First off, let me say while I am asking for opinions/options in my situation, I am not asking for legal advice. I realize this can get into legal areas, but I’m mostly interested in others opinions on what I could/should do rather than a lawyerly answer. I already know the relevant legal issues anyway.
My wife is on disability for mental illness. As part of her disability, she can not receive the funds herself. It goes into an account that I am the representative payee on, and I am supposed to make financial decisions for her. Realistically I never did more than monitor the account. My wife is occasionally suicidal, she’s not stupid or out of touch with reality. I’ve always felt she’s capable of controlling her own finances and she’s never given me reason to think otherwise.
My wife is also not going to be my wife much longer. Once the required 6 month separation period is up I will be filing for divorce. Currently she is living with her parents. When she moved in with them, she had her ATM card. At her parents insistence, she gave them the ATM card. The eventual plan is to make her father the rep payee and remove me from the account entirely. That has not happened yet though. Legally, I still have control over it.
The problem I’m facing is that I never did trust her parents on financial issues. While I am filing for divorce, I don’t want to see my wife screwed over. So I’ve kept tabs on withdraws and occasionally talk to my wife about it. I and my wife both are absolutely convinced that her parents regularly take money out of her account without her permission or knowledge. Over the few months we’ve been separated, it has amounted to several thousand dollars. Whatever they spend the money on, it is not for the benefit of my wife.
Now as rep payee, I can get the ATM card disabled and shut her parents out of the account entirely. I also know what her parents are doing is against SSI rules and could report them. I’ve mentioned this to my wife, but she asked me not to because it would make her home life very hard. Also I am doing my best to keep thing as civil as they can be for a divorce and either of these things smacks too close to that ‘I’m gonna fuck em over’ mentality that I’m trying to avoid.
Talking to her parents will do no good. She has already confronted them on the issue several times with no result. Her parents, naturally, hate me now and are already pushing as hard as they can to make the divorce as bitter and contested as possible, so I definitely would have no influence talking to them.
On one hand I feel like I should just walk away. I’m divorcing her, it’s no longer my place to get involved. Her relationship with her parents is her concern. On the other hand, parents stealing from their mentally ill child just plain pisses me off. Even if she wasn’t my wife, I’d consider that wrong. In this case, I actually have the power to do something to correct that wrong.
So I ask you guys as third parties not emotionally invested in the situation, what do you think I should do here? Put a stop to this despite that would make my wife’s living situation harder, or just leave it be and let them continue stealing her money?