Checks and Un-Balances

"I guess this isn't all that unusual" the young bank teller at bank # 2 said. He was wearing a pullover sweater that seemed a bit vintage. A sweater like a boy in my high school might have worn. "Just last week there was a woman who closed a joint checking account ten years after her divorce," he said, wide-eyed as if he were at the zoo trying not ogle some exotic beast. I'm glad I'm not that woman. It took me half that long to realize I had to be the pro-active one. It was quite simple, really. A cashier's check drawn at each of the two banks where the joint checking accounts were held.

The teller at the first bank was more worldy. Middle-aged with crew-cut, shiny with product. A beautiful pink shirt and a co-ordinating tie. He explained how he was printing out the transaction. Proof that the amount of the cashier's check equalled the amount of the current balance. Well...minus this bank's 10.00 fee (!!!) for the cashier's check. "You have to be careful," he said.

"I have two cashier's checks for you," I said when I called The Someone. I said I'd be downtown today, but without a car, and he could meet me in Little Tokyo or at Union Station. Or somewhere after I got home tonight. He'd be in his office all day, he said. I did not offer to walk several blocks and deliver the checks to his office door. "I won't have a car" I said. "Union Station," I repeated, and he agreed.

When I got there, I decided to treat myself to dinner. A glass of red was set down in front of me just as he called. "I'm eating alone," I told him. "I don't want to walk away from my table. Can you park and come in?" He laughed. Then told me he'd send his secretary in. "I'm giving her a ride to the train," he said. Then there she was, breathless and rushed, but just as congenial as ever. I gave her the envelope. "What would he do without you?" I said.
"Can you believe I've worked for him for 26 years?" she said.
"Almost as long as I was married to him," I said. And then she mentioned her train. We hurriedly wished each other happy New Year.

I had a second glass of wine. A chocolate pot de creme. I won't eat the whipped cream, I said to myself, but somehow I did.

And as I walked through the station to catch my train, in front of me there was a father with two little girls. They held his hands, the younger girl blond and the older one dark-haired, looking up at him as if he was everything.

photo credit: the writer of the above check which I found somewhere on the Internet ages ago and laughed my self silly.

In which I resurface and return to the blogosphere

"Where are you and why are you neglecting your blog?" My friend Julie messaged me on Facebook days ago, and I had an answer, but it was the simple version of why I haven't been blogging.
I've been zipping around in several directions lately. In addition to my new commitments to the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society and the Downtown Women's Center, I've decided to apply to another MFA program in creative writing. I've also set myself on the path to selling my townhouse and moving north of Los Angeles to a house as close to the beach as possible. Both of these projects will involve a couple of years of effort. Thursday my daughter C.(the bride,)who is visiting, and I drove an hour up the coast and met with a real estate agent. The trip was not so much about looking at houses, even though we did that, as it was about looking at neighborhoods. So somehow, I may start grad school in the fall, temporarily move out of L.A., and then permanently move from the city that has been my home for most of my adult life.
But if I had harnessed enough of my focus to blog, I would have blogged about 2 things:

1) The state of disequalibrium I experienced while visiting the banks that continue to host the two joint checking accounts that still tie me to a certain person I am restrained from mentioning on this blog. I literally fell down in front of one of the banks after I learned that I cannot take my name off of these accounts. The accounts must be closed, and because the certain person continues to use them, he must do the closing after he sets up new auto-pays for his bills. Of course, I could do the closing if I were the sort of person who went around poking bears with sharp sticks.

2)El Dia de los Muertos
I am not a fan of Halloween. I never liked traipsing around the streets of L.A. with my children while feeling like a bad mother when they recoiled from some gory display on someone's front porch in order to receive things I didn't really want them to eat. But remembering our dead loved ones seems like a holy practice. Love, I'm convinced, moves from one world to the next.To celebrate this holiday, I did what I have done every year for the past decade--I went to the fabulous exhibit at the Folk Tree in Pasadena. The photo at the top of the post was taken there.

It's Turdsday. Shit I've Learned about Divorce #4: Money, Taxes, Joint Accounts, Credit Cards and Other Horrors

Taxes:
When my marriage broke up, I had all the financial trappings of a big fat life: a CPA who prepared my taxes,a financial advisor, a team of divorce lawyers. Imagine my surprise when the end of 2008 rolled around and I filed my first individual tax return in thirty years. Not one of those professionals had any inkling of how naive I was. I had no idea of how naive I was--cuz that's what naive is. You don't know what you don't know.


You were supposed to being paying quarterly taxes all year, the CPA said.
Yes, alimony is taxable at the full rate, the divorce attorneys said.
You need to come up with how much money?!?! the financial planner said.
I don't have any control over the tax code, someone else said.
Holy shit, I said.


Paying my income tax and the penalties I accrued from failing to pay estimated quarterly tax wiped out every cent I had saved from my rather fat alimony that first year on my own.


I've recovered from the tax debacle of 2008. But I managed to get myself into the penalty box again in 2009 when I goofed up my quarterly payments to the State of California. Here on the left coast of the country, a quarterly payment is not really a quarter. You pay nothing in the third quarter. That's because you were supposed to pay 40% in the second quarter. And, just by the way, the first and fourth quarter, you pay 30%. Um. For all I know it's that way in every state in the union. But I didn't know what I needed to know when I should have known it.


Joint Accounts:
I didn't know what to do with the joint checking accounts. After my alimony began, I quit using them. But it seemed weird to take my name off them. Someone else's name was still on them, and the accounts were being used by him. Maybe there was some strategic smart attorney something I didn't know, and I should leave things alone.Hmmm, the banker said. He could overdraw this account and you could be liable. That didn't happen. Thank god. But it could have.


Credit Cards:
When you get a credit card with someone, you might be just a simple little authorized user. It's a pain, because if you call the credit card company for any reason, you're just a big fat nothing. I'm sorry, they'll tell you. We have to speak to the owner of the account. But I'm his wife, you'll say. Who? Oh, that doesn't matter, they'll say. But if you get divorced, there's still a lot of fancy dancing to get yourself off the account. And what goes on with that account can affect your credit rating.


If you're not just an authorized user,you're probably a co-owner of the account. You can't get your name taken off. Period. We don't recognize divorce, the credit card company will say. They'll go on to say that the agreement you entered into with the credit card company supersedes divorce. You are liable even if you shredded the card long ago. Now you have to pay your divorce lawyers to help you settle this one.


Other Horrors:
Health insurance is at the top of my list of "other horrors." I won't even go into it. But think about your situation. Your health and how you insure it, and how all of that will change when you are divorced.


I wish you the best of luck.
Just telling you some shit you might want to know.




My divorce advice disclaimer: I am not an attorney, a paralegal, or a legal secretary. Nor do I possess any legal education or credentials of any kind other than having been married to an attorney for three decades and immediately thereafter involved in divorcing him for the next four years. My advice is based solely on my own experience and falls under the broader life heading of Damn It,  If Only I'd Known Then What I Know Now.

Hi Mr. Ex, How ya doin?

I meant to delete the link to this blog that's part of my automatic email signature when I sent a reply to Mr. Ex's  email, but I didn't.
I didn't expect Mr. Ex to actually email me about our joint checking account after his secretary gave him my message.  But he did.
His answer was cryptic. It reminded me of a fortune one might pull out of a Chinese fortune cookie.


... some companies require more time to make the change for the auto deductions.


So I emailed him back and asked how much time and I just hit send and then a day later, I thought, OH.


So hey, Mr. Ex, if you're reading this, Hi!!! How about dividing our joint assets? Oh and BTW, I'm closing that joint checking account really soon.

Roarrrrrr Snarrrrrrl Grrrrrrowl

I must have an evil alter ego somewhere. Actually, I'm pretty sure I can access it, I just don't want to unlock that box.

As the 3rd anniversary of Mr. Ex's departure approaches, I have become increasingly cranky at having my financial affairs entwined with his. About five seconds after I got my first alimony check, I stopped using all of our joint credit cards, never touched the ATM cards for our joint accounts, never wrote a check. He, however, is still using our joint checking accounts (currently funded by his money)--one of which he is consistently overdrawn on.  I don't suppose this is good for my credit rating. It is certainly not good for my mental health. It is not possible to simply remove my name from the account, so it must be closed.

On June 30th I sent Mr. Ex an email titled, "I'm going to close our xxxx Bank checking account." I asked how much time he needed to reconfigure his automatic bill pay. How did he respond?  He didn't. Zilch. Zip. Nada. I've been busy writing, so I let it go. Today, I decided to close the account and drove to the bank. Hmmm, I thought, maybe I should give him one more chance. All those bills on autopay. He has a baby in the house. What if they shut off his water or his power or the gas? So I sat in my car and  called his secretary and asked to speak to him. He was too busy, so I asked her to give him a very specific message.  "I need to close the account," I said. (I didn't tell her he is consistently overdrawn). "He has a lot of bills on autopay."

I ran an errand. I came home. The account is overdrawn again.

Is there something I can take to make me meaner?