It might differ by state. In Wisconsin, I think the official filed the paperwork (but my memory fades, so I’m not going to bet the mortgage on that. I don’t recall if we had to file a copy as well, but it is possible.)
It seems unlikely, but I can’t say for sure that it is impossible. Generally, if a minor reports a crime, the police would first interview the parents. There might be some kind of women’s advocacy groups who would try to protect a rape victim from public scrutiny, but unless there was some kind of claim that the victim actually faced a threat from her parents, it seems strange to me that the parents would never be told.
And if the victim was needed to testify in court or at a deposition, how could that be kept from the parents? And, surely, if the boyfriend was being prosecuted in juvenile court, his name might be kept from the public, but surely, his own parents would know about it. It seems very unlikely that the victim’s parents would never find out. Still, I suppose it’s not impossible.
Medical records are kept by individual health care professionals. A person may request a copy of his or own records. Medical health professionals are regulated by both federal and state law, but I suspect that they are not obligated to keep records indefinitely. If you cease to see a particular doctor, I believe that eventually your records will be disposed of, unless you ask to have them transferred to you.
There is no central source for medical records. If you needed copies of your record sent to another medical professional or to your attorney, you would have to directly request it from the person who created the records. Personally, I don’t know anyone who has a complete copy of his or her own medical records, although if you wanted you could have them.
It depends on the terms of your health insurance coverage. Sometimes you can go directly to a specialist. Often, though, insurance companies require you to first see a G.P. and get a referral.
Yes, but generally speaking they rely on you to provide full information yourself. They assume you’re telling the truth.
I suspect that there are some people who lie about their medical histories to their current providers. I’m not sure I could answer the question of why you would do that.
It is quite common for students to be insured by the university, in which case privacy law would prevent disclosure to the parents without consent.
Perhaps. Unless you disposed of it yourself.
Yes, this could happen, very easily. The government doesn’t really care one way or the other about the “wedding ceremony.”
Generally, the way it works is:
- You go to the county courthouse to apply for a wedding license, which is usually issued immediately (if everything’s in order).
- You hold your wedding ceremony.
- You file the paperwork (usually included in the license you were issued in the first place) in which the person who officiated at your ceremony certifies that it was indeed executed.
- The county clerk issues your marriage certificate.
It’s entirely plausible to do just No. 2 and skip everything else. In that case, if your state has no “common law marriage” (and most states no longer do) then you were never legally married.
Soooooo… over the course of the time she’s lived on this planet, she’s managed to be a teenage rape victim, a model, a breast cancer survivor, and was trapped in a fake marriage? Oy.
Honestly, most soap opera characters have less eventful lives.
I imagine your brother must want to give her some leeway because if even a smidge of any of her stories are true, she’s deserving of some sympathy, and furthermore she’s his wife and the mother of his children.
Unfortunately, even if you were to present rock-solid evidence that she’s lying through her teeth, there’s a good chance he’ll be unwilling to believe and very well might try to blame you for trying to put a wedge between them… it may be better to let sleeping dogs lie, for the sake of your relationship with your brother and his kids.
I just double-checked. In Wisconsin, the officiant files the marriage certificate. The bride, groom, officiant, and witnesses sign (in black ink – they are apparently very picky about that), and then the officiant has three days to file with the state. In my case, there wasn’t anything for my wife and me to file, for what little my anecdote might be worth.
Thanks for the information acsenray. It seems that you really have to be on top of your own health care in the States. Which everyone should be, but I would assume that some people are not really up to the task.
In terms of the marriage thing, I think my disbelief is over the fact that she wouldn’t realise that their marriage was never made official (ie not receiving the marriage certificates). Over in the UK, that document is very useful when it comes to changing your name after the wedding.
Cheers. This happened in Illinois, so I’m not sure if it would be the same, but I think I found something that might indicate that this would be the case.
In Ohio, if a minor child is a witness and needs to be subpoenaed to come to court to testify, the prosecutor has to subpoena the parent and indicate that they must bring the child.
Ohio is also one of the jurisdictions where cops can talk to kids without parental consent or knowledge.
And that’s not the half of it. She also had a brush with a (very) famous baseball star who pursued her and was intent of having a relationship with her before his violent outbursts got in the way :rolleyes:, and there are multiple other little stories that, in light of all of the above, make us keel over with disbelief. Sheesh, personally I’d be exhausted keeping all these balls in the air.
This is my thinking too. I mean, to be married to someone you have to believe they aren’t full of shit. Or at least, that’s how my marriage works. I am keeping well out of things, but unfortunately my parents have ended up being a little too honest about their feelings, and the wife is on the warpath and will make it really difficult for us to see my brother and their sons.
sigh I have a really hard time trying to understand the mind of someone who is seemingly this manipulative. It just cannot wrap my head around this, whether it is deliberate or some sort of mental illness. Do people actually live their lives like this?
I asked some friends of mine about this one.
Seriously, for all the reasons that have already been stated.
Well, how good are the breast implants? I suspect that if I were in that position, there would be a certain degree of risk that I would be mesmerized by enhanced breasts. 
Your location is blank but I’m assuming that by “over here” you mean the US. If so, I have to take issues with much of what you say.
Every job I’ve had has had separate life and health insurance. You could opt for various levels of life insurance, or skip it entirely; ditto the health insurance. I know for a fact that you’re not guaranteed life insurance even if your employer has a group plan; I was denied at first when my company was acquired by a bigger one (I was ultimately able to re-apply after proving the specific medical issue was not a concern).
Re the health insurance: people can and do get turned down due to pre-existing conditions. With a group plan, you might be able to get coverage for other stuff but not that pre-existing condition. If you’re simply changing jobs, and already had health insurance, the new employer’s plan can’t refuse to cover that condition - but if you didn’t already have insurance, simply hiring on to a company with insurance doesn’t mean you’re OK. There can be some rules like “hasn’t been seen for xx condition for in the past year”, or whatever.
Back before the law was put into place requiring group plans to cover pre-existing conditions (if the person had other coverage), people were really screwed if they were forced to change jobs.
If “over here” is not the US, then ignore everything I’ve said.
Oh - and re the OP: Time for hip boots, the BS is getting deep. I don’t believe a word of it.
Thanks, that gave me a laugh 
So now I just need to get together a crack team of commandos to extract my brother, nephews and dogs (couldn’t leave the dogs!) from the evil clutches of Soap Opera Wife…
…any takers?
As someone currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer, I find your SIL offensive and full of crap. You know if you had a lumpectomy or a mastectomy. You know if you went through chemo and radiation (at her age, if she’d had it, the doctors would be very aggressive in treating it to make sure it didn’t return.)
On my behalf, please ask her the following questions:
-
What stage was her cancer? (If she doesn’t answer with the number 1, 2, or 3 followed by the letter A, B, or C, she’s lying.)
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Was it estrogen and progesterone positive or negative? Was it HER-2 positive or negative? This affects her post-op treatment.
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Was there lymph node involvement?
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What chemo cocktail did she get and for how long?
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How long were her radiation treatments?
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What body scans did she get prior to her surgery? A friend at work recently had a partial mastectomy, and when I mentioned all the body scans I had, she knew exactly what I was talking about.
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What drugs, if any, is she taking now?
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Has she been tested for the BRCA-1 gene mutation?
Yes, the US.
I explicitly disclaimed any knowledge of the legalities of this. What I do know is that I’ve never been denied coverage on a group health or life plan, even when my medical history indicated a recent cancer diagnosis (recent meaning I’d been in remission for six months).
I’ve never heard of being denied for part of a group policy’s coverage for a pre-existing condition. I have heard of being hit with a waiting period (usually a year long) before said pre-existing condition is covered. But that “denial of coverage” isn’t permanent and you’d be covered for that condition after the waiting period is up. This is for group plans; for individual policies (i.e. you go and buy it yourself, for yourself), you can be denied outright – they won’t allow you to purchase a policy at all – but I’ve never heard of an insurance company extending a partial policy to anyone.
Again, this is stuff I’ve had personal experience with. I signed up for life and health insurance with my last job, having disclosed my cancer diagnosis, and was covered with no problem. The life insurance part was on the same form as the health insurance part. I was denied an individual health policy some years ago due to previous (and not even currently existing) medical issues, but no one has ever offered to cover me “except for that condition.” I have dealt with waiting periods on pre-existing conditions, but I’ve not been denied for group coverage (even with a cancer diagnosis), nor has any group policy permanently denied me coverage for any condition they’d normally cover.
Her pants are pretty much completely on fire. Most rape charges involve a rigorous he-said / she-said investigation. Medical exams too. It would be almost impossible to hide it all from her parents.
I’ve never been asked health questions for group insurance of any kind; that generally falls under the category of “guaranteed issue”.
That said, if you buy your own individual life insurance, there is a process by which the company decides who to cover and for how much. Underwriters can sniff out BS. They can also request medical records and will deny coverage in a heartbeat if something doesn’t add up.
My take is that she’s running from something (or someone) and is lying to cover it up.
Robin
As someone who has had cancer myself, and who knows people who have had breast cancer, you can believe that I find this offensive too. And as someone who has also recently gone through an operation to remove a (potentially cancerous) ovarian cyst, you can bet that I was aware of exactly what was going on throughout my treatment, including all diagnostic tests and their results and the final pathology results after the op. To think that someone could go through treatment and then 10 years later start doubting that they had ever had the disease…
Problems is, when initially told, we didn’t feel we needed to question it. We just accepted it at face value. Then, after thinking about it for a while (and hearing all the other stories start to pile up), we expressed concerns, and this was when the story changed to her saying that she now doubts she actually had cancer. Then, when pushed a bit more, suddenly we are told it would be impossible to find out after all this time, and besides, she didn’t want to look into it (?!?).
Very convenient.
Now it has got to the stage where if we asked the questions you are suggesting (and how I wish we’d asked these sorts of questions initially) we would be accused of calling her a liar by my brother and it would give her the ammunition to further cut us out of their lives.
All this is complicated by the fact that we live in a different country to them, and the relationship between us and her has been strained greatly by her behaviour. The last visit my mother had over there was disasterous to say the least.
It’s funny how it seems to be that the big lies are easy to get away with. I mean, who is going to question someone who says that they have had cancer? Or been raped? You just don’t do that.
I really am confused as to who lies about stuff like this? I have never had contact (that I know of) with anyone that seems to be such a stranger to the truth. Is it really common? Am I naive?
There are people who habitually lie. I’ve met a few. Usually the lies are about their experiences or background. It’s pathological. I mean that literally. It’s a mental illness.
I suspect someone who’s lying as part of a con game would be more careful about maintaining a consistent story and backing it up in a way that doesn’t look suspicious.
Yup. And in my experience, they always put the liar in a position to get sympathy or admiration.
I knew a girl who I initially befriended after a “bad breakup.” Not knowing any better, I played the sympathetic ear for a couple of weeks. Then the stories started - her father abused her, they were poor because of outrageous things he did, she used to cut herself, yadda yadda. In a different context though, she’d spin elaborate tails of climbing mountains in distant lands with her family and having all these wonderful things as a child. When I was applying to grad school, she had suddenly been accepted to grad school in a guaranteed admit program - but her father had screwed it up for her and she didn’t get to go. Of course, she chose the very top institution as the school that she was going to go to.
The thing is these people can’t be challenged. I looked up the admission guidelines for that grad school and had solid evidence that they don’t do early admissions, for anyone. But of course, they had made a special exception for her, blah blah blah. The tails are always just realistic enough to be somewhat plausible, but don’t add up as a whole.
The best thing you can do is minimize contact and support your brother.