Wife Claims Winning Lotto Ticket Is ‘Hers’ And Tries To Quit Working After Paying Off Mortgage—But Husband Says, ‘I’ll Divorce Her And Get Half’
- Personal Finance
ThePostMaster- 0
- 8 minutes read
Most couples buy lottery tickets for fun and joke about quitting their jobs. They picture beach vacations. They promise each other that if they ever win, they’ll “do it right.”
Sure, it’s easy to be generous in a hypothetical. But it’s very different when the money actually lands. That’s exactly what played out in a Reddit post and the situation escalated fast.
The Win That Was Supposed to Be Shared
The husband explained that he and his wife had won a “decent” amount from Lotto. Not the top prize, but enough to pay off their mortgage and still have money left for vacations.
With the mortgage payment gone, he assumed they’d both cut their hours back to school hours and spend more time with their kids. That had always been the daydream when they bought tickets.
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He genuinely thought they were aligned.
When his wife started talking about how amazing it would be to finally never work again, he was blindsided. Even without the mortgage, he knew they would still need to work at least school hours to maintain their lifestyle. On his salary alone, things would be tight.
So he asked if she was serious.
Her response, according to him: “of course, it was her ticket and she gets to decide.”
That line reframed everything.
Because in his mind, the tickets had always been shared. Before moving in together, they both bought them. After moving in, they agreed to just buy one because two felt like a waste of money. The ritual was joint. The fantasy was joint. Now, suddenly, the win wasn’t.
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What’s Mine Is Mine
He tried to reason with her. Suggested she take unpaid leave occasionally. Suggested they stick to their original plan of both scaling back.
He wrote that she accused him of being a “gold digger” and ruining this for her, saying she deserved it after working so much of her life.
Over the next few days, nothing softened. She wouldn’t budge. Then she said, “well it doesn’t matter now because I’m putting in my notice at work.”
That’s when he lost it.
He wrote that he told her, “I’m not going through with this, if she’s not going to share the winnings which is under both of our names I’ll divorce her and get half through the house and therefore half the winnings anyway.”
Another screaming match followed. More accusations that he was a gold digger.
By the end of the post, he sounded drained. He said he felt like his wife had been replaced by an imposter. He even admitted he would’ve preferred not winning if he’d known this was how it would unfold.
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Money Changes Everything
The responses were a mix of dry humor, financial reality, and lived experience.
“The good news is that you can afford the divorce,” one commenter wrote. “The bad news is that the attorneys will be going on your vacation.”
Another added, “Can confirm. My divorce was amicable and cost me $10k.”
Others focused on the math. One person said, “You may have been able to quit your job in the 1980s but unless you won millions then there’s no way that she doesn’t need to work.”
The original poster responded,”It was definitely not millions lol.”
Woven through the thread was a consistent theme: sudden money doesn’t just change bank accounts. It changes dynamics.
That’s where a neutral financial advisor could have slowed things down before ultimatums turned into action. Clear numbers move the conversation from emotion to sustainability, because winning should feel like security—not expose how fragile the foundation really is.
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Image: Shutterstock
