Today I am thankful that I know other homeless activists:
There are some people I can't even try to help.
Well, there is one person.
So -
I signed divorce papers the summer of '13.
This was after seven years of being told that our relationship was over. This was after 12 years of (pretty much) sleeping apart.
My ex-husband played a lot of games to keep me with him. He wanted a.....what did he call it? a "fake marriage"....shoot, I don't remember now.
It was as if we put on a show for the world.
He did a lot of crazy crap to keep me here.
He'd threaten to kill himself.
He'd lie and say he was having life threatening health issues and ask me to stay until the surgeries were over.
There were no surgeries.
Once he let go of a handle on the back of a semi. This caused him to fall to the ground and shatter his right wrist. The way he described it to me, it was intentional.
We were divorced a couple of years when he did that. Guess who had to nurse him?
Ugh.....
Then there was the legal crap.
First, he sued the city.
Then he filed for bankruptcy. In the State of Colorado, it is illegal to file for a divorce pending a bankruptcy.
Let's just say that he sat on that paperwork for four years to make me wait to file for a divorce.
Of course, he dragged out the divorce and begged the judge to wait until after the new year to make it official that way he could get a bigger tax refund.
So, it was official in early January 2014.
The problem was that he wouldn't honor the agreement.
I couldn't evict him from the house.
The mistake?
Well, in the mediation, he wanted to be able to enter into this home at will to visit with his kids. He demanded that I live here.
No. I didn't want the house. We were in the middle of a recession and it wasn't worth anything. It wasn't underwater but it wouldn't have netted me enough money to split once it was sold.
I wanted him to have the house. He could fix it up. He could make a profit when the market rebounded.
There was an argument.
He demanded that I leave the room.
The mediator sat with him.
She came out with a document and warned me that he was stalking me because he was adamant that I not be able to move for the next decade. He was also fixed on the idea that he would have to live within a mile of me!
Wanting to get the heck out of there, I signed what was put in front of me.
According to the original legal agreement, I had to live in this house until 2023 and had to invite him over every Sunday for dinner. He also had free range at my home on all of the holidays.
He was excused from alimony (that was until a judge put it back into the decree....we've never even talked about it let alone took it seriously.)
I was to keep my mini-van (the one I paid for). This never happened. He took my van the day our divorce was final.
He got his little sportscar (which he claimed didn't run so he took my vehicle, too).
We were to split the remainder of the money (which never happened).
He was to leave on October 21, 2013.
I wasn't able to evict him until December 24, 2016 (a date he chose - always wanting to create drama).
That judge saw the bs in the original agreement and forbade my ex from entering my home ever again once he left. That court date was hellish, my ex wore sandals with gnarly long, yellow toenails. His hair was messy and he was angry. He arrived in my mini van and complained that he would be homeless if I didn't let him live in my basement apartment rent free.
The judge gave him 90 days to find a place (his mother would have gladly taken him in). He chose Christmas Eve as the day to vacate. I found out later that the city he sued paid for a place for him several months earlier but he didn't want to live there because it was dirty.
Getting back to my mistake:
You see....
when an ex has access to a house at will, it is just a slippery slope allowing one to stay indefinitely.
It cost $10,000 to get him out. I got judgments for $30,000 (to make up for the money he stole from the IRA).
He wrecked my van and I signed over that check to him so he could pay for an apartment. I think he used the money to buy a fancy phone.
He "lost" his job. He was a corporate auditor making a lot of money.
Now he drives the short bus (not joking....but that low paying job is kinda fitting given the circumstances).
Even after he left, he played a lot of games to cost me a lot of money (e.g. calling my insurance company and telling them we were married so I had to pay his auto-insurance......grrrr....I finally figured it out in 2017 and tried to cut him off the insurance company wouldn't refund me the six month premium because of his lie).
I'm tired of his crap.
All along he publicly whines and cries about being a homeless addict (knowing the first group of people I try to help is...well....the homeless and the second group of people are the addicted).
In private, he tells me that he doesn't do drugs and that he's not homeless.
This is a game for him.
The sad thing is that even if he were homeless, I couldn't help him. I wouldn't even be able to figure out the truth.
He just did a very stupid thing.
He did this after I decided not to renew the $30,000 worth of judgments I have against him.
Maybe I should reconsider?
*****
So....
he wanted to lower his child support (which he is eligible to do).
I dutifully sent in all that information that a stalker could use (my employers, my tax information, my phone numbers, household members....everything).
I remember doing this in early November when I was dizzy and fainting (due to taking prescribed Adderall, buspirone, venlafaxine and drinking a lot of grapefruit juice....don't do that). This was the day I would later learn that my clarinet playing colleague had been found up in the mountains but was so badly burned, he couldn't be identified.
It was a bad day. It was like my subconscious knew of the horror of that day. I knew something was wrong but couldn't pinpoint it. I drove to the county building right after seeing my doctor who was trying to figure out my inexplicable 28 pound weight loss in less than a month.
CO-PEP (the deadbeat daddy welfare program) had a lawyer call my lawyer. They came up with a number. When my lawyer asked about handing the $40,000 worth of arrearages by paying $150 per month, the taxpayer funded lawyer representing my ex hung up and ignored her.
So.....
I asked her to send a response to the court keeping the amount of child support the same because it was obvious he could pay it. Two hundred dollars of that would go towards the arrearages. I would not seek interest and I would let the other $30,000 in judgments for the money he never gave me lapse.
Just to be honest, he was initially supposed to pay $1,488 per month. He got a $500 credit for carrying health insurance on the kids (which he never did). In 2016, his child support dropped for $504 because he claimed that he could only make $12 per hour. He was off the hook for health insurance.
This was done with the help of CO-PEP lawyers. The State of Colorado claimed he was indigent (would have been better if they said he was ignorant) and he got three taxpayer funded lawyers who helped him to run up my legal bills. They spent a lot of time making bizarre claims about me in court (e.g. I have adults living here - implying they were lovers who were supporting me - and trying to strike it from the record that the adults living here are our daughters that are in college).
Of course, he didn't pay a dime of it for several more years.
He would call and text me with disturbing lies about me and my family. Then he'd taunt me claiming that CO-PEP had his back, they were more powerful than the courts and they gave him permission to ignore the court orders.
He is completely convinced his CO-PEP case manager is going to erase his arrearages. I think they tried to invoke a law which pretty much lets a court dismiss a debt if I don't try to collect it. That's why they ignored my lawyer.
He is a corporate auditor with a vast knowledge of tax law. This time of year, he could rake in the dough by doing taxes. Instead, he drives the short bus.
I don't know why someone would play games with his ability to earn a living but it is what it is. If he's going to suffer just to spite me, he's not the brightest bulb in the bunch.
I'm too busy earning my coin and going to school so my coins can get bigger. There is no time to play games with this joker. He blew the retirement so I'm going to have to work until the day I die.
The entire time, he was in and out of court whining that he was "homeless" or that the apartment he had was filthy with bed bugs. In court he once claimed that it was my fault his apartment was dirty.
We were divorced!! It was like he expected me to clean up his apartment!!!
Ugh....
I'm not going to clean up after him anymore.
*****
If you're wondering, yes....he was diagnosed as a narcissist by more than one licensed therapist. When a therapist caught on to his games and lack of empathy, he stopped going.
****
Now, if the CO-PEP lawyers had not ignored my lawyer, he'd only pay about $150 per month towards the arrearages. This was the request. I'm supporting his college aged kids and that amount will help with the cost of schooling and driver's ed.
The judge is making him pay $217 per month.
I thought that was the end of the ordeal.
No.
My ex claims to be pissed that's he's paying more than $100 towards the arrearages each month. State law says that he needs to pay it within 24 months (meaning a payment of $1666.66 monthly - talk about evil - look at all those sixes).
I thought I was being generous. I'm not even tallying the interest or trying to collect that.
*****
I received an email Sunday when I was getting my Covid shot.
I'm sitting there with a nurse watching me to make sure I don't go into anaphylaxis, when my phone lights up.
As I read the document, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. It wasn't an allergic reaction. It was me stifling laughter.
Apparently, my ex-husband filed a four page hand-written rant at the county courthouse demanding that the district judge review the magistrate's decision due to his disdain that the magistrate wasn't a mind-reader.
Not joking.....
The magistrate should have known that he was suffering due to Covid and that most guys' hours are getting cut. He claims he can only afford to pay $100 per month in arrearages and the judge should have known that. Mind you, his government funded lawyer didn't even offer that. The lawyer just hung up and ignored everything.
He works for RTD. The local transit authority requires overtime (which should count towards his income when it comes to child support). He tells so many stories, I just ignore it. I'm not going to wrinkle and go gray over money I'll never see.
Covid is not impacting him.
It's impacting me (in that I can't see private clients right now). I don't whine about it. I believe that fallow times are good for investing in learning.
The level of vile vitriol in that filing has me a little bit scared for our safety.
Stuff like this makes me happy I'm away from the relationship. I can't believe I spent more than half of my life with this drama king!
Wow....
Apparently, he told the sixteen year old that he's living in a hotel. I know a lot of homeless people living in hotels. The address he gives in the filing is to an apartment in Lakewood....not a hotel.
So.....
It's a shame he didn't follow the original divorce agreement. If he stayed in the city he demanded we both live, there are many people who would help him.
He didn't.
Don't know too much about Lakewood (except that there is A LOT of corruption there - maybe someday I'll tell you about the elderly farmer they stole land from for the police department and city building).
There is a great little church in Arvada that helps the homeless. Once I get school out of the way, I intend to tithe to them because I should be making decent money. I could offer to counsel their homeless addicts, too.
*****
I have NEVER met a homeless person with as much hatred as this guy who pretends to be homeless for my sympathy.
Trust me, I meet a lot of angry homeless folks who are scared, addicted, cold and hungry. Many have untreated mental health issues.
No one has ever been as nasty as my ex-husband.
I wonder how long it will be before someone calls him on his crap?
Sigh.....
I don't know.....
if only he would have taken the house, he'd be sitting pretty right now.
I've sunk $60,000 into fixing the damage he did to the basement after our divorce.
It's too late to give him the house now.
At the last appraisal, I have earned $332,000 worth of equity.
What a difference nine years can make.
May you stay prosperous and may all your karma be good.
More importantly, may you know enough NOT to piss off a judge.
Love ya,
S.