Am I unreasonable (long sorry)

[chocolatemummy]

OK I have been with my husband for almost 6 years, we have a daughter who is almost 3.
When we met he was living at his parents house having moved out of HIS house because he found out his partner (they were not married) was pregnant from an affair with a married man. They had a son together who was only 22 months old at the time and this was her third affair in the four years together, the first one being when their son (unplanned)was only 5 months old.
The reason he moved out was because she was australian and had no family in this country and she had no job so if he kicked her out she and his baby son had nowhere to go. After a year and a half he and I decided WE wanted to move in together. I put my flat on the market and he gave her warning that he wanted to sell HIS house. At the time she was in a relationship and we felt that having lived in his house for over 2 years since they split up, FREE as he carried on paying the mortgage and bills for his sons sake. It was about time she got a job and got herself sorted out.
Well she was not happy about it but didn't have much choice and his house was sold. My flat was sold and we found a lovely house that we wanted to buy together as we both worked full time it was to be 50/50. He had £35,000 equity in his house and I had £38,000 equity mine.However she got a solicitor, (legal aid) and took us to court and eventually for the sake of their son she was a awarded £20,000 of his equity. As the poor unemployed single mum with no family or home .........

Well we were very suprised as she had never made any contribution to the house at all but tried to move on until the bailiffs arrived at our door. As the old house was in my husbands name he was liable for debts against it, what we then came to realise over the next couple months was that she had run up £12,000 of debt and we couldn't get her to take responsibility for any of it because she used my husbands identity to get credit cards over the internet.
As a result of all this we had to pull out of buying our house and find a much cheaper one. we were left £12,000 in debt for things we didn't even know about

Safe to say our first few years together were made hell by her and we only managed to clear everything about a year ago, we have been married for over three years now and she is constantly on our backs for maintenance,
I feel that after everything she has done and she got £20,000 and left my husband (whose house it was) with absolutely nothing and over £10,000 of debt, She has had her maintenance!

she still does not work, has been in this country for over 8 years and never worked, has a council flat in a lovely village (god knows how she got that) but well.................
Am I unreasonable! you tell me

No - you're not unreasonable at all, this is really hard and unfair. can't give any advice i'm afraid but do understand how pissed off you must both be. there seems to be no safety net when things go wrong in relationships for the hardworking honest men in this country. not fair at all.

your are right, I am fully aware that there are a alot of bad ones out there but he is not one of them, But I kind of wish she would P**s off now and let US have a life

Hold on ....... what about these credit cards ? She obtained these fraudulently - without your husband's knowledge, so why on earth should he have been liable for those debts ?

Did DH report this to the police ? She has committed a serious crime and as such, should be bought to task. I can't believe that legally, nothing could - or still can - be done about this.

What about the credit card companies themelves ? Surely they would have had to supply a list of transactions, dates etc., and, if in dispute, I should have thought they would have also had to provide copies of "DH's" signature - which obviously wouldn't have been his.

Furthermore, I have never heard of credit cards being secured against property. Loans - yes, credit cards no. But nonetheless, even if she did somehow secure any sort of debt on the property, it would have been done fraudulently, so we go back to the fact DH should not be liable.

It shouldn't have been a case of YOU having to get her to accept any of the responsibility ..... this should have been the Police's and/or Credit Card companies job !!

Have you /did you seek any legal advice about this ? It absolutely ISN'T right - and, I should have thought, be relatively easy to prove DH is entirely innocent.

Putting that aside for a moment, I'm sure you agree that DH should be paying CSA miniumum child maintenance for his son ...... but certainly nothing for her. Though I do appreciate the credit card nightmare must wrankle and it'd be easy to compare the expense of that against the money she's now demanding.

The £20k of equity is probably something you will have to "swallow" ...... it does seem ridiculously unfair given she never put anything into the property AND got 2 years worth of accommodation rent-free and with bills ..... but I suspect the court awarded this sum "in the interests of the child" (no doubt she argued she needed it for that purpose) and to help house him.

I really do think the best thing you can do is sort out the credit card mess as that is the out and out grossly unfair thing in this situation, and the injustice of it all must be doing your head in. Quite how it would work now that you've actually paid those debts off I don't know ..... I suppose she would become liable to pay DH, and perhaps he could argue that whatever he's legally obliged to pay in child maintenance is offset by what she owes him until that £12k debt is paid off, at which point he then starts paying at least minimum CSA again.

However the finances are worked out though, it doesn't alter the fact she is guilty of a number of crimes - identity theft for one, fraud for another.

I fully appreciate how sickening all this must be .... I'm not going to spend ages writing about my own situation but my DP too was dragged through the mire financially by his ex, severely limiting our purcahsing potential (the effects of which we live with on a daily basis while she sits pretty). What's worse is that she deliberately obstructed sorting out the finances for 2 years, racking up huge legal fees - even though they had already made a more than fair settlement when they originally separated. But the greedy b couldn't resist coming back for a second bite of the cherry.

I hate to put the frighteners on you but I used to think that one day we would be allowed to have our own life but more than 5 years after meeting DP, and 7+ years after they split, her gross spite is worse than ever. Yet again she's been at it today with snidey texts accusing DP of all sorts. I'm sort of resigned now to the fact it will never change but I hate it and her with a vengeance.

So no ..... you're not unreasonable, but please please do something about those credit cards. You read about people's cards being scammed on holiday - being charged £300 for a £30 meal, that sort of thing - and the company is usually understanding. How on earth her debt has become your DH's responsibility I don't know ?

Chocolatemummy ...... sorry to pester you but I'm still agog at how this woman got DH to pay for her fraud.

hello
the police didnt want to know to be honest, we called them becauae she was driving his son around in his old scrap car from the garage( he had a new one)with no licence and they arrested her and she was summoned to court, she didnt turn up and my husband got done for letting her drive his car around knowing she had no licence! HE CALLED THE POLICE for god sake..... Another great example of british justice. we have sorted the cards out now, I appreciate as the dad he should pay maintenance for his sOn but I think a £20,000 CASH SUM should be sufficient as thats more than most single mums get from the dads in a life time, we buy all his shoes, his school uniform and he has premium bonds from us.

WTF? He got done???? Madness. Did he complain? MP? Press? Sorry but this is ridiculous.

exactly, she is very pretty blonde and manipulative, american/australian accent very good actress and I an only assume that muist have something to do with it, we have given up on justice Im afraid

But what was the reaction of the credit card companies themselves ? ..... they all have fraud departments, they have to.

In cases like this, handwriting experts can often ascertain that the real signature (on a cc slip) doesn't correspond to the forgeries. Similarly, they'd look at the items purchased, where they were purchased, and how all that corresponds to where DP was on the particular dates.

So far as child maintenance is concerned, it's true that many mums see nothing, but others see a great deal more than £92.60 a month (£20K divided by 18 years, divided by 12). I'm not having a go because I can clearly see she's a nasty lazy piece, but though it must rankle, that £20k was awarded to help house DH's son .... though it's a shame she couldn't also have been ordered to work in some capacity. Many mums with young kids have to. You have to try and forget about that, because it was awarded according to law.

Bear in mind, that lump sum won't mean a thing if she decides to go to the CSA. In fact, if she doesn't work and is therefore presumably getting benefits, I'm surprised the CSA hasn't already been in touch with DH. You'll then be looking at 15% of his net income for his 1st child, less an allowance for his other child, and maybe a reduction if DH sees his son for more than 52 nights a year. I'm not sure either, and the CSA are a law unto themselves, but they might try to claim backdated maintenance if DP hasn't been paying anything at all.

I speak as someone with a total bitch from hell as my partner's ex. Through a variety of sources over the years she has had more than £30k off DP ..... and that's after division of assets, and after child maintenance which was at one time hundreds of pounds more than the CSA would have had him pay. The effect on our finances have been disastrous and probably will be for many years still. We both work long hours while she's now "at college", despite being capable of earning more than me, because she fancied a "change" ...... and all her benefits, tiny mortgage, ideal location (a concept unknown to us) allow her to do this.

So yes, it often sucks ...... and the 2nd wife and her children often seem to be bottom of the pile. But I don't think however much you wish it that the "she's had her maintenance" argument will avoid DH having to pay maintenance in the future. This will be viewed as a capital sum in law, unless it was expressly described otherwise in court, and a court order or similar drawn up to state that was so.

Have just read your message as i too have a husband's ex-wife who just won't p* off and leave us to get on with life. If she has received the 20K from the settlement she might not be entitled to benefits because of her 'savings'. It might be worth a quick phone call to the council to ask how much is the cut off point and if they are aware that she has this money. I know it seems very sneaky, but I've learnt in my 8 years as the second wife that sometimes you have to be in order to make sure that you and your husband are not being taken for mugs. We now have copies of all school letters regarding his sons sent direct to us, and we have links with social services if we need them (again). As much as it will really wind you up to suggest it and keep to it, see if your husband can introduce talking to his child each night by phone. We use this to not only find out what DH's boys have been up to and to tell them we are there for them, but also to keep tabs on what SHE is doing and with who. It's amazing what lonely, high and dry women say when they think they are talking to someone safe. I agree that what she's done is awful, my husband had it written into the divorce proceedings that the 8K she had taken from the savings (and the whole house full of furniture, leaving him a kettle!) and the lump sum awarded was all she would ever have entitlement to, which meant when we sold his house we gained the positive equity. We too have the ongoing hell of CSA as well as uniforms, shoes, club fees and trip money, only for two children. The only other advice i would give you is to take out a small life insurance policy on your husband in his child's name. If the worst ever happens, she cannot claim your joint property in her son's rights if he is provided for. My mum also says that when she divorced my dad she was told she had to leave him a sum in her will to stop him having any claim on her estate. (then she only had to leave £1!) I don't know if it still works like that but i'm in the process of making my house water-tight against the ex. I don't want her to have any claim on a house we've worked for, for 8 years and I paid half of like you. The other thing we are doing is writing our wills to the effect that the house is split in two and then each half is split between the children of that person ( ie his half goes four ways, mine goes two) it means that if we both die my children will inherit over half of the house that they have lived in, while his kids get enough to make them have no other claim. If he goes first of course, it's all mine except for the insurance policies that go straight to trust funds. I've no idea if this helps you at all, but I hope that if nothing else, you don't feel quite so alone in the fight.

hello, thankyou for your continued support and information.
As for the credit card companies- they didnt want to know, they would not even talk to us because it was not in our names and then we wrote to them explaining it all, but they just basically said that she had contacted them and told them that the cards were all taken out with his permission and agreement and he was only saying this because they had split up, they then replied to us saying it was a domestic dispute etc etc, not interested.
as for CSA we have been given a departures our income doesnt allow for any more maintenance, we were paying just under £200 a month for a couple of years but when our daughter was born they reassesed it and becuase we paid that lump sum and also were paying off another £167 a month on debts left by he relationship (the ones we actually proved) they let us off paying anymore.
we also paid his nursery fees every week for over a year until he started school etc so i think we do pay our way

sorry that wasnt meant to sound snappy lol

No it didn't sound snappy but I still don't understand about the credit card thing !!

If the companies wouldn't talk to you because it wasn't "in DH's name", then why on earth did he end up paying the blasted things ?

Her name - her debt.

When you said she used your husband's ID to get credit cards over the Net, I had assumed that she'd applied as if she was still his wife, got joint cards, and then spent loads. Which, if that were the case, he would ostensibly be a signatory to the card and therefore, the credit card companies should have talked to him.

I don't understand how she could use "his" ID, yet the cards weren't in his name ???

she used his id to get cards without him knowing anything about it, so when he found out about it, he tried to contact them to explain and they wouldnt talk about it because they said it was domestic dispute and doesnt afect the debt, as they were in his name only we had no way of connecting her to them and so he was fully liable.

I meant they wouldn't talk to me!
anyway, it doesnt matter its all history now, point is, it happened we paid for it.
I just feel its her turn to get a job and support her child now like I have to work and support mine.