The Lawsuit

The summer after my ex-husband left, the kids and I were at home having a normal day. I was in the shower when Mr. Monkey came to the bathroom door and said he had something for me. Never a moment's peace, not even in the shower :-) Through gritted teeth I asked if it could wait until I got out of the shower. When I got out, I discovered that a sheriff's deputy had come to the door. He asked for me and MM told him I was in the shower. The deputy asked if he was my son, and handed him papers. That's how I learned I was being sued. So did all the kids, as the boys witnessed the papers being served and told Little Miss Mom before I got out of the shower. No protecting them from this ugly truth. They were in this with me.

After a week or two of phone calls and research, I discovered that 2 years prior, my ex-husband had applied for 3 credit cards in my name, but without my knowledge or consent. One of them he had never used, and it was closed. But with the other two, he had run up thousands of dollars in debt, which he never paid. It was one of these I was being sued for. He admitted applying for 2 of them when I confronted him about it, but tried to claim that I knew what he was doing.

Over the next three months I walked through the process of defending myself against this lawsuit. The credit card company required a police report, so I dutifully called the sheriff's office. That's when I learned identity theft against a spouse is not a crime in my state. So the deputy refused to file a report. My ex-husband did sign affidavits accepting full responsibility for the debts, but that wasn't enough to satisfy the credit card company. Finally, I learned that I could request a copy of the application, which would prove I never signed it. If he had signed my name, I could easily demonstrate that it was not my signature. Or an online application with my testimony and affidavit from my ex-husband would be enough to establish my innocence. Case closed.

But credit card companies don't care if you're innocent or not. They just want their money. I didn't realize what was going on at first. I simply made my request for a copy of the application. But after weeks of excuses why they couldn't get me one, I understood that they were hoping to intimidate me into just paying. The excuses got really creative towards the end. The person responsible for tracking down the application was on vacation, ill or out of the office for 5 weeks! I never did receive a copy, but I also never agreed to pay. Just one week before the court date, the company dismissed the lawsuit.

Without the Lord, I never could have endured this experience. My natural tendency is to worry and become angry, which almost always leads to my own sin. Instead I trusted my God to protect me and defend me. It was a faith-building exercise for all of us. If I had been in control of the circumstances, the kids would never have known about the lawsuit. I wanted to protect them from the fear of what if's, and from one more reason to be angry with their father. But their Heavenly Father knew better than I what they needed and used it to teach them about His faithfulness.