My in-laws have never financially assisted me paying my husband’s gambling debts

I am a 45-year-old high school teacher. My husband is four years older than me and works as a public servant with a monthly income of around VND 15 million (US$593).

After our marriage in 2000, I found out that my husband has been addicted to gambling since his college days. My father-in-law revealed this in anger, mentioning that my husband had once pawned the family’s title deed while still in school. Despite this, he has not been able to quit.

In the first year of our marriage, my husband took all our wedding monetary gifts and later our joint salaries to pay off what he called business investments. Occasionally, I would receive messages from relatives and friends informing me that my husband had borrowed money from them.

During that time, my mother-in-law was still working, and since my salary was low, she often paid off my husband’s debts. Later, I started paying off small amounts. For about eight years after our marriage, my husband still gave me his salary. After covering household expenses, there wasn’t much left, and the remaining money would soon disappear to pay off my husband’s debts.

By 2012, my husband went bankrupt and had to sell the house his parents had given us, which was worth more than VND10 billion. Initially, we sold half of the land and kept the house, but two years later, we sold the house to the same buyer. The second sale was decided by my husband and his parents without my knowledge. It wasn’t until he told me to move into a rented apartment that I realized what had happened.

By the third time we moved to a rented place, besides using my savings, I decided to borrow more money to buy our first apartment, and my husband did not contribute a single penny. Also, during the time we rented, my parents-in-law and my husband’s four siblings never visited or gave our children even a bag of chips or a carton of milk.

Since then, I have bought three apartments and a plot of land in the suburbs with my own savings. Not only did I have to struggle on my own to buy houses, cars, and furnishings, and pay for our three children’s education, but I also had to cover two-third of the family’s monthly food expenses, sometimes even the entire amount.

My husband would leave home for two or three months each year, and some years he would even leave twice. Additionally, I occasionally had to give him money to pay off debts because he pawned my car twice for VND200 million each to pay his debts. If my husband knew I had gold or necklaces, even when they were gifts from my mother, he would steal them and sell them for his own sake without asking anyone. He has promised and apologized to his parents and me many times, but nothing has changed.

Currently, my husband still borrows from loan sharks, owes money to banks, and deceives my relatives to get money for gambling and paying off debts. I only find out when someone comes to demand repayment. We have never been at peace as we are constantly plagued by his debts. I have to endure it, not daring to divorce because I don’t want our children to bear the stigma of having divorced parents when they start their own families, despite them repeatedly asking me to divorce their father.

Now everyone can understand how my children and I have suffered emotionally and struggled materially. Yet, my husband feels no remorse. On the contrary, he remains indifferent to my tears, advice, pleas, and scoldings. He always calls me ungrateful, saying I bite the hand that feeds me because he covered household expenses when my salary was low. In reality, during the early years of our marriage, I was also earning a salary from teaching and was never dependent on him. The money he gave me was not even enough to pay off his debts.

Another thing that saddens me is that even when my parents-in-law knew that my children lacked both material and emotional conditions compared to other families, and that my husband borrowed money from his siblings, they showed no empathy.

Now, my parents-in-law have no land or house left because they have transferred the ownership of the properties to their children. When I bring up my husband’s debts, my parents-in-law always say that my husband and I should handle them ourselves, which essentially means putting the burden on me. They don’t care that I am raising three children and need to save money to pay off the debts from buying the house, which I bought for our children.

I should add that my husband and I are currently living in the same house but are separated. My husband has stopped caring about our children’s education or expenses and has not contributed any money for a long time. However, when I asked him to sign a document renouncing his rights to my property so that I can save it for our children and ensure their education, he stubbornly refused to sign.

Is the way my parents-in-law treat their daughter-in-law and grandchildren right or wrong? Is it right or wrong for my husband to refuse to relinquish the property to me and our children?

What should I do to get my husband to sign the document renouncing his rights to the property?