…’Custody gives me control of her grandfather’s trust. Once she’s mine, I can use it to cover the $2.4 million.'”
My father had left my daughter, Emma, a trust fund when she was born. Whoever had custody of Emma would manage it until she turned twenty-one.
I read the rest of the emails with Emma beside me, both of us crying.
During our marriage, my ex-husband, Greg, had embezzled $2.4 million from the investment firm where he worked. Patricia was his colleague and girlfriend. When the firm began an audit, Greg needed money fast. Emma’s trust held almost $3 million.
So he fought for custody. I’d lost. Greg had hired an expensive lawyer, and I couldn’t afford one. Then he quietly drained Emma’s trust to repay the firm before the audit discovered the theft.
To cover his tracks, he’d also taken out student loans and a business account in my name, so that if anyone looked closely at the money, it would point to me.
I took the emails to a lawyer, then to the state attorney general’s office. Emma gave a statement too. She was twenty-two. She told the investigators exactly where she’d found the emails: on an old laptop her father had given her, without deleting anything.
Greg and Patricia were arrested six months later. The student loans and business account were removed from my credit. The court ordered Greg’s assets seized to repay Emma’s trust.
Emma recovered a little more than half of it. She used part of it to pay me back for her tuition. I refused. She insisted. In the end, we compromised. We took a trip together to the town where my father grew up, the man who’d tried so hard to protect her before she was even born.
