Squirrel,
Our married-with-children friends often don't believe me when I say we never argue about money. But we don't - ever - and here's our particular recipe for that.
Over time we've discovered that our household takes a certain amount of money every month to maintain: mortgage, utilities, food, pet food, vet bills, etc. It goes up and down, and there are those inevitable surprises, but generally we have a pretty good idea what to expect dollarwise.
We have a joint account. Into that goes half of the dollar amount above, from each of us. It is ONLY used for bills and household upkeep.
We also both have individual accounts. With those we do what we want.
What's ours is ours, what's his is his, what's mine is mine. No fights, no using money for control, no overdrafts, nada. If he wants to buy a porsche (miniature
), or I want to take a class, we can both knock ourselves out as long as it's our account, and as long as our half of the bills are in the joint account by the first of the month. We do NOT have an ATM card on this account, purposely.
If you're at all interested in trying something new -- and I'm not saying you should (like I said this morning) -- this might be a good system to try, and one that he can hardly argue with. Get his agreement in writing, and then when he breaks his end of the bargain you can show the lawyer the bank records. Sorry to end that on a mean note, but he sounds like, well, an active alcoholic.
Good luck no matter what you decide.