My husband was arrested after a car chase. I want to support him, but we’ve racked up $10,000 in legal fees. What should I do?

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• For Love & Money is a weekly Business Insider column answering relationship and money questions.
• This week, a reader’s husband was arrested after a car chase and could lose his CDL.
• Our columnist says making up for it should start with him giving up his hobby collecting fast cars.
• Got a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.

Dear For Love & Money,

Let me start by saying I love my husband, but I don’t love his poor decision-making.

My husband likes fast cars, and we have quite a few, so he decided to take one out for a test drive. He decided to speed, and instead of stopping when the lights lit up behind him, he tried to run. As you can imagine, that did not go well. When I got home, I found him arrested and sitting in the back of a cop car. Due to my job, I was able to talk down some of the felony charges that he would have faced, and they released him on a few serious traffic violations, including reckless endangerment and speeding.

Now, he’s obviously at risk of losing his commercial driver’s license. Although I have worked a stable job for five years and make $80,000 annually, he is the primary breadwinner. This will negatively impact our finances so much that we will have to make significant changes to our future plans. We have already spent $10,000 in the past few weeks as we needed an attorney to try to help him keep his CDL.

I am struggling with how to stand by my husband and support him at this time, but I am also not the person who kicks somebody when they’re down. I feel immense guilt that I feel this anger toward him, but we also have three children, and this will negatively impact them as well. I have worked very hard in my life to provide stability for myself and, of course, our children, and I feel so upset he made a split-second poor decision, and now our entire future hangs on the status of his CDL.

How do we work through this financial hardship that is looming over us? We will lose a lot if he loses his CDL, but it feels crappy to consider leaving somebody you love over this.

Sincerely,

Conflicted Wife

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Dear Conflicted Wife,

You mentioned feeling guilt over your anger toward your husband, but honestly? An angry wife should be the least of his consequences. After making the reckless choice to ignore the speed limit, your husband proceeded to try to outrun the police — putting innocent bystanders’ lives at risk — so he could, if we’re attributing the best possible motives, avoid a couple hundred dollar fine. Remember that with you making $80,000 and him still being the primary breadwinner, he could have easily afforded this fine. If we’re attributing the worst motives, he chose to live 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 fuel some much-needed change in your family dynamic. Beyond the potential loss of the CDL, more financial repercussions are on the horizon. There are legal fees, which you mentioned, but your husband will also likely have fines to pay, lost paychecks due to community service hours, and almost certainly a severe spike 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 racers will at least cover the immediate costs of your husband’s mistake and help with your insurance premiums, as you should replace them with one or two sensible daily drivers.

As punitive as this may sound, it’s not you kicking your husband when he’s down; it’s you saving your family. If I said I enjoy wine tasting as a hobby, collect old bottles, and spend weekends at the vineyard sniffing and swirling, most people wouldn’t bat an eyelid. However, if I got sloshed on a Saturday night, made the choice to drive home anyway, and took out a neighbor’s fenceline before getting hauled to jail by the cops, everyone would agree that I should sever my relationship with alcohol — or, at the very least, stop celebrating wine tasting as my “hobby.”

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

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

I don’t know if he will get to keep his CDL. It seems your best bet is the attorney you’ve already hired, and I wish you luck. Win or lose, I don’t think you need to leave your husband over his choice, if only because it’s clear that you don’t want to. Love can withstand a lot more than a vocational loss. What it can’t withstand is someone who refuses to take accountability and pay the price for their mistakes. How your husband handles you telling him to sell his cars will be the actual test.

You mentioned struggling with supporting him during this. If he is willing to give up his vice by selling his cars and does end up losing his CDL, the most supportive thing you can do is to show him you still believe in him. Keep your family afloat while he retrains in a new field, even if this means downsizing your house and lifestyle and taking out loans.

If he can grow up, and you can stick by him, this mistake may be the best thing that ever happened to your family.

Rooting for you,

For Love & Money

Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.