…personally responsible for every dollar of his company’s debt. $1.1 million. He’s filing for business bankruptcy next month. Then he’s leaving. With me. He thinks I don’t know the rest.”
I sat on the edge of my bed with my birthday roses on the dresser and read the document she’d photographed. A personal guarantee. For my husband’s construction company. Making me liable, as a co-owner, for its loans. With my signature at the bottom. It looked exactly like mine. It wasn’t.
The woman’s name was Denise. She sent me one more message. “He told me you were cold and controlling. He told me the business was yours and he was trapped. I believed him for eleven years. Then I found this, and I found the bank account in the Caymans with only his name on it. He’s not leaving with me. He’s leaving with the money. And you’re left with the debt.”
The next morning, I took a day off work and went to a lawyer. She looked at the guarantee for about ten seconds. “Have you ever signed anything for his business?”
“Never,” I said. “I’m a schoolteacher. I’ve never even seen his books.”
She sent the guarantee to a handwriting expert. It came back forged. She filed an emergency motion with the court and notified the bank that the guarantee was fraudulent. She also filed for divorce, on my behalf, and asked the judge to freeze all of my husband’s personal accounts until the case was resolved. Including the one in the Caymans.
The judge agreed.
My husband, Gary, found out when his card was declined at a hotel bar. In another city. With Denise.
He called me screaming. I let it go to voicemail. My lawyer handled it from there.
It took a year. The bank dropped every claim against me once they saw the forgery report. Gary was charged with fraud. The court found that he’d hidden over $600,000 in marital assets offshore. I was awarded half. Denise testified. She said she’d been a fool for eleven years. I told her afterward that we both had.
On my next birthday, the doorbell rang again. A delivery man with a bouquet of red roses. My heart dropped.
The card said, “To the woman who figured it out. Happy birthday. — Denise.”
I put them in a vase on my kitchen table. They lasted almost two weeks.
