A Cautionary Tale

Let me start off by saying I'm okay and it's all good now, and add that trusting my judgement and sticking to it would have prevented all this.

The short version is this: a couple of weeks ago I faced the facts that, after nearly two years of not contributing his share and two months of contributing almost nothing, Steve was a messed-up person who would live off of me for the rest of his life if I allowed it. I decided that life is too short to have wasted two years of it - and certainly not the rest of it - supporting his freeloading arse. So I started putting things in order and finding out what I would have to do to get his name off the house. I planned to come home from work the Friday before last, sit down and have a talk with him, and work things out rationally. And then crap (it seems to be a common theme on this blog) hit the fan.

Okay, so how does a supposedly smart woman like me find herself in the kind of predicament that leads to a decision like this? Well, first off, the aforementioned "trusting my judgement" was something I constantly questioned, due only in part to Steve always telling me it was just the way I saw things. Things like it not being okay to be over 40 and still "borrowing" money from your mom or averaging maybe 3.5 days of work per week. But, I digress...

When we lived at my previous house, I approached him about the money and sharing expenses issue and he said that if it was his house he wouldn't expect me to pay for anything. He said that all I needed to do was ask him for money if I needed it. I had a problem with that and thought he should just pay part of the bills and we wound up settling on him paying a $300 bill for me every month. This was about three months before we moved. He did pay it twice and then didn't have the money the last month. He also said that when we got a house that was ours as opposed to just mine, things would be different.

So here's where the against-my-better-judgement thing comes in. When you're dealing with someone who isn't honest or who has mental problems (Steve is bipolar - a fact he didn't disclose until after we'd been together a year - but that's the least of it), you can't treat them as though they were like you. They're not, and if you think you're going to be an open-mined person, a reasonable person and give them the same fair shot you'd expect, you're going to get hurt. So I did, and I did. I gave him his shot at having the responsibility of a house payment and in just over two months I wound up paying or charging (mostly charging) more than $2,000 of his share of expenses. I knew it was an unfair balance, but until I put it all in a spreadsheet and saw that it added up to that amount, I think I was in some kind of denial.

It wasn't just about money - there were several other areas that were problematic. All stemmed from the same issue, and where that issue came from I don't know. A bad childhood and parents that he was able to guilt-trip into making up for it, I guess. He laid out of work for just about any reason he could come up with. And no work = no money. One morning, toward the end of it, he stayed home from work because he had to clean up dog crap and it made him sick to his stomach. He said that - I'm not making it up. Anyway, he'd stay down in the basement, on the couch in front of the TV, for days on end. He'd come up to get something to eat or drink, but that was it. By the time I'd decided I'd had enough and was going to have "The Talk," I'd already quit buying groceries for at least a week or two. I guess I starved him out because when I got home, ready for "The Talk," there was a note on the door from Steve.

He said he "had to figure something out about all this" and was going to his parents' house. I think what he really had to figure out was where to get a decent meal without having to pay for it. He said I should call him if I wanted to talk. Well, from past experience with Steve I knew getting him to actually leave the house was half the battle, and that I should just run with it. I know - it's terrible that I didn't have "The Talk" face to face like I planned, but I've since decided that my actions fall under the aforementioned exemption from giving dishonest and/or mentally ill people a fair shot because they won't be fair to you.

So I wrote an e-mail outlining how his parents had given us $5,000 for the house and, while he had put in $1,100, he'd slacked off to the tune of over $2,000 in just over two months so I didn't owe him anything. I was taking out a loan against my retirement to pay his parents back but he himself wasn't getting another dime from me. I didn't say it nasty. It was firm and business like. But that was irrelevant. I called and left him a voice mail telling him he should check his e-mail, and when he did, he exploded.

He wouldn't agree to be removed from the title unless I gave him his parents' money and "his" money. My spreadsheet didn't mean crap to him. He was on the title and said I could either give him what he wanted to get rid of him or he would come back and live here for as long as he pleased. Either that, or when I sold the house in 10 - 15 years I could give him half the proceeds. Me trying to calmly explain how - even if you completely disregarded the rent-free year and a half he spent at my house - I had picked up the lion's share of the expenses was all irrelevant to him. He knew I wanted him out of the house and off the title and he was the one who held the keys to make that happen.

Or so he thought.

During my "putting things in order" period, one of the steps I took was to contact the real estate attorney who'd conducted our closing in mid-July and ask if they could do a Quit Claim Deed to take his name off the title like they'd done when they added him at closing, provided he agreed. They said there was no problem with that, and the fee was only about $60. I planned to call them back for an appointment after my rational conversation with Steve, which of course never happened.

I called the real estate attorney for an appointment the Monday following the Weekend from Hell (I say that because it was pretty much non-stop harrassment from Steve via e-mail, phone and cell phone), and the woman who handles the titles was out of the office. Argh. Every thing else had seemed to fall into place, like God was going, "Girl, I'm so glad you finally wised up - let me help you all I can!" I'd finally agreed to write Steve a post-dated check for half the $1,100 so he would just go away and let me get on with my life. And now I couldn't make the appointment to get him legally out.

So, a day and a half later, I'm sitting at work when I get a phone call from the real estate attorney lady. She says, "I pulled your paperwork and he's not on the title." I was incredulous. It was too good to be true. I asked how that was, and she said that they first have to send off the title after closing, get it recorded with the county, and then they can file the Quit Claim Deed to add someone. The title hadn't even come back from the county yet. She asked if I wanted to just forget the Quit Claim Deed and I was like, um, "YEAH!" Then she said, "Well if you ever change your mind..." I interrupted her: "I don't think so."

I'd had all the locks rekeyed that Monday (the one following the Weekend from Hell). God, how it angered Steve that he couldn't get into the house to intimidate me. But I felt a lot safer - and saner - without him here. He left me a voice mail threatening to get his daddy and a lawyer and the sherriff and come over here, but I felt like if I got before a judge I'd be okay.

Steve didn't really bring anything into the house but the clothes on his back, most of which I had put in the garage and he had picked up that Monday. He still had the garage door opener and had programmed the remote control in his mirror, so he could still get into the garage. That worried me. So before I let him know that he had absolutely no legal claim to the house - and thus no leverage he could use to extort money from me - I got on the Internet and got instructions for how to zap the garage door openers so the remotes wouldn't work. Once I had the house and the garage completely secured, I wrote him an e-mail and told him how it was going to be. The subject line: "Bad Karma." It was pretty late when I finished.

I was giving his parents back the money they'd given us. I was not giving it to him unless they directly told me I should. Furthermore, he was not getting any additional money out of me. He owed me, though I realized I probably would never see it. He was to show up to collect the rest of his belongings between 7:30 and 8:30 on Thursday evening and was to hand over the garage door remote before I would allow him in. He would not be coming into the house, and if I felt threatened in any way I would call the police.

He apparently finished reading my "this is how it's going to be" e-mail right about the time I got into the office, and it didn't go over too well. I'd started it off by telling him he could scream, curse, go to the county and get a copy of the title, etc., but it wouldn't matter. I guess he decided to do all that anyway. He started calling my cell phone, my desk phone, calling the front desk and having them put him through to my phone, text messaging...everything. A few days prior to this when it became apparent that this all wasn't going to go too well I decided I needed to keep everything in writing in case it was ever called into question, plus I was an emotional wreck from him trying to manipulate me and I really didn't want to volunteer for more. So I wouldn't answer the phone. Which of course made him angrier and more persistent.

At some point, he realized it was all futile. I don't know if he got information from the county that confirmed what I told him, or what. I reminded him in the "Bad Karma" e-mail that his parents had given me the money and had signed a gift letter to that effect, and that I was not obligated to give them anything, either. Maybe that was it. Whatever it was, he realized the tables had been turned and, a couple of hours after he read my final e-mail I received a one word reply: "Fine."

It's now Sunday night, three nights after he cleared the last of his stuff out. That day, that Thursday, guess what I received in the mail? The title that had just come back from the county. If I had waited even a few days longer to put him out of my life it would have been even more costly. I am so grateful it wasn't any worse. So what have I learned that I can pass on to you all? That I should have trusted my gut instinct nearly two years ago. At minimum I should never have gone into this house with him. By the grace of God I escaped with only somewhat of a financial setback. I've realized that the playing field isn't necessarily level and I don't have to open myself up to risk in order to be seen as a nice, fair, open-minded person. And, in the end, I'm reminded that there's nothing wrong with being alone if the right person's not there. The alternative isn't worth it.