This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I woke up this morning to check the status of the credit balance transactions I had initiated over the weekend. Much to my surprise and horror, the transactions I had initiated were not there. Instead there were a collection of transactions initiated by my spouse, I presume on 02/10, which drew large amounts of funds out of our checking account to pay off 2 personal loans and 3 credit cards all in their name. One of these credit cards was for an account that I had been told was closed and I did not recognize the 3rd credit card.

Between the $1200 on 02/10, and the large swath of transactions completing on 02/13, my spouse had drained over $7,422.30 from our account, with $2175.82 of that being credit card debt I did not know about. That combined with the $1200 from 02/10 put the amount of credit card debt in my spouses name to $3375.82 that I never knew about and had no visibility into as they had never added me to these cards or granted me access to these accounts.

I knew about the 2 loans, but both loans had payment plans and there was no reason to pay them off outside of some unfounded idea that they had every right to do so and thought they could walk away from everything without going through a divorce proceeding.

On top of that, I had a series of credit card payments I had initiated which were certain to be impacted by this manueving by my spouse.

As I was reeling from the reality of the financial damage my spouse had just enacted on us both, I received an email from the High School concerning our youngest child. The email was to inform me that our child had been withdrawn from school and that I needed to pay for their laptop that was never turned in, and for a school camp that they had attended but was apparently never paid for.

This was our last child’s graduation year, the year they would walk the stage with their friends, the final year they had been looking forward to as they picked out their class ring and prepared for finally starting their own personal adventure in life. The chance for our family, including grandparents, to all be there and congradulate them and celebrate. All of that was suddenly taken away.

I tried once again to contact my children, to let them know that their other parent was acting contrary to any advice that would be given by a lawyer. That if they could they needed to contact them and let them know to stop, to get them to contact a lawyer, and to maybe encourage them to go back to therapy. That their other parent was causing both of us financial ruin.

Only one of our children replied, and their reply was only to say:

Sorry, I’m still at work. But I’m pretty sure they have a lawyer.

This confirmed another of my fears, that my spouse had already discussed all of this with our children, had already told them this false narritive, and had already made efforts to get them to ignore me before events on 02/10.

It was also clear that my spouse did not, in fact, have a lawyer, but our children were told otherwise and were willing to believe what they were told against all evidence to the contrary.

The small glimmer of hope had just been extinguished by my spouse and I was cast, once again, into sobbing cries of anguish.