…the owner of a company that’s been hiding his money from both of us.”
The ex-wife’s name was Patricia. She opened the folder on my kitchen counter while the turkey cooled behind us.
During their divorce twenty-three years ago, my husband, Gary, swore under oath that he had almost no savings. The judge believed him. Patricia got very little in the settlement. Recently, while helping their daughter with a mortgage, she’d found records of a holding company registered in Delaware. It had been created two months before their divorce.
The company’s current owner was me.
I’d never heard of it. My signature was on the incorporation papers, the bank documents and the annual tax filings. Every one of them was forged.
For twenty-three years, Gary had been moving money into that company in my name. If anyone ever looked, I was the one hiding assets. Now he was planning to “divorce” me in his mind and get back together with Patricia, likely to get his hands on her new inheritance.
“He told me you were already divorced and living here as a ‘roommate’ until the house sold,” Patricia said. “I believed him for about a week.”
We looked at each other. Two women he’d lied to for a quarter of a century.
Then we went back into the dining room together. Gary looked up and smiled, until he saw the folder in Patricia’s hands.
I didn’t make a scene. I simply asked him, in front of his adult children, how much money was in the Delaware account. He couldn’t answer.
Patricia and I hired the same forensic accountant. The account held more than nine hundred thousand dollars. The court reopened her divorce settlement and awarded her half. I filed for a real divorce and a fraud claim for the forged documents. The judge was not sympathetic to Gary.
Patricia and I have lunch every month now. Last Christmas, we hosted dinner together at my house for the children. Gary wasn’t invited. Nobody asked us to serve anyone.
