I believe Jess continues not facing her own wrongdoing or issues; she functions in a shameless state, thinking she is good and I’m evil. She can’t handle the stigma of being viewed as evil, due to her pride and victim mentality, so she marginalizes everyone who does not agree with her version of the truth. If you don’t submit to her version of the truth or if you take a position she does not like, the very core of her identity is threatened, and she will react with over-the-top emotion, screaming to the world about how evil you are. She is incapable of thinking any other way or reflecting on the hypocrisy of her own actions.
Another issue with Jess has reared its ugly head, but luckily it is not causing me any problems. On January 19, 2017, I got a call from a Dearborn Federal Credit Union (DFCU) fraud investigator. It turned out Jess never stopped her mother’s social security payments after Suda died in June 2015. The government found out, but someone transferred all the money that had accumulated in her mother’s DFCU account into a Huntington Bank account in multiple transfers during the first half of January. The amount was close to $4,500. The next day I went to a DFCU branch office and had a chat with them. I told the bank I would cooperate and help any way I could. My name and personal information had been used to access the DFCU account. The only two people who have the account information are Jess and me, so DFCU and the fraud investigators are sure Jess did it. I’m positive Jess did it too; no one else could.
A criminal investigation was started for wire and social security fraud to find out who the Huntington Bank account holder is. I met with a Washtenaw County deputy and gave him all the information I had. The bank investigator told me they would be filing charges when they could prove who it was. The feds were asking questions too—they wanted the social security funds back. The deputy eventually filed a warrant to get the account holder’s information from Huntington Bank.
Soon after, I asked the Washtenaw County deputy if Jess was the account holder. Due to this being an active investigation, he couldn’t comment. However, he replied, “That being said, I am preparing to interview her as the only suspect in this case.”
That sealed it. Jess had done it. In early August 2017, the deputy e-mailed me that his investigation was completed. He was waiting for the prosecutor’s office to review the report. I’m sure Jess spun some type of lie to cover her tracks when the deputy interviewed her. The problem is that she is an extremely skilled manipulator of facts and may find a way to spin this in her favor at my expense.
I told my dad what had happened with the social security bank fraud. He said she just might flee the country and go to Thailand, depending on what criminal charges were filed against her. I doubted that would happen, but it would have been great if it had. I’m not a vindictive person and am not seeking vengeance, but it sure would be satisfying to finally see her get something done to her after all the hell and felony-level false accusations she has put me through.
Near the end of August 2017, I learned that the prosecutor was not going to press charges. During the deputy’s interview, Jess had contrived a story, claiming she had taken the money because she was safeguarding it from me. She described me as the bad guy in this social security theft she had committed. She also claimed she’d thought she could take the funds to pay for her mother’s expenses because she was the executor of her mother’s estate.
Jess’s next move was to claim she knew the funds had to be returned, so she had contacted the social security office to pay it back. She started a chain of e-mails with the social security office to validate this new story I believe she created. Jess knew she had been caught; now she was doing anything to avoid getting charged with fraud. She eventually started paying the money back. I noticed that her last demands and extortion attempts in July 2017 for me to give her loans were around the same time she was interviewed by the deputy. Now I suspect that the real reason for her demands for money was so she could pay back what she had taken.
I’m sure that because she was paying the money back, the prosecutor didn’t want to waste time and resources prosecuting her. It would be a tough case to get a conviction, as Jess is able to expertly manipulate facts.
EightEEn
The Problem with Modern Divorces
It’s a bitter pill to swallow that I have to pay to keep someone’s vicious and criminal acts out of my life. I view Jess as a disgusting leech who keeps sucking at me. A simple piece of paper that says you were married gives the courts a reason to take from your wallet for years. Even when you can prove the person fraudulently took hundreds of thousands of dollars and ran up huge debts by giving false statements and hiding the truth, the court will not consider this. This is not equitable justice in any way.
I used to be a firm believer in marriage but not anymore. The institution of marriage has been completely perverted by the legal system and attorneys. It did me virtually no good to tell the truth in court, while Jess habitually lied with no consequence. My innocence did not matter financially. When our divorce court system essentially punishes an innocent with huge legal bills for his or her spouse’s criminal acts and perjury, the system is broken. Whoever came up with the concept of equal division of assets without considering the spouse’s actions should be tarred and feathered. I do believe in the biblical principle of marriage, but the intertwining of this worldly legal system into marriage has corrupted what God intended. My parents used to believe divorce was never an option, but they changed their view after all the damage Jess did.
I can understand paying spousal support if there are children involved and one spouse had to give up a career to stay at home to take care of the kids, but when a spouse makes the conscious choice to stop working and be a lazy bum, that’s different. The legal concept of maintaining the person’s current lifestyle through spousal support is ridiculous. Any other lazy bum would be homeless, and it’s only because the spouse hooked his or her claws into someone that he or she gets paid. No one should be allowed to continue to leech off a person for years. I can understand a very short duration of support, but paying for multiple years is ridiculous.
The main problem I had going through the divorce was the constant barrage of false statements Jess made to the court. I paid more than $33,000 in legal fees through all this. She constantly lied and bent the truth, and I had to defend myself. Nothing fair exists in the divorce court system, which doesn’t punish someone like Jess for giving false statements but does punish me with exorbitant legal bills for defending myself. It would cost me more in attorney fees to file contempt motions than I’d get from any damages.
In the end, all Jess’s motions and false statements accomplished nothing except lining the attorneys’ pockets. Here is some advice: Never try to use the divorce court to get back at your soon-to-be ex. Emotions run high, and each party wants to hurt the other. But everyone loses when the court is used to lash out. The goal of divorce is to get it over with as quickly as possible, to get happiness back in your life, and to keep your money in your own pocket.
I understand the courts simply don’t have the time to wade through all the issues someone like Jess creates, but a new system should be started that considers false statements made in court. I’d propose that a simple point system be implemented. When it’s found that a person has committed malicious acts, lied, or violated court orders, that person would be assigned demerit points instead of having to go through formal hearings and wasting the court’s time. When the divorce is granted, these points would have a monetary value that would be subtracted from the awarded portion of the estate of that person.
If this had happened to Jess and she had seen her portion of the equity of the home and 401(k) dwindling away, I guarantee she would have toned down or stopped her hateful behavior. Divorce courts do not properly examine cases like mine and do not administer justice to those wronged by a malicious spouse. They only split assets in half without considering any other circumstances. Divorce attorneys would surely fight any reform like this, as they all profit greatly off the
ir clients’ misery.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get married again, as I know how unfair the legal system is and what can be taken from you. If I do get married, there will be an ironclad prenuptial agreement to protect my assets. I even tell young people who are still single that marriage can be an incredibly fulfilling part of life but that you never know if something will happen to your spouse or if the spouse will go off the deep end. A prenup is an absolute necessity in today’s legal system. It must be fair to each person to protect his or her assets. If I had one, I would include that any sexual infidelity would immediately end the marriage and that the cheating spouse would be kicked to the curb with nothing except what he or she brought into the marriage. I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but I sure wish I’d had this with Jess.
Bringing up the idea of a prenup to the person you love is very difficult, but it must be done. I’d even take it a step farther and make prenups mandatory for all marriages. This would eliminate many problems in the divorce court system, but attorneys would fight this concept, as it would cut off their revenue stream from bickering clients.
Another issue that reared its ugly head was all the other people who were brought in to settle matters, such as our property distribution and her tax debt. The meeting with the property arbitrator, Gerald, was a disaster. Both Jess and I sent him Excel spreadsheets ahead of time listing what property we wanted, but the guy couldn’t open a simple spreadsheet. He was supposed to review all the documents prior to the meeting, but he didn’t inform us that he couldn’t open our spreadsheets. That was an incredible level of gross incompetence. I had to hook up to his office network with my laptop and print out hard copies of our lists because he was incapable of performing this simple task. He caused many other issues that created a huge mess with distributing the property. He still got paid his full fee. If I had recorded the conversation during property arbitration, I could have proved what was said and saved close to $2,000 in additional legal costs cleaning up the mess.
When meeting with any mediator or arbitrator, always record the conversation for your own protection, just in case the spouse goes nuts and starts claiming things that are not true. Make sure everyone in the room knows you are recording. If people object, too bad. Stand firm and state that the meeting will not continue without being recorded so that everyone has a record of what transpired.
When Jess came over to pick up the last of the property the arbitrator had awarded her, I made the mistake of not setting everything outside and not preventing her from entering my house. I foolishly assumed that the police present at the civil standby would enforce the court order. Jess went into full-blown psycho mode and started taking things she was not awarded or had forfeited per the court order because she hadn’t picked them up in time. She was also trying to alter the meaning of the words in her favor. The main word she tried to change the meaning of was hardware. She had been awarded half of the hardware, which included nuts, bolts, screws, and other similar items. She was arguing to the cop that hardware meant all the tools, woodworking clamps, and other large items.
The cop was getting extremely frustrated when I stood my ground and said no to her unreasonable demands, and then he accused us both of acting like children. Due to his frustration, he wanted me to compromise and give her what she was clearly not entitled to per the court order. He even forced me to give some of it up. It’s a clear example of how someone acting crazy gets the upper hand even though it’s not lawful, reasonable, or fair. If you divorce an out-of-control spouse, learn from my mistake: get all the property out, and never let the spouse into the house.
Jess didn’t have enough room in the vehicles to get everything, so she was coming over again the next morning. After what had happened, I knew better than to let her in the house. I called my friend Alan, and he helped me move the rest of her stuff outside to my driveway. My dad also came over to help. One of Jess’s friends helping her move arrived early. I told him that because of what had happened yesterday, no one would be allowed in my house, and I would have no contact with Jess. He nodded in agreement with my reasoning. Jess arrived and was livid at all the stuff outside, but she had no choice. Dad and I were watching the live video from my porch camera, and he burst out laughing at how she was acting. I thought again that I should have moved everything out before to prevent issues with her.
Ray and I discussed the property mess later on. He told me that in negotiations, a crazy person has the advantage over a rational person, because the rational person realizes the consequences of unreasonable requests, and the crazy person does not. The crazy person will list outrageous demands and not realize that those requests make him or her look unreasonable. All these unreasonable demands end up preventing rational discourse and distracting talks from getting to the heart of the issues. Any mediators involved eventually get frustrated and suggest that the rational person make compromises from his or her small but reasonable list of demands to accommodate the crazy person’s huge list of demands. This was evident with the cops wanting me to submit to Jess’s demands just so they could get out of the situation. You cannot win against a crazy person in a negotiation. The only thing you can do is isolate the person from all talks and thus render the person ineffective in order to minimize the damage the person can cause. Let such people rant and rave all they want and ignore them.
Another mistake I made was agreeing to go with a CPA the attorneys selected. We had to clear up the huge tax mess Jess created. The attorneys said the CPA was a good guy, which was true on a personal level, but he was an utter failure in dealing with the IRS. I give the guy credit for admitting he was not experienced in this, but he still kept my $1,000 retainer for services he failed at. I had to spend another $7,000 for another tax firm to clear up the tax mess.
These excessive costs were due to the wording of the divorce judgment. Our attorneys had written in the judgment that we had to use a tax attorney or CPA. What the attorneys didn’t know was that there is another professional certification called an “enrolled agent,” which solely deals with IRS tax resolution issues. Jess was being stubborn and demanding that the divorce judgment be followed word for word. That meant we couldn’t use a cheaper but more knowledgeable enrolled agent because this was not included in the judgment. She didn’t have to pay for the tax attorney, per the divorce judgment, so I was stuck with the cost of a high-priced tax attorney’s firm because most CPAs don’t deal with these types of IRS issues. Her knowing I would be stuck paying a high-priced tax attorney was the reason I suspected she wouldn’t budge.
The problem with all these so-called experts is that even with such poor performance, they still get their money. It’s not like having a carpenter mess up with physical evidence of a poorly made bookcase that fell apart. With physical evidence, you can refuse to pay or take the person to court to prove just how screwed-up the work was. With attorneys, arbitrators, or mediators, there is no physical evidence, and it’s virtually impossible to prove how bad the representation was in order to get your money back. They always have their hands out demanding payment for their self-proclaimed exalted opinions. There is no measurable metric of quality similar to the work a carpenter can produce. They know this and use it to be paid.
Never, ever go solely on the recommendation of your attorney when a tax professional or any other specialist is required to clear up issues in a divorce. What I experienced is that the professionals I was referred to were friends of attorneys being thrown a bone. Almost all of them failed in some manner or didn’t have the expertise required to clear up the issue. I had to investigate the new people’s competency by vetting them myself and not relying on attorneys’ opinions. You must investigate by using your network of friends to determine who has shown a demonstrated ability to be knowledgeable in their field. Also investigate the people’s social media postings to get a feel for their level of professional abilities and sense of their character.
Shortly after the divorce was granted, I did a review of m
y finances and realized the harsh punishment I am being subjected to due to Jess’s profiting from being a habitual liar. I have to delay my retirement an additional five years to make up for the loss of my 401(k), pension, and equity in my home. Evil behavior profits, and an innocent person has to bend over and take it. It makes one want to run out and escape society forever.
I watched a TV show about single people living by themselves out in the middle of nowhere, isolated from society. I understand this now and sympathize with their need to keep the hell away from people and the problems with society. I thought that I could take early retirement, move deep into the woods far away from civilization, and live a minimalistic lifestyle to avoid the pitfalls of relationships. After you go through so much pain, deception, betrayal, and abuse by the legal system, being alone, away from assholes, has a very strong appeal.
The other part of me knows that being alone is not right. We were created by God to give and receive love and need social interactions with others. We must help others with the gifts and talents we have been blessed with to achieve true happiness. Giving people unconditional love is how to achieve a real and fulfilling joy. Keeping away from society has a strong pull to those who have gone through great pain, but it ultimately leaves them lonely, unhappy, and unfulfilled.
One of the other emotional tolls of fighting all these false accusations, especially the PPO, was that I stopped going to church for a while. It was too painful to go. It was not a faith crisis, but when I was going through all this hell, my heart was torn apart, my family life was destroyed, and I found little happiness. When I went to church, I was surrounded by happy families with their children. It was a painful reminder of what had happened to me, and it felt like a knife going through my heart. Church didn’t uplift me; it brought me down, so I stopped going.
Tales of the Crazy Page 30
