Etiquette/Ethics Question Re Ex, And Re $$

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t even know that it’s an etiquette or ethical issue I’m experiencing so much as, “Is this the kind of person I want to be” dilemma.

So: It’s fairly complicated, but some years ago, an Interest and I split up, more or less over the phone (we were on different continents). A short while before that, she had asked me to ship some of her stuff to her and also asked for a loan. I shipped the stuff, and loaned her a bit of money. She saw me a bit later and gave me a check for about a thousand bucks (actual cost of the shipping). She said she’d repay the loan later, and also asked me not to cash the check she gave me for awhile, as her cashflow situation was in flux due to unexpected problems with her company (true enough).

And then, we called it off a few weeks later. Not acrimoniously, a bit awkwardly, and with no mention of the money (I know, second mistake, if I had any intention of seeing it, I should have raised the issue then).

We haven’t really been in much contact since then.

Now . . . I came across the uncashed check the other day. I know that my current Interest thinks I should cash it, and demand the other money back. (I’m assuming it’s because she views my still holding onto the check as an indication I may have some sort of soft spot for the ex, which I don’t – still, she’d be much happier if I symbolically cut all ties).

Putting aside the serious question as to whether a several-year-old check is cashable (basically, I think it’s technically not, but the banks rarely look at the date – assuming the account’s still open) – WWYD? I mean, I did front the money for her on the understanding she’d pay me back. And, I’ve given up (if only on practical grounds) on getting the couple of thousand dollar “loan” back, so we’re only talking about the check I actually have in hand. But – assuming you had this check, and assuming it was practical to deposit it – would you? Part of me says, Hell, why not, it’s mine? Part of me says the bigger thing to do is to walk away, or to make the “definitive break” by tearing it up. We parted on sad but cordial terms, so I have no interest in figurative pay-back (I hope her business is thriving so much that she’d never even miss the thousand bucks), but some modest interest in literal payback.

2

Given that…

Current S.O. needs to butt out.

If you are able to walk away from this two grand without suffering financially, the bigger thing to do just that. IMHO.

If you want to cash it after all this time, it’s probably best to check with your ex first. (That will help answer the question in your mind about how much you want the money… Bad enough to pick up the phone and have that conversation?)

3

Yeah, I don’t want the current S.O. pushing me into something tacky or ill-advised, and I have to take her bias into account.

Yes, I could walk away from this money (after all, it’s been several years) without any real pinch (but – hey, I could also find a use for it!).

Yes, when S.O. first pressed on this, I e-mailed ex and (pansy that I am) instead of saying (as S.O. recommended) “I is cashing it, respek” [/Ali_G], equivocated (“Hey, hope all’s well. Any thoughts on whether I ought to cash that check you gave me?”). No response at all, and I’m not going to make another effort at contact.

4

Huerta88, if it were me and I could take the financial hit, I’d just let it go.

And I wholeheartedly agree with QuickSilver, the SO should butt out of it all.

5

The check probably won’t be good…they are usually considered stale after six months or a year.

But if you do plan to cash it, it would be nice to give the ex a heads-up since she may be assuming it will never be cashed, and is using her money accordingly.

6

I agree with this, if you decide to go that route. I’d also go a step further and suggest that, even if you decide not to cash the check, you contact your ex and let her know what your decision is. It’s possible that she feels somewhat guilty (depending on her financial situation, and depending on whether she honestly remembers the debt) for not having paid it back. If you shrug the loss off and let her know, then you could alleviate some stress on her part and walk away without any more ties.

As for your current SO: I’m gonna disagree with some of the other replies and say that, yes, she has a vaid interest in this, but it’s a limited interest. Listen to her advice and then make the best decision for you; that’ll show her that you value what she thinks while, at the same time, illustrating that your willingness to listen is not an abdication of your decision-making abilities in the relationship.

7

Good plan. And THEN you tell her to “butt out”, right?..

:wink:

8

Well, it may sound Dutch, but a loan is a loan. And I really don’t understand this American “a real man pays for the girl”-thing.
Personally, I’d say she is at fault for not bringing up how she’d handle the loan thing at the break-up. What is she, that you had to pay for the pleasure of her company?

I’d say the decent thing to do is to e-mail her and say you came across the check the other day and were reminded of the loan, and you could use the money, and would she be in a position to pay some of it back?

If no, well, that’s that. But if she’s got a shred of honour, she’should be happy to pay you back what she can.

9

This isn’t a “real man pays for the girl thing,” nor I suspect is the notion of men paying for the expenses of women remotely just an American thing. He didn’t offer or agree to pay for the cost of her move, he agreed to lend her money which she repaid in part. He is well within his rights to expect that all the money be repaid (legally the $1000 from the check might be considered already repaid but considering the number of jurisdictions involved I wouldn’t begin to hazard a guess). What people are saying here, that he needs to weigh the emotional costs of contacting her (both on him and the ex, as well as the possible strain on the new relationship) against the financial benefits of trying to get his money back. It has nothing to do with the nationality or the sex of any party.

10

Well Otto, if I read the OP correctly, the shippingcosts were about a thousand dollars, for which she gave a cheque with the request not to cash it for a while (and no word from her to indicate when it WAS oaky to cash the check). So she didn’t really repay that part.
And then there’s a loan of several thousand dollars, where she never even mentioned pay-back. Basically, she’s conned the OP for thousands of dollars. The reason that it doesn’t feel to the OP like conning, is that she’s a girl he liked and felt attracted to and protective of. If it was a guy, a friend, instead of a girl, Or if the OP was a girl, the OP might have looked at everything in a more realistic, harsh light. That’s where the gender difference comes in.

And maybe this is just my sour Dutch grapes speaking. Going “Dutch” isn’t a Dutch expression for nothing. I don’t use my femininity to get men to do something or pay for me, and I feel vaguely stupid for not taking that advantage. Well, I prefer feeling morally superior to feeling stupid, hence my comdemning of the OP’s ex-Interest.

I don’t see what the emotional cost of him contacting her would be. It can be kept brief, cordial and business-like. If she makes him feel he’s a cad for asking the money back, she’s showing her true colors; she’s the one at fault, and if she has a shred of honour left in her, she’ll know that.

11

If I were you, I’d probably cash the check, and maybe call her first to make sure it doesn’t bounce. But after several years, S.O. debts are generally understood to be called off. I think you should write the loan off and move on.

12

Last year I got this nice check from IRS.

The USA IRS. I’m from Spain, at the time I got the check I was in Costa Rica. Wasn’t going to get home for at least 8 weeks.

So my brother went to the bank to ask for how long would it be cashable. 3 months.

It got cashed but some parts of the process may be slightly illegal…
Anyway, I imagine the check you have isn’t even cashable, but ask your bank. If it’s cashable, I would - you can do whatever you want; it’s your money. Even if your current SO is the wife (which would make your money common property in many places), this “hole in your finances” comes from way back when… if you decide to let it be, it’s very much YOUR right.

If I’d gotten married, I would have tried to convince my hubby to rework his debt (for some reason, all my bf’s have been financial black holes; it seems to be quite common for the male of the species though, we even have some threads about it). I wouldn’t have gone and told him what he should have done back when God was still making the world…

13

Well, again, I don’t know the legal complexities involved in a multi-national jurisdictional case like this, so I have no idea whether from a legal standpoint she’s cosidered to have paid the $1000 back or not. As I understand it, it makes no difference if she says not to cash the check for a while. If she hands him a check with all the necessary information on it, he’s free to attempt to cash it at any time. If he lets it sit for several years, were I she and if it got nasty I’d certainly make the argument that the money was already repaid and it isn’t my problem if he chose not to collect it.

I have to wonder if you’re reading this a little harshly. It’s certainly possible that the ex was out to screw the OP out of a few thousand dollars but it just doesn’t seem like the most likely explanation to me.

I have an ex who I hate so much that he’d have to owe me a lot of money that I desperately needed before I’d be willing to speak to him. He hurt me deeply and just the thought of being in contact is starting to get me upset. He’s still friends with several of my friends and when I think about that I get angry at them for their disloyalty to me. I have no idea what emotional price the OP would pay for the contact; he needs to decide that for himself and weigh it against the financial price.

14

In this situation (not really needing the money), I wouldn’t cash the check. But then, I plainly hate money-related issues. And I think that a relationship, even a past one, is much probably worth forgetting about 1000 $ (excepted relationships from hell, but it doesn’t seem to be the case).

If I really needed the money, or for some reason intended anyway to cash the check, I’d call my ex first. But then, according to what you wrote, you want to clerly cut any link with her, aven symbolically, so this might not be an option for you, though I still think it’s the decent thing to do.

Also, my current SO would have no say in the matter. That would be my life history, not hers, and I would resent an attempt to influence me that would be based on her self-interest in having me “symbolically break ties” (as opposed to a sound and reasonned advice).

Hmmm… I didn’t read this part before I begun to respond. I don’t think you were pansy, but once again decent and respectful for someone you once loved. IMO, you did the right thing.

At this point, though, I don’t know what you should do. My assumption would be that your ex didn’t answer because she’d rather not be out of 1 000 $. I nevertheles wouldn’t cash the check but YMMV.
Anecdotically, my ex owes me roughly the same amount, and I too have a couple uncashed checks lying somewhere around. I don’t really feel that checks have that much of a symbolic value, by the way.

15

I didn’t catch this as well. IMHO a perfectly decent request. Any chance the ex changed e-mail adresses so your mail never reached her? In my experiences, misdirected e-mails often don’t bounce back, but just disappear into nothingness. If I were you, I’d try to find ex through mutual aqaintances or something and try just once more.

16

I actually think there is a bit of truth to this. There’s a certain amount of residual male guilt (possibly self-deluding – I never really asked if she had moved onto a new guy the next week, but it is far from impossible) at having made her unhappy when we called it off. Some sympathy for the difficulties (finances, plus trying and failing to maintain a LDR) she had been facing. Some generalized noblesse oblige (here’s where I maybe disagree with Maastricht – I think though I’d process things a bit differently if a guy owed me money, I might come to the same conclusion – who steals my purse steals trash, etc., if you’re that hard up I’m not going to dignify your sordid monetary chicanery with a response, etc.).