My husband racked up $10,000 in legal fees after a car chase

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• For Love & Money is a weekly Business Insider column that answers relationship and money questions.
• This week a reader's husband was arrested after a car chase and could lose his CDL.
• Our columnist says that to compensate for this, he should first give up his hobby of collecting fast cars.
• Do you have a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google Form.

Dear for love and money,

First let me say that I love my husband, but I don't love his bad decisions.

My husband likes fast cars and we have a few of them, so he decided to take one for a test drive. He decided to speed up and instead of stopping when the lights flashed behind him, he tried to run. As you can imagine, that didn't go well. When I got home I found him arrested and sitting in the back of a patrol car. Because of my job, I was able to downplay some of the offenses he would face, and they released him for some serious traffic violations, including reckless endangerment and speeding.

Now he is apparently at risk of losing his commercial driver's license. Even though I have had a steady job for five years and make $80,000 a year, he is the primary breadwinner. This will have such a negative impact on our finances that we will have to significantly change our future plans. We have already spent $10,000 in the last few weeks as we needed a lawyer to help him keep his CDL.

I'm having trouble standing by and supporting my husband during this time, but I'm also not the type of person to kick someone when they're down. I feel a lot of guilt because I'm so angry with him, but we also have three children and this will have a negative impact on them too. I have worked very hard in my life to provide stability for myself and of course our children and I am so upset that he made a split second bad decision and now our entire future depends on the status of his CDL .

How do we cope with this financial hardship that lies before us? We'll lose a lot if he loses his CDL, but it feels crappy to think about leaving someone you love because of it.

Sincerely,

Woman in conflict

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Dear conflict woman,

You mentioned feeling guilty about your anger at your husband, but honestly? An angry wife should be the least of his consequences. After your husband made the reckless decision to ignore the speed limit, he attempted to elude the police—risking the lives of innocent bystanders in the process—leaving himself, using the best possible motives, fined a few hundred dollars could avoid. Keep in mind that since you make $80,000 and he is still the primary breadwinner, he could have easily afforded this fine. If we go with the worst motives, then he decided to act out his 2 Fast 2 Furious teenage fantasies in that split second because he wasn't thinking at all.

In fact, allow your anger to create much-needed change in your family dynamic. There are other financial implications beyond the potential loss of the CDL. There will be legal fees that you mentioned, but your husband will also likely have to pay fines, lost paychecks for community service, and will almost certainly face a significant increase in your car insurance premiums.

The solution to some of your problems is probably the one your husband will like the least. It sounds like you have several fast cars. Something tells me that selling your fleet of street racing vehicles will at least cover the immediate cost of your husband's mistake and lower your insurance premiums since you should replace them with a sensible daily driver or two.

As punitive as this may sound, it's not your place to kick your man when he's down; You save your family. If I said that my hobby was wine tasting, collecting old bottles, and spending weekends sniffing and sniffing in the vineyard, most people wouldn't bat an eyelid. However, if I had gotten drunk on a Saturday night, decided to drive home anyway, and destroyed a neighbor's fence before being hauled off to jail by the police, everyone would be okay with my relationship with alcohol should stop – or at least stop celebrating wine tasting as my “hobby”.

When a hobby starts endangering lives, draining bank accounts, endangering a person's livelihood, and showing up on a person's background check, it is no longer a favorite pastime; It's a problem. In your case it is a problem for the whole family.

If you tell your husband that you expect him to sell his cars, chances are he will argue because he is a driven man and he won't think it's fair that you take something he loves , because you made a split-second decision. But that $10,000 in legal fees has to come from somewhere, and that's the price he has to pay. This isn't your fault. The blame lies with the father of three, who decided to send law enforcement on a high-speed chase.

I don't know if he will keep his CDL. The best choice seems to be the lawyer you have already hired, and I wish you the best of luck. Whether you win or lose, I don't think you need to leave your husband to make his decision, if only because it's clear that you don't want to. Love can endure much more than a professional loss. What it can't stand is someone who refuses to take responsibility and pay the price for their mistakes. How your husband handles it when you tell him to sell his cars will be the real test.

You mentioned that you had difficulty supporting him. If he is willing to give up his vice by selling his cars and ends up losing his CDL, the best support you can do is to show him that you still believe in him. Keep your family afloat while he retrains in a new field, even if that means downsizing your home and lifestyle and taking out loans.

When he grows up and you can support him, this mistake may be the best thing that ever happened to your family.

We keep our fingers crossed for you,

For love and money

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