moneychaser
Well-Known Member
This is the wildest thing I’ve read in awhile....
From Reddit:
As the title states my wife was recently sued, she lost and we had to pay. The money is a significant amount for us, we didn’t have much in savings or our emergency fund to begin with, and both of those accounts are now empty.
My currently problem is trying to move past the resentment and anger I’m feeling towards my wife. Until now I’ve always felt like we were a partnership in our marriage. But, since I’m the breadwinner I can’t help but to feel like I’m spending "my" money on something that isn’t my fault. I’ve had no problem paying the mortgage, and taking care of various financial burdens that come with being a married homeowner. However, I have been the only one to put money aside in our savings and other accounts to prepare for an emergency - like a totaled car, someone loses their job, medical bills, or an act of god… not a stupid lawsuit where I know my wife is guilty. She has a part time job and doesn’t make much money, but pays for smaller things when she can (like groceries and some random bills), but she does take care of a lot of cooking, cleaning and caring for our pets.
What did my wife do? (Note: I had no idea this was going on while it was happening).
She used linkedin to find her former ex best friend, she ended up creating a realistic looking fake linkedin profile with a vague occupation of ‘recruiter’. My wife ended up sending this ex-best friend, "Laura" a few messages pretending to be a recruiter in her line of work. Laura finally responded thinking that this recruiter was real, my wife wanted her phone number but Laura gave her a personal email address instead. My wife created a second fake linkedin profile and started to send messages to people with similar titles as Laura at her company. These messages said derogatory things about Laura, a mixture of truthful things but embarrassing and just fabricated ******** to make Laura look bad. Her manager got one of these messages that claimed that Laura was a heavy drug user. Laura's manager talked to her about these messages and he felt like the messages were bizarre and seemed like someone was trying to troll or harass Laura. Well, Laura team had her back and helped her saved these messages. Not only that, but Laura requested that she be drug tested anyway, to provide further evidence that she was clean. My wife didn’t know this at this point, but Laura was pregnant. Several of her coworkers, including her manager testified on Laura behalf.
Using the personal email address she got from the fake recruiter profile, she was able to find a few social media platforms Laura was on and was able to figure out her husbands name. She did some more internet sleuthing and found Laura's husband on facebook. Laura's husband didn’t have much on his facebook profile, but you could see his business email address on it. My wife sent him an email claiming that Laura was cheating on him. The husband confronted Laura about this email and Laura encouraged him to keep responding to this person, and save the messages, as well as to start asking specific questions about this supposed affair. My wife thought she was being clever and ended up telling the husband that Laura was cheating on him during the work week, she even gave him specific dates. What she didn’t realize was Laura had something turned on in google maps where it keeps years worth of historical gps data. Some of the dates my wife gave him also happened to be days where they both worked from home together. She also ended up giving him dates during a time they were on vacation together. Laura had her husband keep responding as much as possible to my wife and to backup all correspondence.
My wife was able to find out when and where the baby shower was going to be. One of Laura friends had created a public registry for her and had the invitation online. My wife decided to show up unannounced (the baby shower took place in a semi-public place, they had rented out an area connected to the public business.) She did not make herself known immediately. Instead she looked for patrons that were entering and exiting the rented out room. She was able to get the attention of a few guests that had never met her and tried to gossip about Laura - my wife was telling people that Laura didn’t actually know who the father was, among other things. This was at an event where her husband was at as well. The word got back around to Laura and she spotted my wife and apparently immediately put together all the pieces of what happened.
I’m leaving a fair amount of information out - My wife was able to find phone numbers, social media accounts and email for other people in Laura circle and sent them messages about Laura on multiple occasions. All the messages were trying to paint Laura in an extremely derogatory light. All the events I’ve mentioned so far took place over a year or so. My wife didn’t think to mask her IP address, so it was pretty easy to find out that all of these made up messages came from the same IP address, ours. Many of Laura's friends and family testified on her behalf, Laura had everyone saved as much digital evidence as possible - and it was a lot.
Laura and her husband hired a lawyer and decided to sue to my wife. They had ample evidence against her. All the saved messages, close friends and even her manager spoke on her behalf, she showed that she went to see a therapist once all the harassment started because she was depressed and anxious, she showed that she and her husband went to counseling after the accusations of her cheating. She even went above and beyond and had more drug tests done to show she was clean and my wife’s accusations were 100% false, and even had a paternity test done to show that my wife was again wrong and chose to lie.
I honestly felt awful for Laura, there were lots of tears on her end. You could tell how much emotional stress she had gone through. She said that being pregnant during the majority of this was absolutely horrific and was worried the stress and anxiety would somehow hurt her baby. She was pained that her one and only baby shower was ruined by my wife and that was something that could never be truly repaid or made up for. And that my wife’s harassment continued even after Laura gave birth and was trying to manage a newborn child.
My wife has never done anything this crazy before. I knew she could be a little petty and jealous of others, especially people she use to be friends with in the past, but it was only talk - no action. We’ve had a very happy marriage otherwise, we rarely fight, have a lot in common, we have a lot of fun together. But, she really ****ed up this time. I don’t know how to move forward. I know someone is going to suggest therapy, but I really want to start building up an emergency fund again. We’re pretty screwed financially for awhile.
tl;dr Wife was sued by her former best friend, I emptied out all of our savings and sold a few things to pay for everything. I need help managing my resentment towards my wife and to move past this. Funds are low and we can't afford therapy right now. What can we do to move forward?
From Reddit:
As the title states my wife was recently sued, she lost and we had to pay. The money is a significant amount for us, we didn’t have much in savings or our emergency fund to begin with, and both of those accounts are now empty.
My currently problem is trying to move past the resentment and anger I’m feeling towards my wife. Until now I’ve always felt like we were a partnership in our marriage. But, since I’m the breadwinner I can’t help but to feel like I’m spending "my" money on something that isn’t my fault. I’ve had no problem paying the mortgage, and taking care of various financial burdens that come with being a married homeowner. However, I have been the only one to put money aside in our savings and other accounts to prepare for an emergency - like a totaled car, someone loses their job, medical bills, or an act of god… not a stupid lawsuit where I know my wife is guilty. She has a part time job and doesn’t make much money, but pays for smaller things when she can (like groceries and some random bills), but she does take care of a lot of cooking, cleaning and caring for our pets.
What did my wife do? (Note: I had no idea this was going on while it was happening).
She used linkedin to find her former ex best friend, she ended up creating a realistic looking fake linkedin profile with a vague occupation of ‘recruiter’. My wife ended up sending this ex-best friend, "Laura" a few messages pretending to be a recruiter in her line of work. Laura finally responded thinking that this recruiter was real, my wife wanted her phone number but Laura gave her a personal email address instead. My wife created a second fake linkedin profile and started to send messages to people with similar titles as Laura at her company. These messages said derogatory things about Laura, a mixture of truthful things but embarrassing and just fabricated ******** to make Laura look bad. Her manager got one of these messages that claimed that Laura was a heavy drug user. Laura's manager talked to her about these messages and he felt like the messages were bizarre and seemed like someone was trying to troll or harass Laura. Well, Laura team had her back and helped her saved these messages. Not only that, but Laura requested that she be drug tested anyway, to provide further evidence that she was clean. My wife didn’t know this at this point, but Laura was pregnant. Several of her coworkers, including her manager testified on Laura behalf.
Using the personal email address she got from the fake recruiter profile, she was able to find a few social media platforms Laura was on and was able to figure out her husbands name. She did some more internet sleuthing and found Laura's husband on facebook. Laura's husband didn’t have much on his facebook profile, but you could see his business email address on it. My wife sent him an email claiming that Laura was cheating on him. The husband confronted Laura about this email and Laura encouraged him to keep responding to this person, and save the messages, as well as to start asking specific questions about this supposed affair. My wife thought she was being clever and ended up telling the husband that Laura was cheating on him during the work week, she even gave him specific dates. What she didn’t realize was Laura had something turned on in google maps where it keeps years worth of historical gps data. Some of the dates my wife gave him also happened to be days where they both worked from home together. She also ended up giving him dates during a time they were on vacation together. Laura had her husband keep responding as much as possible to my wife and to backup all correspondence.
My wife was able to find out when and where the baby shower was going to be. One of Laura friends had created a public registry for her and had the invitation online. My wife decided to show up unannounced (the baby shower took place in a semi-public place, they had rented out an area connected to the public business.) She did not make herself known immediately. Instead she looked for patrons that were entering and exiting the rented out room. She was able to get the attention of a few guests that had never met her and tried to gossip about Laura - my wife was telling people that Laura didn’t actually know who the father was, among other things. This was at an event where her husband was at as well. The word got back around to Laura and she spotted my wife and apparently immediately put together all the pieces of what happened.
I’m leaving a fair amount of information out - My wife was able to find phone numbers, social media accounts and email for other people in Laura circle and sent them messages about Laura on multiple occasions. All the messages were trying to paint Laura in an extremely derogatory light. All the events I’ve mentioned so far took place over a year or so. My wife didn’t think to mask her IP address, so it was pretty easy to find out that all of these made up messages came from the same IP address, ours. Many of Laura's friends and family testified on her behalf, Laura had everyone saved as much digital evidence as possible - and it was a lot.
Laura and her husband hired a lawyer and decided to sue to my wife. They had ample evidence against her. All the saved messages, close friends and even her manager spoke on her behalf, she showed that she went to see a therapist once all the harassment started because she was depressed and anxious, she showed that she and her husband went to counseling after the accusations of her cheating. She even went above and beyond and had more drug tests done to show she was clean and my wife’s accusations were 100% false, and even had a paternity test done to show that my wife was again wrong and chose to lie.
I honestly felt awful for Laura, there were lots of tears on her end. You could tell how much emotional stress she had gone through. She said that being pregnant during the majority of this was absolutely horrific and was worried the stress and anxiety would somehow hurt her baby. She was pained that her one and only baby shower was ruined by my wife and that was something that could never be truly repaid or made up for. And that my wife’s harassment continued even after Laura gave birth and was trying to manage a newborn child.
My wife has never done anything this crazy before. I knew she could be a little petty and jealous of others, especially people she use to be friends with in the past, but it was only talk - no action. We’ve had a very happy marriage otherwise, we rarely fight, have a lot in common, we have a lot of fun together. But, she really ****ed up this time. I don’t know how to move forward. I know someone is going to suggest therapy, but I really want to start building up an emergency fund again. We’re pretty screwed financially for awhile.
tl;dr Wife was sued by her former best friend, I emptied out all of our savings and sold a few things to pay for everything. I need help managing my resentment towards my wife and to move past this. Funds are low and we can't afford therapy right now. What can we do to move forward?
Yup... 
