Let’s Talk Financials with a Sociopath – Part 3 of 5

Part of a Now 5 Week Series:

Week 1:  Running a Business with a Sociopath

Week 2:  The Downfall of a Business with a Sociopath

Week 3: Preparing for Divorce

Week 4: Divorce and Aftermath Part A

Week 5:  Divorce and Aftermath Part B

Preparing for a Divorce 

Out of Denial

Now this is where it really gets ugly.  I am going to try and attempt to only highlight the business details of the story, not sure if it’s fortunate or not, but I think I will have enough juice to make a full short story of this.

I went to the doctor on a Tuesday and had spath watch the little one.  On my way home, I decided it would be nice to stop by the office to bring some candy to my office manager, the new admin assistant and my spouse.  Although he was at home watching my daughter, I wanted to leave him his favorite candy so when he returned back to the office it would be there for him.  I made a phone call to him on the way to the office mentioning about my idea of us transitioning over to commercial real estate.  He was very hesitant.  That was a first, and caught me off guard.  He usually liked all the money making plans I came up with.

I stopped by the office around 1 pm and handed out the candy.  My office manager and I always chat so we went outside to catch up.  He was frantic.  I told him that I have been sensing something was not right lately.  He was smoking and very upset.  I can’t really remember the conversation in detail, but he told me that things have been really shady around the office and things are falling through the cracks.  A rush of heat went all through my body.  Was this going to be the day when I couldn’t turn away in denial anymore?  I went right into the spath’s office and went to his computer.  Well all be, the screen was on and there was an email pulled up from a “MR” (initials)  It was in Spanish, but luckily I finally could read and understand Spanish.  It went pretty much like, “I’m crossing my fingers that when I get to my office I have an email from you.”  He referred to her as “Mrs. (my last name)”.  It was creepy enough that she corrected him in the email trail to say, um my last name is “R” not “(my last name.)”  Anyway he was calling her his wife already.  Then at the end he said that he was working hard for her future.  I went on to look in his email and he had deleted all his incoming mail.  Silly him, he didn’t think to delete his sent mail which has incoming mail as a trail.  So pretty much he didn’t delete anything that he thought he did.  I saw all of it.  All the communicating with this girlfriend of his.  He was already having her do errands for him for the business delegating things to her.  Oh I felt sorry for her.  She was being delegated to do things for her boyfriend’s wife’s business.  That’s a trip.  I saw all their talk about going to visit his Mom in his home town and that they were going to stay with his Mom at her house.  It was gross.  Even more, looking at his office there was a big margarita cup that said “Playa” on it.  When I confronted him about it, he tried to say that it meant “beach in Spanish” which playa does mean beach in Spanish but it would say “La Playa” if it was really saying beach, and it wouldn’t be silver and studded with black rhinestones.  It would look beachy.  Perfect example of pathological lying and manipulation.  Also the picture of my daughter and I that was supposed to be on his desk was shoved in one of his drawers.  That was pretty much how I felt like he treated us, just…like..that. So wife and daughter’s picture shoved in the drawer and studded “playa” cup on his desk.  There was his duplicitous lifestyle right there.

I went back to my office manager and took him outside again so the admin wouldn’t hear us.  BTW, in looking at the emails I found out that the admin that we had just recently hired was his girlfriend’s family by marriage.  You’ve got to be kidding me!??  Am I in a movie here?  I mean where does this come from?  Anyway  I told my office manager to spill the beans.  I told him I’m going to divorce him so don’t worry about being caught in the middle.  Poor guy could have gone to the hospital for an anxiety attack.  He told me how a month ago the business credit card bill had come across his desk and he had seen the flight purchases.  He confronted the spath and told him to get his you know what together and take care of the home front.  My office manager couldn’t believe how dumb he was to purchase tickets for him and another female on a credit card other people had access to.  Um get caught much?  My office manager told me how things were falling through the cracks and the spath wasn’t answering his phone, returning phone calls, showing up to the field or really getting anything done and her was having to do all of the spath’s work.

Standing out at the car that day breathing in the second hand smoke from my office manager, I finally came out of my denial and forced myself to make a decision.  All the while I have spath bombarding me with text messages of when I’m coming home because he has stuff to do.  All bet you have stuff to do.  I had finally come to a decision.

Making the Call

The next morning after kicking him out of the house, I went straight to the attorney’s office.  I know if I had forewarned the spath of what I was doing, he would try to drain the account or something of that nature.  Legally I had to bind him so he couldn’t mess with the finances.  It was hard to make a quick decision on a divorce overnight like that and there was still a part of me that wasn’t sure I wanted to do it.  So I decided to do a legal separation.  It would still freeze the assets and I could turn it into a divorce if I wanted to later.  Because our business was worth so much, my retainer was hefty.  I had to retain a lawyer because I knew this thing was going to be ridiculous.  I debited it right out of the business account.  I knew my daughter’s well being would be at stake, I had to do it.  I knew I was honest and had integrity.  Him?  Not so much. He couldn’t be trusted.

I had him served by Thursday.  He took me off the bank account sometime from Wednesday morning on.  I communicated to him that he could NOT take me off the business account due to the preliminary injunction and Friday we were back down at the bank putting me back on the business account.  Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming.  Thank goodness I listened to my gut so I could retain an attorney.

Discoveries were made in the next months to find that our business was worth over a mil and that we decided that we were going to sell the business.  Things went on pretty quietly until I had to file an order of protection; let the games begin.