The envelope arrived on Monday. My daughter’s name was inside it, but not where I expected to see it. There was a company resolution, a bank authorization, and three invoices from suppliers I’d never heard of. My name was listed as director on every page, but my daughter was listed as the person authorized to receive payments from one of the accounts. I called the company and asked whether she’d ever been added officially. The woman checked the file and said yes. She’d been added six months earlier. I asked who had submitted the paperwork. She gave me the name of my son-in-law.
I called my daughter that night. She swore she’d never signed anything and didn’t know there was another account. Then I asked her where she’d been getting the money for the past six months. She said her husband had told her he’d increased his salary because the business was doing better. I asked how much. She gave me a number. It was almost exactly the amount being transferred from the account every month. I told her to check her statements while we were on the phone. She went quiet. Then she said the money hadn’t gone into her account at all. It had gone into an account with her name on it that she had never opened.
The next morning I went to the bank with the company documents. The manager told me something that changed everything. The account had been opened using my daughter’s identification, but the contact information belonged to my son-in-law. There were also two loan applications attached to it, both using my name as the director guaranteeing the business. I asked whether the bank had my signature on either application. The manager turned the screen toward me. There it was. A signature that looked close enough to mine to pass a quick check, but I had never signed those papers. Then he opened the newest application and pointed to the guarantor section.
My daughter was listed as the second guarantor.
She had never agreed to any of it. And when I asked the manager when the application had been submitted, he gave me the date.
It was the same afternoon my son-in-law told me he’d “sorted everything.”
