Married to an Austrian Welfare recipient

The majority of Austrians I have met are very hard working people, and by this I mean 18 hour working days are not uncommon.

My ex-husband declared bankruptcy about 20 years ago, at the prime age of about 35, and decided from then on not to seek gainful employment anymore. So for 20 years the government of Austria has been paying an able-bodied man, capable of employment, an amount of approximately €800 per month This he was able to do because he found a loophole in the system that allowed him to claim to be suffering from "Attention Deficit Disorder" and therefore couldn't concentrate in an office based job. (He has since disclaimed this disorder as it would mean he would be declared an incapable parent during our custody hearings. But he still continues getting unemployment money)

Well, when we first met, we spoke widely on his unemployment subject, as this worried me alot.  He mentioned that a friend had offered to bail him out, and then he would rebuild his business. I was in the midst of my MBA in the US, which was rather expensive, and he suggested to move to Austria, where the education quality was just as good, and yet much more affordable. Sounded good to me - I packed up my stuff, moved to Austria. 

I got pregnant almost immediately, and this was the beginning of my hellish life with a psychopath. Despite the fact that we had spoken several times about having a family as soon as possible, this changed immediately I got pregnant. I was constantly told how I had ruined his life through this pregnancy and that he had never wanted any more children. He told me  that he wanted to have a sexy wife for at least a while, and not some fat post -birth - looking hag. I was stunned. All my promises of keeping my weight down and taking care of myself post baby came to naught.

Here I was, alone in a foreign country, pregnant, not a penny to my name, living off welfare, and being pressured to have an abortion. After fielding endless calls from his friends asking me to "do the right thing", I finally caved and accepted to have an abortion. One of his friends, with a slightly better insight, saw through me and mentioned to him as i was much younger than him, if he forced me to go through with the abortion, I would leave him right afterwards. He then decided to ALLOW ME to keep the pregnancy.

The first thing that made him quite happy when we kept our daughter was how much more the Austrian government was going to pay us for her upkeep. For the first 2 years of her life we would receive Kinderbetreuungsgeld in the amount of €436/month +  €175,70 "Familienbeihilfe" / month, in addition to the  €1,100 he was now receiving as unemployment money. (I didn't realize until after I got divorced that he also received additionally about €300/ month for me as spousal maintenance - he kept all the money). 

At this time I made the suggestion that I should try to look for some part time work to prepare for the baby. The initial and harsh response I recieved was that if we would get employed, then the government would take away all the welfare benefits, and I was incapable anyway of earning much more than what we were receiving in welfare. I told him that in that case he should similarly seek employment. I got a resounding no, and the story was closed. We sat back - two able bodied grown ups - and lived off the sweat of those hardworking Austrians I mentioned at the beginning.