Didn’t they have children? I hope someone will put aside some money for the therapy these kids are sure to need. It won’t be an easy thing going through life as the “killer’s kids.” The wife will probably need it, too - I know I’d have the screaming heebie-jeebies if I found out I had been sleeping with a mass murderer for years.
He hasn’t “gotten out” of his debt, he simply doesn’t have (and probably never will have) the means to pay it. What you’re proposing is to pay his debt to one group of victims by fining a third group of victims: his own family. Thier lives have been devastated by the BTK every bit as much as the lives of his victim’s families. Yeah, it’s not fair to his victim’s families that they get nothing. You don’t rectify one injustice by committing another one. I don’t get how this is some scheme on the BTK’s behalf to “protect” his assests from his victim’s families. He’s going to be in prison for the rest of his life. Wether his ex-wife gets the money, or the families of the people he killed get his money, he’s never going to see any of it again, no matter what. He’s lost absolutely everything except for his own life: what injustice is fixed by destryoing what ever is left of his wife’s life, too?
Bravo, Miller! That was beautiful.
As for you, Cheesesteak, comparing restitution for a human life taken and a financial debt doesn’t really work. In our society, primary punishment for murder is criminal, and Mr. Rader has already lost his freedom. Your comparison would be better suited for a society where the primary punishment for murder is civil.
Robin
Women lose their houses all the time due to bad financial decisions by their husbands. They wind up with nothing, or living in cheap tar paper dumps because their husbands are stupid. These people don’t get to divorce, and hide all their assets from creditors. Murder someone, instead of just being stupid, and it’s suddenly an option?
Wrongful death lawsuits have a very long history in this country. You’re not being punished for murder, you are financially compensating somebody for causing a wrongful death. Just like a big corporation would if their product was fatally defective, or if they didn’t follow OSHA guidelines, causing an accident. Just like drunk drivers have to pay as well. But you deliberately murder someone and the family just has to eat whatever cost there is, on top of having a dead mother or father? Nice.
Rader left a lot of victims in his wake, yes his wife is one of them, no that doesn’t giver her the right to blow off all the other victims.
But his wife didn’t kill those people. Dennis Rader did.
I don’t care how long of a history wrongful death suits have. They’re about forcing responsibility, and Paula Rader wasn’t responsible for the deaths of her husband’s victims. She should not be forced to bear her husband’s burden.
In any event, the victims’ families must still go through a civil trial in order to get a judgment against anyone, and the judgment will be against Dennis Rader, not against Paula. He can pay his restitution from his 50-cent-per-hour wages for the rest of his life.
Paula Rader has been punished enough, and in far worse ways than if her husband was merely financially irresponsible.
Robin
But, she was, while married, only the joint owner of the property in question. Dennis was the other owner. He decided to give up his rights to that property in the divorce, THAT is where the problem lies. He can’t just give away all his stuff when there is a clear liability on the horizon.
The court granted her the property. When I divorced my ex after he was convicted and sentenced to prison, the court automatically awarded me all property, both real (not that there was any) and intangible, because of the circumstances. It wouldn’t surprise me if such a decision was made by the court in the Rader case.
Robin
If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a different tack at my opinion here. Let’s talk generically, rather than about the BTK killer
Man commits act against a party
That party (among others) files a $75,000 lawsuit against him Jul 02, 2005
House is sold for $90,000, on July 11, 2005
Wife divorces man July 27, 2005 getting all assets transferred to her.
Should the plaintiff have no rights to these assets? I have a hard time seeing where that’s ok.
Files, or wins? If it’s files, I see no reason the plaintiff has any claim to the money. If it’s wins, it is greyer.
Techincally, it’s “files”. But after his guilty plea, a win is pretty much guaranteed, only the amount is in question. You can’t exactly claim you didn’t cause a wrongful death when you admitted to murdering the person in court. Legally, though, I don’t think it’s all that grey.
I found this interesting quote at Offshore Press
Bearing part of the burden is a major part of marriage is it not?
If a husband seriously injured himself checking a gas tank with a match and runs up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, a wife would have to bear the burden.
If a husband seriously injures someone else in a car accident, the wife would have to bear the burden.
If a husband is seriously injured by someone else in car accident, the wife would have to bear the burden.
I don’t understand why if a husband commits heinous crimes, the wife should get some sort of release from that burden.
Because the wife isn’t connected to her husband. She’s a separate entity. If my husband were to commit murder and I didn’t know about it, why should I be responsible for his crimes? Furthermore, they’re divorced. They’re no longer married.
Cheesesteak, the Rader assets weren’t transferred to Paula or to a minor child to keep them out of bankruptcy court or render them judgment-proof. I highly doubt that either Dennis or Paula or the divorce court’s intentions were to defraud the victims’ families out of any sort of restitution. (I just did a search on Lexis-Nexis and came up empty.) The divorce court granted Paula an emergency divorce in light of the fact that her husband was now incarcerated, and as part of that, gave her all the assets.
But I think the biggest issue is that Paula Rader is now a victim of her husband’s notoriety. Until that fades away, she probably can’t work or find a job, and she’s most likely been ostracized from her community. How is she to support herself and her family?
Let the victims’ families sue and get their judgment, then go after Dennis, because he’s the one responsible. Not Paula.
Robin
To put it simply: would someone tell me what Paula Rader did that would MORALLY justify taking her assets? I don’t care why you think it might be legal. I want to know why you think it might be fair.
Ok, since you’re offerig up your own life as an example here, let’s get all the facts out there:
Did your husband have any uncollected debts? Did those debts get annulled or remain assigned to your husband after the divorce, or was the transfer of all assets dependent upon the paying of any debts he had incurred?
The idea that this woman is being victimized makes no sense to me. Her husband had a liability which is now uncollectable because all of his assets are <poof> gone and now the property of his wife. Should she get the house? Absolutely. Should she get his retirement fund? After some amount is removed from it, perhaps. Should she get everything he had? Not on your life.
What if, for instance, it’s discovered a year from now that he also had a secret swiss account with 500K in there? What would your arguments be then? How would you feel knowing that the victims of the crime shelled out thousands of dollars for funerals, etc, and received nothing for it?
I don’t think it matters about the intent of the judgement, it’s the effect it had.
At the time of your posting, that’s true. At the time of the lawsuit and (attempted) sale of assets, not true.
I don’t know how anyone but the court can be sure that the court didn’t transfer the assets to Paula with the specific intent of shielding them from wrongful death collection.
I also don’t see it as “the suit is going after her property”. The suit, it seems, is going after Dennis Rader’s half of the property, which was transferred as if to shield it from legal action AFTER the suit was filed. The fact that some judge made it her proprty in a decree seems…challengeable. Judges do make mistakes.
Sailboat
Sure…they shouldn’t have all been HER assets in the first place. They were jointly owned, and probably had liens, etc, on them. If Denis owed some people for the crimes he committed, he incurred that debt LONG before the court decided (unwisely) to shelter his assets with his wife.
I agree, life is going to suck for the wife. Life also sucks for the families of the victims. Let’s stretch this out a bit…what if the BTK killer took the primary earner from a family. Should the victim’s family be required to bankrupt themselves, or have their house forclosed on because the murderer’s wife got all the assets?
Maybe you live in some non-community property state or something. The whole point of marriage for me, was that we become one. You are not responsible for the actual crime, but there is nothing in the law that says that you deserve to be shielded from any and all ‘unfairness’ as a result of his actions.
Let’s say hypothetically that I let my wife do the tax returns. We send it off. We divorce a year later. Three years later the IRS comes a knockin’, for tax fraud. Is this fair for me? No, but it is a possible downside of being married.
I would wonder if you would be as vehement about the concept ‘separate entity’ if this was a case where assets are being evenly distributed after a divorce. If you really believe in the separate entities concept, you would have to side with a husband who buys a winning lottery ticket with his own money, then divorces the wife and doesn’t share any of the winnings. Right? If the you believe the law should say no penalty for his individual actions, the law would also say no benefits for the wife for his individual actions.
Why should she be required to bankrupt herself? She committed no crimes. What gives the victims’ families a greater moral claim to her money than she has?
I think you guys are focusing on the ‘crime’. No one is saying that she should be responsible for his crime. The problem seems to be that no one else is shielded from the collateral effects of a crime, why should she. If a bread winner is murdered, no plea of unfairness stops a bank from forelosing on a house. In effect they are being doubly victimized. What is so extraordinary about ex-Mrs. Rader? The only explanation seems to be, because she has gone through so much already. So? Has she gone through worse that a victim’s family?
Like it or not, the law says that once you get married, you are responsible for each other. Just like the law says that you are responsible for you children. If your 15 yr old son firebombs your neighbor’s car, you will not be charged with vandalism, but you will be held financially accountable even if you did not light the car on fire.
If your spouse murders someone, you will not be charged with murder. But if there is some sort of judgement or court ordered restitution it will come out of the joint property and you will be affected.