Her reply:
The car will first be under your as my attorney suggested. That’s all I can say. It’s a safe car....not luxury. It just happens to come in because the prior owner needed a bigger vehicle. I am trying to be civilized on the situation.
You got the truck that you wanted...the money that came from the business that you and i spent.
You used the Focus to death, $ 10k.... couldn’t get a one year old car of any brand.
The problem with her reply was that her business closed in March 2008, and I’d bought the F-150 in February 2009. These were more contrived lies on her part. She wouldn’t even talk about the $551,000 of debt she had racked up with the store. She would lie about anything and ignore reality to get her way.
I sent this reply:
Your car will not be under my name. I cannot be forced to accept the legal liability of your vehicle under my name.
Also, I paid entirely for the F-150 partly through the insurance payment when Ranger was totaled, and the rest I took out a loan on my 401k from my salary at Ford. No funds came from your business to pay for it. What little cash came from your business was an extremely small amount and was not enough to even pay basic bills. You accumulated over $500k in debt with your store that put us in a huge financial hole with you doing virtually nothing to help pay off since 2008.
$10k is all I can afford now. Selling the Focus and your motorcycle will add another $5k. That’s $15k total and that will get a very safe and nice used vehicle. This is the reality of the finances.
You will also need to find out what insurance will cost you per month.
I was not going write the actual dates when her store closed and when I had bought the truck. I was going keep this tidbit of info just in case she should bring it up to the judge. Then I would point out her lie and attempted manipulation of facts.
Her reply:
The accident insurance came from you total Ranger....it was not free money.
Stop controlling me, first was to get a new car, and you said a year old car which I did, even older....selling the Focus or bike, they are different issues. The dealer told me that the brake lights stay on all the time....there is more issue... Please just stop..., get a decent car for my safety and get it over with...they are holding the car for me.
Find the car doesn’t have to be under your name. This Focus is almost used by you.
I replied:
$10k is all I can afford. If you want more to pay for a car, then get the money yourself. Selling your Focus and motorcycle is just a suggestion to get more cash for a better car.
You can get whatever you want, but you will have to get the money yourself for anything over $10k, while also figuring in the costs of your own insurance. Some vehicles are a lot more to insure than others. I highly recommend you get an insurance quote for the car you would like to get before you commit to buy.
I will not debate this further. $10k from me for your next car is all I can do.
There were no more e-mails from her about getting this Volvo after this. I was sure she was extremely pissed off that I was not submitting to her demands.
When I got home, she was there and started up on me again about buying the Volvo. She came at me from multiple angles, trying to justify the cost and saying the money was not an issue because it would be part of the divorce settlement. I refused to budge, but she would not give up and started calling me controlling. She said buying this car for her would allow her to be independent. She didn’t understand that being independent meant working to get her own stuff, not using manipulations or lies to get it from others. I finally told her that $10,000 was all I could do and that I wouldn’t discuss it further. Then I walked away.
There was another issue with Jess’s mom’s ATM card. The bank deactivated it. Jess was supposed to check and see if the card worked with the new PIN on April 28, but she didn’t until May 14. The bank told me they needed her mom to come in or call to get it reactivated. I told Jess this, but all she did was accuse me of trying to control her.
On May 15, I sent her and Kanya an e-mail:
I’ll stop in DFCU today and see what happened and try to get your mom’s ATM card reactivated.
I asked for you or Kanya to let me know if the new PIN # worked, but got no response. I’ll take care of this latest problem, but as I have said multiple times before, I suggest you get her social security deposits transferred to a local bank that Kanya can manage for your mom.
I do not want to be caught up in your mom’s finances or bank issues and I will be removing my name from your mom’s DFCU account the first week of June.
I’d had enough of this. They had both had ample time and multiple requests from me to take care of their mom’s finances. I don’t want to be falsely accused of anything, so my name was coming off the account.
Jess replied, “You asked me once. I tried to used it yesterday, and it didn’t work.”
What? Jess had her mom’s ATM card? This was her mom’s money, and Jess was supposed to have left it with Kanya to withdraw money in Thailand for her mother’s care. This situation was looking very fishy to me. Because I was a joint owner, I had my own ATM card for her mom’s account, but I wouldn’t give it to Jess. If she made withdrawals with my card and Kanya claimed they never got the money, I would be in trouble, falsely accused of taking her mom’s social security money.
I sent Jess this reply:
My card still works. This is your mom’s card, she should have it to draw her Social Security money on. That card was supposed to stay with her in Thailand.
Attached is a screenshot of her DFCU balance, $426.50. The last withdrawal was done by me at the bank last month for $2,100.00 and I gave you the money to send to her.
You were supposed to check on the card ASAP with the new PIN#. It was not done. I’ll go to DFCU today and see what the problem is, but this is the last time I will do this. I’ve had enough of this. Get her social security deposits changed ASAP so they can be managed by someone other than me. After I take my name off her account June 1, I’m out of this situation forever.
She e-mailed this reply:
Again, you are so good of accusing / or pointing finger at me, may God bless your heart with his love and kindness, and open your eyes to see who you are hurting!
You lied to me about the divorce? You have been threatening and abusing me through out the marriage and constantly accused me and never let go of the past, for whatever you want to make yourself look good in front of other people or feel superior over me.
Please stop all of them, I am sick of your behaviors, if you don’t, our next communication will be through our attorneys which will come out of your pockets, since you can’t be civilized in the communication. Through out the years, you’ve been trying to destroy the house, which makes me wonder why you just don’t leave the house. You can stay at your parents’ house, so I won’t be so be scared to stay home.
You know that I can’t do anything with DFCU mom’s account.
Enough of your tough guy threats, you ruined Focus and I want a new car that I want...., you just do whatever you have do to make it fair to me, like I have done for you almost 15 years.
Her over-the-top response was classic Jess—she protested too much—when she was caught in something she shouldn’t be doing. All she did was make up ridiculous accusations instead of addressing the problem. I wouldn’t even reply to this; she wanted to get me to address all these other false accusations in order to deflect the real issue of why her mom did not have her ATM card to draw her social security funds.
Her response was clearly baseless. If I was such a horrible person, why did she still want me in control of her mother’s social security? I wouldn’t want a soon-to-be ex in control of my parents’ money. Something else was going on with her, and I wondered if the money I had withdrawn and given her to wire to her mom had been sent. Was Jess giving her sister some excuse to justify keeping her mom’s money? The whole situation was very suspicious.
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On May 18, Jess called, but I didn’t answer. She left a message. I didn’t want to hear it, so I deleted it. I wouldn’t deal with her craziness. An hour later, she sent this e-mail:
I talked to Ford dealer sales rep., Chris, he said even 2014 Focus is still about $20,000.00 + up.
You want me to be independent, I need reliable car, this on comes with 100,000 miles warranty, that is a good deal, please they will only hold the car until to tomorrow.
Now she was changing tactics. First, she’d said she didn’t want another Ford, especially a Focus, and now she was looking at a Focus? I didn’t reply to this, but when I got home from work, she started up again, using all the same manipulations she’d tried when she wanted the Volvo. As usual she tried the same pressure tactics, saying they would hold the car only until the next day. I repeated what I’d said all along: I had $10,000 for the car. She could sell her motorcycle and Focus for another $5,000, and the $15,000 total would buy a really nice used vehicle.
She then changed the subject, saying her attorney had told her she could change the lock on the bedroom so she could feel safe from me at night. What a load of crap that was. I told her that was bullshit; she knew I had never shown violence to her, and she knew she had nothing to fear.
She went back to the car subject again and would not stop, so I walked away.
May 19 was a crazy texting day with Jess. First she asked for me to withdraw her mom’s money, claiming her mom had gone into the hospital. I told her I would do it, but I asked her again to get her mother’s social security deposits changed to a bank her sister could manage. I didn’t believe a word she said now. Her mom might or might not be in the hospital. Jess would do or say anything at this point. I was not convinced she was sending her mom’s money to her, but I was not going to get involved between her and her sister. I was thinking about drawing out the money and wiring it directly to Kanya, but that would cause more problems I didn’t need.
Then Jess sent me a text asking me to give her $10,000 cash. I laughed when she had the nerve to ask that. No way would I do that. I replied that I would only write a check to the owner of the car. She stopped all talk of a car at that point, and now I was sure she had been trying to manipulate me into giving her the cash all along so she could use it for something other than getting a car. She had wanted large sums of cash for a while, but that hadn’t happened. I would give her only what Ray advised. We also had the first mediation meeting coming up on June 12, and I had to pay for that. The first divorce hearing was on June 15.
Jess texted about all the boxes of inventory still in the house. She wanted to take them all and not give me anything for it. That was pure nuts. There was a staggering debt remaining on my house and $74,000 of tax debt from her business. There was no way any reasonable person could expect me to agree to her terms of getting nothing for the inventory. She had done virtually nothing with the dresses during the past seven years since her store had closed. No way was she going to take them all now and give me nothing in return. They had to be included as her part of the divorce settlement. For paperwork submitted to the court as part of her net worth, I estimated the inventory to be worth close to $178,000, with each dress at $200 and each box holding seven dresses. Jess had contacted my attorney saying she was scared I was going to destroy $200,000 of her inventory.
She also asked for an additional $800 that month, but there was no way I was going to do that. I texted back, “You have taken $2,000 the past month and a half. Plus I paid $2,000 to your attorney. This is extremely excessive, and there will be no more deposits in the TCF account for a while. If you want more, get a job and be more independent. I simply can’t maintain that amount being taken. It’s draining the bank balances.”
Jess then texted, “You have been spending a lot of money like crazy with your shopping spree, so just learn to be fair and get this divorce over in peace.”
I had to laugh at her accusation of my “shopping spree.” I had stopped cable TV and all other nonessential services to save money, and I had trimmed all other costs. I made most of my lunches to save money and rarely went out to eat. When she’d been on her last trip to Thailand, I had kept the house at sixty-three degrees during the day and fifty-five at night during winter to save on heating bills. It was another one of her crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t even respond. She threw crap like this out hoping something would stick and deflect attention from the real issues.
When I got home from work, there was a new lockset on the bedroom door, but the door was not locked. She has not been home most nights, and I rarely saw her. So this was just a symbolic act of her control and perceived victimhood at this point. I decided to contact my attorney about how to proceed on this latest act of hers before I removed the lock. At this point I wanted to gather all facts to see what it would take to remove her from the house. She was just too hateful and crazy to deal with.
It was now May 20, and Jess had been spending almost every night somewhere else. I had no idea where, and I didn’t care if she was screwing some other guy. If it made her happy, that equaled fewer crazy and conniving threats I had to deal with. I was pretty sure she was telling more wild tales of victimization at my expense and had found some poor sap to believe her. That day she was in the house for only a short time, starting giving me crap, and then left. I didn’t even look at or say anything to her.
I sent this to my attorney:
Ray,
She changed the lockset for my bedroom and is telling me her attorney said she could change locks in the home to keep me out of rooms. If she wants to lock a room other than the master bedroom where all my clothes and personal items are, I’m OK with that, but all her stuff must be moved in that room.
She is spending less than half the nights at the home living with someone else, yet has told me in person and in an email, “Throughout the years, you’ve been trying to destroy the house, which makes me wonder why you just don’t leave the house. You can stay at your parents house, so I won’t be so be scared to stay home.” This woman is bat crap crazy and completely out of control.
What can be done to prevent her from changing locks and stopping this abusive crazy behavior and constant false accusations from her? I’m tired of trying to be civil with her, I just get taken advantage of and am being subjected to her abuse. She needs to be removed from my home, prevented from having any contact with me, and I want to do whatever it takes to remove her. Like I said before, she is living with someone else over half the time.
Eight days later Jess was briefly in the house after I got home from work. I said nothing to her, and she left. This was the first time I had seen her since May 20.
All these issues were incredibly petty and purely driven by Jess’s emotions. I talked with her once to attempt to put our differences aside and get this divorce over without arguing, but all she did was accuse me of being the one causing problems. The only people winning were the attorneys racking up billing hours.
Ray called me on June 1, and we talked a bit about how to keep this situation with Jess under control. He talked a bit about game theory and about strategies for dealing with a crazy person. The strategy was to do something even crazier to throw the person off and completely confuse him or her. I told him we could try that, but I was not that personality type—besides, I knew never to underestimate the level of crazy Jess could bring on.
After our conversation, I was thinking that when the divorce was over, if she continued to act in a reprehensible manner, I could really bring on crazy vengeance, but that was not me, and I’d never do that. All I wanted to do was get her out of my life and be happy. Being vindictive only extended emotional pain and prevented people from getting true peace in their lives. Jess had made a choice to be a hateful human being, and I doubted she would ever escape this path in her life. The problem was that right now I was paying the price for her hate. When this was over, I was going to engage in the joys of having a wonderful life, but she would probably continue having a bitte
r victim mentality.
The next day Jess came into the house around nine at night. I was already in bed half-asleep. I was still staying in the spare bedroom. She knocked on the bedroom door and said, “Charles?”
I ignored her, and she knocked again. “Charles?”
I replied, “Jess, I’ve had a long day, and I get up at four thirty in the morning and need to sleep.”
She asked if I had read her e-mail asking to transfer money. I said no. She said, “I need money to give to people. I have bills to pay.”
I replied, “Jess, don’t give me that; you don’t have any bills.”
She pressed on, asking if I was going to transfer money into the TCF account, and I replied, “I’ll think about it.”
I took two seconds to think about it: no. I couldn’t help but think, She wants to give my money to other people? That’s absurd.
Her excuse sure was a poorly contrived lie on her part. She was a far better liar than that and usually made up more complex story lines. I suspected she was trying to take as much as she could from me to build up cash for herself. The only bills she had were her phone and gas money. I thought she had two mobile phones. Besides, she knew I was giving her $1,000 a month, as my attorney had suggested, but she wanted more.
On June 4, Jess’s sister sent me an e-mail notifying me that their mother had died. Jess didn’t say anything to me. I called Jess to say I was sorry, but she lashed out, accusing me of not being sorry. Then she started accusing me of “pulling me away from my niece’s wedding.”
I said, “Forget you, Jess,” and then hung up. I could understand her being upset with the death of her mom, but I wouldn’t tolerate her abuse. I genuinely felt bad for Jess.
She was so twisted now that she couldn’t even accept kindness from me. Her being so hateful and malicious solidified my thought that I had to protect myself from her. I couldn’t offer assistance in any way, since it was assured that she would distort anything to demonize me. I would give assistance only if ordered by the court. I was sure she would attempt to take advantage of any kindness I showed her, so there was no more reason to continue. I had tried my best to be civil, but it was impossible dealing with her.
Tales of the Crazy Page 22
