Auditing Your Ex
What are your rates for babysitting? That’s the question I was asking of my 7 & 8 year olds babysitter. You would think I would know the figure, but being the non-custodial parent – I only know what the custodial parent tells me. Sometimes I check on what she tells me, especially when it comes to money.
You see my ex has this bad habit of inflating the actual figures as a way to get me to pay more than what is necessary. You would think that it is easy to verify if she pays by check, but the problem there is that my ex had worked a few deals with her tenants that she would write them a check for “babysitting” fees and they were to cash/ deposit the checks and return the cash back to her. This way she had a “receipt” for court purposes and it would be difficult if not impossible for me to dispute.
Luckily I ran into one tenant who informed me of this little arrangement. She had been asked by my ex on a number of occasions to take the checks from her and return the cash, but this woman had a bad feeling about it and the whole situation and declined each time.
Apparently that didn’t deter my ex from moving forward with her game plan because a bill for babysitting over a 4 month period was presented by my ex to the lawyers and the court. She even included the “canceled” check showing that she paid this woman. I’m glad I took a closer look at the $1020.00 check and asked a few questions of the tenant.
Well guess what. The back of the check had the tenants name on it and below it was my ex’s signature. When I questioned my ex about it she said that the woman signed the check over so that she could cash it for her. Something didn’t seem right but I kept my mouth shut for the time being.
I contacted the tenant and she asked me to provide a copy of the check as she was certain she NEVER signed over a check to my ex. When I showed this woman the check in question she immediately said “that is not my signature.” She proceeded to pull out all her banking info and other canceled checks to illustrate to me what her signature does look like. In my opinion there was NO match – not even close.
I contacted my lawyer about it in hopes that it could be used in court to help illustrate the great lengths that my ex goes to in order to substantiate her requests for additional monies from me. The best my lawyer could offer me was for me to go the police and file a criminal complaint.
The police were contacted a few days later and they directed me to the Sheriff’s department. I met with a Deputy and went over what had happened. He responded that there wasn’t going to be anything he could do about it. I told him that my lawyer instructed me to come down here and file a complaint. He asked me who my lawyer was and when I told him, he quickly became more interested in assisting me. Apparently my lawyer is well known in the area and seemingly well liked. The deputy contacted my lawyer and they chatted for a few minutes before changing the topic to the forged check.
He hung up after stating that he would be looking into it a bit more and he gave me his card to call back in for an official report in a couple of weeks. I was hoping that he would at the very least rattle my ex’s cage a little. Hopefully I’ll find out more at the next court date.
“Forty dollars per day for the two children”, the babysitter responded. “They are here for four hours each.” Quick math in my head put that at $5 per kid per hour. I guess that is a good rate. Now I just have to go back and check the bills my ex submitted for this woman’s services. My hunch is that things are not going to match up like they should, but isn’t that the fun part of auditing your ex?
