January 22, 2016 at 5:43 pm

My ex husband left me with a ton of debt. The piling up debt contributed to my reasons for leaving. I feel that he emotionally bullied me into taking on more debt than I was comfortable with because I was the one who was more easily able to obtain credit. We have some joint debts that I know he is partly responsible for, but in particular there are a couple of credit cards that were in my name only and one credit card where he was a secondary cardholder, but since I was the primary cardholder, the bank doesn’t hold him responsible for any of it.

It doesn’t seem fair that I should have to eat it when I was the one who didn’t want to spend all that money in the first place. Is there anything I can do to force him to pay some of those debts? I know it would be difficult to prove in a court that I was emotionally abused, but I could probably prove that the majority of the expenses on the cards were for purchases for either just him or both of us.

There were also some expensive items that were paid for by my credit card that he held onto and wouldn’t let me take when I moved out, a lazy boy chair and a large TV. My card also paid for his new computer. I feel I should be entitled to keep any possessions that were paid for by the cards. How could I enforce that? He feels that because he gave me his old computer and old TV that he had before we were together that should make up for it, but obviously the older possessions are of less value.

We have no kids and no real estate, so our net worth is negative. Why isn’t debt divided up between divorced people equally the way that property is in Canada? It seems really unfair that the law works this way.