The Betrayal You Can’t Ignore
Marriage does tend to produce a fair number of twists and turns in life. And even content people do from time to time wonder whether “Is this where I want to be?”
The top reason people give for divorcing remains infidelity and it counts as a factor in up to 40% of marriage dissolutions. But the second category is financial incompatibility. Sometimes this is the quarrel over “saver vs. spender.” This is a challenge in its own right because if I devote myself to building a nest egg for my retirement or my kids, if my spouse saves nothing and we decide to split up, the court is going to be dividing assets and if mine are the only ones that can be identified, it will be my assets that my spouse and I will divide. This may seem patently unfair. And while the law in Pennsylvania states that courts must consider “the contribution or dissipation of each party in the acquisition, preservation, depreciation or appreciation of the marital property, including the contribution of a party as homemaker” that factor is but one of 13 the court is to consider. 23 Pa.C.S. 3502(7). To see it play out in real time, readers should look at Schultz v. Schultz 2018 Pa. Super. 83. This certainly does not foreclose a pitch to the court to make Section 3502(7) a major factor to consider but judges will often respond with a shrug: “He knew she was a spender and yet they stayed together for the last decade by choice.”
The more dangerous problem is what we can define as “fraudulent infidelity.” It’s the spouse to takes out credit cards in the other spouse’s name or somehow otherwise gets access to cash through transactions which appear to have been fraudulently undertaken. We have also seen situations where a spouse in trouble liquidates a retirement account to cover a “problem” without disclosing either the problem or the withdrawal.
Financial fraud often involves a third party; typically a credit provider of some kind who has lent or purchased on the strength that you assented to the transaction by signing off on it. If your spouse signed your name without your consent, they are defrauding the other party from whom they are borrowing. If problems arise (i.e., default of payments due) that third party will be suing you and your spouse. You can try to defend the suit on the basis that your signature was forged but if you become aware of the transaction and don’t take action to undo promptly, the lender is going to have a strong case that you consented to the transaction by not coming forward when you learned it had occurred.
So, you come home one day and the mailbox has a letter addressed to you and your spouse indicating that action is due immediately. Or you get a phone message indicating that you must call some unknown phone number immediately. You take the bait and voila it’s a creditor informing you that you have defaulted on a debt and the
$ 10-20-30,000 balance is due NOW. You know nothing about this debt and when you confront your spouse you get evasive answers or worse.
Step 1 is to collect your own credit report to see what debt the big three credit reporting agencies think you owe. About this site – Annual Credit Report.com If the news is bad, you need to consult with an attorney. Yes, you can complain up a storm to friends and family but that really is not very useful when the creditor is lining up to sue you. If they do sue you, you are going to need an attorney anyway and not the one your husband is considering. Do not try contacting the lender who made the loan. Candidly, they don’t know whose signatures are on their files or whether you are just gaming them.
Realize as well that when/if you come forward to expose the fraud, the criminal laws come into play. You and your spouse can, at times, act as agents for one another but if your spouse acted without your permission, he is likely to have committed a crime. Once police or the lender are made aware of the transactions they may well be making an arrest. You need to stay on the right side of that fence and to be clear about your rights and responsibilities before you start acting on your anger.
Do you need to chat with a divorce lawyer? Perhaps. But understand that people who falsify documents to get what they need do have character flaws that don’t wash out easily. A good reason to seek independent legal advice the moment you learn that there is debt you don’t know about that has your name on it.