Each person I tell the bank fraud story to that is their first question--how did she pull that off--it is beginning to make me feel the eggshells have morphed into landmines--the intensity of the wrong step or wrong response now illuminated the sky as I am blown to smithereens.
Thankfully the money has been replaced. I can breathe --but it never lasts.
Our money is now in two joint accounts. I am not happy about that.
Was it in joint accounts before? If not then ponder over your options.
Current funds... .if not huge amounts then likely they'll be spent relatively soon on rent or mortgage, insurance, utilities, food and other typical expenses.
Are you both earning incomes? Then you can contribute your respective portions to the joint accounts for monthly expenses.
Where does your paycheck get deposited? If not into your personal account, then time to do that. Yes, she'll squawk like the sky is falling but things are changed now, the missing money caused real problems and you can't let that happen again. My story... .My marriage was going downhill fast in the last 6 months and this happened midway... .
This is yet another reminder that anything not fully in our control is going to vanish or be sabotaged. Leaving a large sum of money in a joint account when separating is just inviting the other spouse to raid the cookie jar. Joint bank accounts and joint credit cards are especially risky.
In my case, I did have my paycheck going into our joint account. But when we went together, I bought a car and she thereafter refused to sign her rights notification in the standard J&S waiver from my 401(k) account, they would not issue me the loan I had planned on. I had to rush to a bank and get a personal loan at a much higher rate. While there I had the brilliant idea to open a personal checking account and changed my auto deposit to there. Oh boy, did she howl and rage for me to undo it, but I told her I had to because she refused at the last hour to sign the standard acknowledgment form and hence blocked my 401(k) loan. Mind you, she had accompanied me to look at the car and help me with driving to get both cars home. Two months later the police got involved and that was the end. I didn't have much money, but my paycheck was safe and it was easy to call the credit card companies and cancel our cards to the other's credit accounts.
When our marriage of 15 years was nearing its end with her flaming out, she went with me when I replaced a car but a few days later she flatly refused to sign a simple 401(k) loan J&S acknowledgement as required by law. Lacking that signature, I couldn't get that loan so I had to rush to a bank to apply for a loan. While there I opened a checking account and moved my paycheck there. Yikes, what a scene it was when she found out. To her it didn't matter that she had nearly sabotaged my car purchase, she demanded I put my paycheck auto deposit back in the joint account. Meanwhile she moved into our preschooler's room and locked herself inside at night, and did other things to made it quite evident it was too dangerous for us to stay together. Did my changing the deposit cause The End? No, if it wasn't that, then it would have been something else. And that's the point. If I hadn't set that boundary then, however small it was, I would have continued my appeasing ways and perhaps not saved myself when it all did come crashing down one weekend a few months later.
And S9 got suspended from school again. I guess it's time for another meeting with the principal.
By now the school's counselor is involved? If not, get that started and don't let his mother control that. (If there are no orders to the contrary, both parents have equal but undefined parental authority. She cannot trump your status as Father unless you let her do it.) I would believe his misbehaviors are strongly influenced by the continuing family dysfunction.
