The beneficiary was a woman named Elaine, and I knew exactly who she was. She worked at the nursing home where Wanda had been living since last winter. I asked the advisor when the beneficiary had been changed. He gave me a date from February. I had been at home that entire day, and I certainly hadn’t signed anything. Then he told me the distribution request had been submitted using a fax from the nursing home. I asked him why a nursing home would have anything to do with my retirement account. He said, “That’s what I was wondering too.” Then he opened the original request and said my husband’s name appeared in the contact section.
I confronted my husband with the statement. For the first time in thirty-one years, he didn’t have an explanation ready. He said Wanda had been afraid she would run out of money and that Elaine had been helping her with paperwork. I asked why $62,000 had been withdrawn from my retirement instead of Wanda’s pension. He said it was supposed to be temporary and that he’d planned to put it back. Then I asked him why he’d been making me sign papers without letting me read them. He looked at the floor and said, “You would’ve said no.” I told him he was right. I would’ve said no to every single part of it.
The advisor called me back that afternoon and said there was another document I needed to see. It was a beneficiary change form dated three weeks before the withdrawal. My husband had been listed as the person authorized to communicate with the account, but the beneficiary wasn’t Elaine. It was someone else. A woman I’d never heard of. I asked the advisor to read the name again. He did. It was my husband’s first wife’s name. I thought he’d gone silent because he knew he’d been caught. Then he said something worse: “That’s not possible. She’s been dead for eleven years.” The advisor checked the identification attached to the form and said, “Sir, whoever submitted this used her old Social Security number — and your current phone number.”
