I disclose a lot of personal stuff. It has come back to bite me a few times, but sometimes I receive some heartfelt letters about how I may have helped someone and the impact I’ve made on their life. It helps to know you are not alone. So, that’s one reason I tend to be an open book and reveal more than what a lot of folks are comfortable with. With that said, I’ve taken some serious steps to fight my depression, but not willing to go into detail because I’m scared it will be used against me from accessing my children, as it was before. I will admit, that hurts. I tried to be proactive in taking care of my mental health. But the court views it differently. With that knowledge, my ex used my attempts at bettering my mental health to keep make it seem I was mentally unstable and keep my kids away from me. She was so successful at it; she convinced a judge to make me take a psychological evaluation. Talk about humiliating. And until the results were came in, the judge only allowed me to see my children for only nine hours a week, with no overnight visitation. I had to go 137 nights without giving my kids a kiss goodnight. It’s hard to forgive someone who keeps you from your own children. The judge’s orders allowed us to mutually agree to other options, but my ex would have nothing of it. She knew I was never a danger to our children, and despite them wanting to stay the night in the only house they have ever called home with their father, she refused to let it happen.
Despite seventeen years of marriage, me never physically harming her, and us never going to a single counseling session together, she was so determined to divorce me she got my estranged sister (actually, my adopted cousin from Vietnam who was 11 years younger than me) to testify against me. There’s a lot of history here, but basically after our mother died, I was literally the only family she had. She wanted to become an actress and needed to attend acting school, but she could only do so with private student loans, so she asked if I would cosign them. I did. When she moved to New York and that didn’t pan out, she wanted to become a chef and attend cooking school. Once again, she needed a cosigner for her private student loans. I was hesitant, but felt like it was the right thing to do. She ensured me she would pay off the loans herself and would never do anything to harm the future of my children, but she went back on those promises.
I attended my sister’s graduation from the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cooking academy, where she was first in her class. She asked me to give her away at her wedding. When she needed a car, I gave her mine. After mom died, she lived in our house rent free. But for some reason, she stopped communicating with me. I was sad she wasn’t being a part of my children’s lives. When it came to family, all my kids knew were my wife’s side. As opposed to me, her parents are still living, and she has siblings who have their own families. I thought it was sad that my kids would never get to know anyone from my side of the family, who I felt were equally important.
The total amount of the two private student loans I cosigned was over $40,000. One day I started to receive notices in the mail that payment was due and she wasn’t paying. She was three months behind. Then, I started to get phone calls from the student loan company. I tried to reach out to her, but she never responded to any of my emails or voicemails. I no longer knew where she lived. Monthly payments were over $800 a month and the interest rate was insane. I spoke to my wife about what we should do as we couldn’t budget that amount. We both decided it would be best to refinance the house and get cash back to pay off the loans.
My wife and I paid off the larger of the two loans, about $32,000, thinking my sister could handle the lesser of the two loans in which the monthly payment was less than a hundred dollars a month. Or, if she failed to pay that, could manage that amount. After paying off the larger loan, I heard nothing from my sister. No thank you, no acknowledgement. A lawyer friend told me Texas law was set up where I could sue my sister, but I had a two-year window to do so. I kept that in the back of my mind in case she defaulted on the lesser of the two loans. After about 14-months, I started to get letters and phone calls from the student loan company that she was three months behind. I spoke to my wife about what we should do, and we both decided to that we shouldn’t allow her to walk over me like that and take money away from what would go to our children’s college savings. So, I sued.
It’s not everyday you decide to sue your sister. I hated the idea of it. I made an appointment to meet a lawyer about it, and remember confiding in my wife how hard of a decision this was. Rarely have I felt my wife made me a priority. Proof of that came after I met the lawyer about suing my sister. She never asked me how the appointment went. Two weeks went by, and she never inquired a single time about me meeting with a lawyer to sue my sister until I brought it up to her. Yeah, I could have brought it up, but it was difficult to talk about. A compassionate wife would have had it on her mind.
To make a long story short, the judge, via Zoom, ruled in my favor. It wasn’t the ruling I wanted. My sister claimed she was never informed the loan was in default or paid off. To my astonishment, she said the following, “He paid my loan off without my consent.” Seeing her in online court was the first time I saw her in five years. Before the trial, her husband sent me an email and attached an audio recording of her speaking to a customer service representative of the student loan company. I’m not sure if they were aware, but they didn’t turn the recording off after the call and I could hear them tell me to suck a part of a male anatomy and how much money he was earning selling luxury cars while she, a woman in her mid-thirties, was a full-time college student who still didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. The judge said she could start paying me back in five years once she graduates medical school, which was she still didn’t know if she was accepted in.
As I said before, I never physically harmed my wife and we never went to a single counseling session, yet her first step was to abandon me, kidnap the kids, alienate them from me, and file for divorce. Not only that, but she reached out to my estranged sister and got her to testify against me in court at the custodial hearing. My lawyer objected, stating since my sister hasn’t communicated with me in five years, had no idea what kind of parent I am. Nevertheless, the judge allowed her to testify, and she lied in court claiming that I once got on top of her, held her down, and beat her. That is a total lie. My lawyer objected, but it didn’t matter, it was said and I’m sure it stuck in everyone’s mind. Before the trial, when my lawyer first talked to her, she claimed my parents abused her.