At 57, can I qualify for any kind of independent living place?

As to the tax returns....if your husband had income you did not know about and forged your name on the forms, you may be an "innocent spouse". Think about it as being the ignorant wife of the Mafia mob boss...She knows nothing and might be innocent as to the tax debt. In your case did you know about all the income and all he did was sign your name, or were you in complete ignorance about the income? Was all the income reported originally or was the situation uncovered by the IRS through document cross matching or an audit? Check the website irsdotgov for info on innocent spouse and decide if you want to follow up on that. You can research that on your own. You do have financial obstacles to deal with in planning your future. Start with at least a free consultation with a divorce attorney. And don't let an attorney tell you that you can just have the divorce decree make your husband solely responsible for the taxes. The IRS is not bound by some state divorce decree and could still collect from you. If it's put in the decree that one spouse will be responsible for paying the back taxes and doesn't do it, you have to follow up in court for that while the IRS still holds both of you as responsible, unless you have established yourself as an innocent spouse. Since you seem to have a pattern of being taken advantage of regarding money you should get an attorney with a reputation for being tough in this area.

Well, you have been deeply hurt and betrayed.
So sorry for what you are going through.

Do you need some level of care? If you are healthy, couldn't you go live where you would like? Maybe an over-55 community would suit you.

Is divorce part of your thinking at this point?

Metrie, I've been looking back through your previous postings over two years to try to understand what has been happening.

I noted, inter alia, that your main caregiving role related to your well-off MIL; and that two years ago you and your husband were then struggling with financial difficulties, although at the time you seemed to have confidence that you would pull through these; and that you were recuperating from cancer.

But I'm struggling to understand the timeline about when you were ill, when you moved, and what has gone on. And you mention a stepson - living with you and your husband, or out of the picture now?

How old is your son?

You say your husband forged your signature on tax returns, plural. Does that mean this has been going on for some years? And you've only just found out about it? Would you be able to prove it?

I'm sorry that you're having to deal with so many issues all at once, when in an ideal world you would focus on staying well - very hard to do under stress. "When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions..."

But the only way to deal with them is one at a time.

Would you like to say a little more about where you are in life, and where you would like to get to?

Turn him in OR accept the debt?

Why are you not turning him in?