…”your son. Every withdrawal came from his laptop.”
My son, Jake, wasn’t at the meeting. I asked the lawyer to repeat what he’d said. He did, and then he showed me the timeline.
My ex-husband, Craig, had set up the education trust when Jake was twelve, after a large bonus. He’d never told me, and, I realized, he’d never told our son not to tell me either. A year ago, when Jake turned eighteen, the trust’s rules allowed money to be moved into an account for his education. The account had been opened online using my name and date of birth as “custodial parent,” with Jake’s email address. Over ten months, almost $330,000 had been withdrawn. Most had gone into a sports betting app and a cryptocurrency exchange.
Craig stared at the records. For the first time in fifteen years, he had nothing to say to me.
That evening, I sat down with Jake. I didn’t yell. I laid the bank records on the kitchen table and waited.
He broke down. He told me he’d found out about the trust when his father mentioned it during a visit. He thought if he could turn it into “real money,” he could pay for college and still have something left over. He started winning, then lost, then kept betting to win it back. When it was almost gone, he panicked. He blamed me because he couldn’t face what he’d done.
“I called you a terrible mother,” he said, crying, “because I was a terrible son.”
I told him he wasn’t terrible. He was nineteen, scared and addicted. And addiction is something you get help for, not something you hide.
Craig and I agreed, for once, on something. Jake started a gambling recovery program the next week. The remaining $70,000 stayed in the trust, managed by the lawyer, to be released only for tuition paid directly to a school. Jake started at a community college, transferring to a university next year, working part-time to cover the rest.
It’s been a year. Jake hasn’t placed a bet since. Last month, on my birthday, he handed me a card. Inside, he’d written: “Thank you for working two jobs so I’d never go hungry. I’m sorry it took me so long to understand what that meant.” I keep it in my nightstand.
