09:07 - 14.08.05
Truculence
It's an odd thing. When I went to see my banker a couple of weeks ago, he naturally pulled up my credit report on his computer. He gave a strange exclamation and then turned the monitor so I could look at it. He said "Do you see that?" See what? "There is no record of credit for you at all - not even your mortgage." Well how can that be? The bank knows full well that I've been the sole owner of the home for a long time. I had to report to them monthly the first few years that the boys and I were on our own in the early '90's. The reason being, was that the ex had stopped paying the mortgage several months before he walked out while insisting the notices received at home were just outdated. He showed me "receipts". They were fake. So when he left, I had not only to pay the monthly rate, but also try to pay down the debt so that foreclosure didn't happen. All on $7 an hour wage with six sons in school and very little help from him or anyone else. No welfare either, thank you very much. It took me a long time to get that straightened around and that is why I have always been afraid of debt since.
Those years were punishing beyond recall. A carton of eggs to feed the boys or pantyhose, because they were mandatory at the worksite? How many runs could I get away with, before something was said. Bread for the boys or tampons, so I could go in to work. Had to show up or no pay, right? Bought pasta instead, but it was served as plain spaghetti - buckets of it. Great nutrition huh? More often than not, I would just buy the ingredients to make pancakes or scrambled eggs. Pancakes? Well yes the four food groups almost. Milk, eggs, flour (fortified) and some form of fruit. Missing in action was vegetables a lot of the winter, although in the summer we had the garden growing and a very productive raspberry patch. The boys loathe pancakes now - can't blame them.
Anyway back to the credit check. Once my divorce was decreed, I went to the bank and gave copies of all the documents to the banker so he could have my name changed on the mortgage - maiden name - so I could build up my own credit rating. Asked Elections Canada to change their records and ditto with the service providers that take monthly payments for their services. And, once I dug myself out of the hole the boys Dad had left us in - he hadn't made any of those monthly payments for several billing cycles either - I was a very good girl. Before anything else, those bills were paid. Odd thing was that even though I had requested that the name changes take place, they always seemed to last one or two billing cycles and then I would find that the name of the payee was always the generic last name of my ex. After a year of battling it out with Elections Canada, I finally had to write their legal counsel and register a strong protest. It finally got switched into my name with an apology from the person who just sent me the nasty letter. Apparently he was the one countermanding my requests.
The same thing happened with the mortgage. I know I received correspondence for a year with my maiden name, then somehow it was switched back to the married name. The banker had remembered the time I brought in all my paperwork and couldn't account for the switch. I can't either, nor for the changes to the records in the bank's database - even the address had been altered. Yesterday, there was an article in the newspaper about faulty credit ratings and the damage they can cause in your life. Tell me about it. I couldn't even get a credit card for years of asking, even though my sons were almost automatically given one when they arrived at the age of majority. How is that fair. It isn't. When I saw that credit screen in the bank one light went on. No record of me paying bills on time all those years including the mortgage, so it appeared I had never had fiscal duties that I had carried out.
As I was reading the article the second light dawned, as I realized that as long as my credit rating was good in my married name. The boys' Dad could use that if he failed to disclose that we had been separated/divorced for over a decade. The proof that he was likely doing that, in my mind, were the letters that arrived at our home from a credit lending agency a couple of years ago addressed to him. I called the agency and asked them to remove his name and my mailing address from their client mailout list explaining the circumstances fully. That happened two or three times from different agencies and I had to call each time to get the changes made. Although there is no lien on the title to my home - at least not that I am aware of, nor did the banker find any - it means the boys' Dad has probably fraudulently gained goods and services using my credit rating under the married name. The question becomes how would he have been able to get that data switched back. A friend working at the bank or for the city might do it for him I suppose.
The other odd thing is that my youngest seems to be talking with his Dad a little more and I seem to be on the receiving end of attacks from him through my youngest that way as well. Last week, when he was supposed to go spend some time with his Dad, it only lasted about an hour. His Dad brought him back and my youngest was clearly very angry. First, I think he had hoped for some more of his Dad's time. Their time spent together likely hasn't added up to a full 24 hours this past year and that includes the family Christmas and Thanksgiving get togethers. When he came back, I heard the accusations of me being a bad parent because I didn't spend enough time with him and I was demanding too much from him.
Let's see. That little fiasco where he was using the Elections Canada cell phone for web browsing cost me a good chunk of change, but I didn't complain because I wasn't aware it was being done and I also didn't know that there would be additional charges for activated features already on the unit. An honest mistake, that he could make up by doing extra work around the house. Now apparently I am exploiting him. To underline that the past couple of weeks, I've come home to find the house torn apart - apparently all done by the cats. Now that is a tactic his Dad used when he was still living here, only he would blame the boys. I think I've told the story about the day I spent four hours organizing some storage space downstairs. It was typical of the pattern of behaviour my ex followed. When I came upstairs, my ex was sitting on the couch staring at the wrestling match and the boys were playing at star wars,he man,turtles or whatever the heroes du jour were at the time. But, in addition, the whole upstairs was torn apart. Every drawer, cupboard, closet and storage area had been emptied out on to the floor. "The boys did it." Right the boys didn't do that when they were left to play while I did housework during a regular day at home when he wasn't there. I started just cleaning up, while he raved at the boys for being "so messy". It had happend often enough by then that I knew not to even challenge him on his behaviour. Then he went downstairs, saying he needed to find his fishing gear. 15 minutes later I went downstairs with an armload of dirty laundry, to find he had ripped apart the storeroom I had just spent half a day organizing. None of the boys could be blamed because none of them had gone downstairs, nor could most of them have reached most of the shelves. When I confronted their Dad about it, standing as he was right beside the doorway, his comment was that he had been looking for something and couldn't find it. It was my fault for not doing the organizing right. Uh huh.
Now the boys' Dad has worked through each of the boys at about the age my youngest is now using their sense of deprivation and their need to separate from the nest to make me the target of their anger. The pattern is familiar, but it hurts just as much each time. I never have responded to the boy's personal attacks because I knew where they were coming from. Each form had been different based on the personality of the son in question. Some have been minimal, almost non-existant, and very short-lived, while a couple lasted a long time. I'm hoping that this last attempt at emotional/psychological/financial abuse won't last long, because the person being sabotaged the most by the behaviours I think my ex is encouraging, is my youngest himself. Maybe one of his older brothers can intervene, but even moreso I'm hoping my youngest's own intelligence and strong character will help him realize that he is being duped by his Dad. No shame in that though, it took me over a dozen years to figure it out and even longer to remove myself and the boys from his abuse. My excuse was that I was 18 when I got married and I just didn't know any better. But the boys were all sucked in when they were still adolescents too. Guess they're just smarter than me, eh?
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