are hoping to get her onto Medicaid. If we can't get her onto Medicaid, we are on the hook with the nursing home for $20K a month which we do not have. So we will have to sell the house and be homeless.

My mother has been super helpful lately and even has offered to help pay the bills from her retirement fund if it's what's necessary to help the kids and I keep the house. But then yesterday we found out that hackers had broken into my mom's online bank accounts and transferred a lot of her money out to their own accounts. The bank says they will investigate but we may never see that money back. She may be losing everything.

Every day, there's some fresh horror. I go to the mailbox with great dread, waiting to see a crippling medical bill or some note from Medicaid saying that they've rejected her application and we're on our own. And then I feel worthless at work and worthless as a parent and I'm worried I'll lose my job too.

When it comes time to concentrate on something else like my work or watching the kids, all I can do is spiral thinking about going bankrupt and losing the house. Meanwhile, I can't be present in my life and just try to put these legitimate worries to the side while I wait to see what happens.

All I want to do is go to bed and sleep and sleep and not pay attention to anyone or anything. Because everything I see upsets and horrifies me. But I'm supposed to be a functional person, supposed to help my kids, supposed to do a great job at work. Yet everything feels like it's falling apart around me and I can't do anything but watch it fall.