Your husband screws up, it 'ruins' your life, and it's MY fault because I'd done you

The BBQ Pit
1

Situation: In June one of my co-workers needed $950 to get her car repaired. She didn’t have enough in her checking account to cover it, nor enough available credit on her credit cards. She did have a $20,000 CD, but that wasn’t coming due until towards the end of August, and to take any money out she’d have to cash the whole thing in and forfeit something like six months worth of already earned interest on the whole CD.

Normally I wouldn’t lend that much to someone who isn’t a really, really good friend or a relative, but I’ve worked with this woman for years and we’ve gotten along well and she’s always been meticulous about paying back people when she borrowed lunch money or whatever here and there. And she showed me the CD, so she really had the money. And it would only be for a couple of months. So…we wrote up a note about the loan, I gave her check for $950 and she gave me a check for $950 dated for September 1st – the due date plus a few days to be sure the money had time to get into her checking account. She was super, super grateful – she had wanted to repay me with extra money, or give me interest, but I refused. I don’t believe in making money off friends. (Besides, with the interest rate my money market account is paying currently, the interest on a thou for two months is, well, I don’t know exactly but I think it’s somewhere between a Happy Meal and a Value Meal.)

I deposited her check on September 2nd.

This afternoon she came to work and start laying into me about how I’ve just ruined her life, practically foaming at the mouth! It seems her husband ‘forgot’ to send back the notice telling the bank what to do when the CD came due, and so they’d automatically renewed it for another two years. Which meant that check I cashed virtually wiped out her checking account balance, and now the bank is bouncing all the checks she (or hubby) had mailed the previous weekend for their telephone and gas and electric and Visa and car payments and cable and… How are they supposed to live this month with no money?? And they were planning to buy a new house this winter, and now their credit is all to hell and they won’t get a mortgage or it’ll cost them a zillion more dollars in higher interest and on and on. :frowning:

OUCH! I sympathize, I really do. This is a major problem for them, and costly, too, if the bank really insists on hitting them with a $25/check fee for the ‘bad’ checks.

But she didn’t want sympathy, she wanted ‘her’ money back! And not only that, she was strongly implying that I should pay the bounced check fees because it was ‘my fault’ that the other checks bounced.

Say what??

What did I do wrong? I lent you money when you were in a jam, charged no interest or anything, and deposited the check when you said I could. Go yell at your husband for not sending back that notice! Yell at yourself for not checking with the bank yourself to see that the money from the CD had been deposited when it should have been. Go to your bank and plead for understanding, maybe they’ll waive the overdrawn fees. Explain what happened and they’ll probably let you cancel the renewal on the CD.

STOP BLAMING ME! I DID NOT CREATE YOUR PROBLEM. IT IS NOT MY FAULT!
What really, really gripes me, though, is that everyone else in the office seems to be siding with her. :frowning:

2

What a bitch… :frowning:

3

Fuck that shit. Show them the promissory notice, and since the dumb broad never communicated with you that there was a problem, you’re in the clear-Legally, morally, ethically.

Still sucks. THat’s why I never do business with cow-orkers or family!

Sam

4

She DID tell her husband about the loan you gave her, right?

Either way, it’s her fault.

5

AMAZING gall on the part of this woman.

Show everyone who is siding with her the promisary note, and ask them what they would have done differently had they been in your position.

6

Ummm… I don’t get the picture unless she’s lost her mind or there’s more to the story. Why does she feel she has any justification in this world to be angry at you for cashing the check she gave you? I could understand her being angry at her or her hubby’s forgetfullness, but people who are not completely insane typically have some rationale for their anger. How did she explain to you that this was your fault?

7

FYI, your title reads thusly.

I’m guessing there was supposed to be something like “a favor” on the end of that, but it got truncated by the system. Who knows, maybe this bit of twisted humor will be part of the silver lining in the grey cloud you are currently experiencing. Good luck.

Enjoy,
Steven

8

color me quite relieved. you see, when I saw the thread title, 'husband screws up, ruins your life and it’s “MY” fault 'cause I done you", well, suffice it to say, the issue of a promisary note for a loan wasn’t what I was thinking happened…

9

Mtg minds thinking alike and all…

10

You’re completely in the right of course, but knowing where the funds where coming from and the delay between the loan and repayment it probably wouldn’t have killed you to ask, “Hey, we’re all set for me to deposit that check, right?”

11

Maybe, but the fact of the matter is that co-worker should have recorded that check in her checkbook and assumed that the money was already gone, regardless. I’ve forgotten to record a check or two that I’ve sent off to friends to be cashed later, and at one point, it overdrew my account, but I certainly never blamed my friends for that - I was the one who wrote the check and only I could see what was in my bank account.

Personally, I think co-worker should have grabbed StarvingButStrong BEFORE September 1st and said “Hey, small problem with that check - please don’t cash it! Can we work out payment arrangements?”. She’s the one who borrowed the money, she’s the one who should have been trying to right the situation.

Ava

12

manhattan makes a good point; it would have been considerate (but by no means required) to ask about the check before depositing it. But it is still quite bitchy of the woman to blame you for her husband’s fuckup.

13

Although you were completely within your rights to deposit that check when you did, given that you knew the money’s availability was contingent upon her actually cashing that CD (and it having time to clear her bank), if it had been me, I would have at least reminded her that I was holding a post-dated check and was about to deposit it in the next day or so and confirm the availability of the funds. No, you didn’t owe her that courtesy. However, I’ve always found it’s best to err on the side of caution when dealing with post-dated check for this very reason.

I know you’re just an individual, not a collection agency, so I’m in NO WAY saying you should or could be held to the same standards they are, but just as an example…

Again, I’m by no means saying you’re obligated – you’re absolutely not. I just would’ve tapped her on the shoulder the day before and reminded her, is all. It sure would’ve saved you a lot of trouble in the long run.

14

On the other hand, considering her subsequent behavior, it’s probably good that she didn’t do that. I doubt she’d have gotten anything but a long, long line of excuses. If she’d asked first, I don’t think she’d have ever seen her money again.

15

Ah, but avabeth, we don’t have the whole story about the communication between the husband and wife. For all we know, she did record the check and the deposit of the CD, believing her spouse had sent the requisit forms to the bank, thereby not having any reason to believe she needed to forewarn StarvingButStrong. It may very well be that she only learned of her husband’s negligence upon receiving the bounced check notices from the bank.

16

astro, people are insane when it comes to dealing with money. Years ago I wanted to order a mattress set but had no credit card to use for a phone order. A friend let me use her card. As soon as the order was completed I gave her a check to cover the mattresses, tax, delivery and estimated interest. A month later I hear she had been bitching about not having enough money to pay her credit card bill and IT WAS ALL MY FAULT. Yes, my fault, because of the many hundreds of dollars I had charged to her account. Never mind that I had paid her the day I used the card. She had spent every penny of the money on other things. That was my fault, too.

17

Yes, you’re absolutely right. But that still doesn’t change the fact that the dispute should have been between co-worker and her husband. StarvingButStrong isn’t responsible for the lack of communication between those two.

I feel sorry for the co-worker, but it’s her own fault for not checking with her husband before the check came due, and realizing that she needed to fix the situation.

Ava

18

The money was supposed to have come from CD interest, or decreased CD amount when renewed, and instead the husband rolled the entire CD over. They have a CD, so we’re not talking about the destitute poor here.

Whassa’ problem? CD’s are the best security in the world. All borrower or husband has to do is go to the bank and borrow against the amount of the CD to square things up.

The bounced check charges are their penalty for poor accounting/financial planning.

StarvingButStrong has had the misfortune of dealing with two total ingrates, IMHO.

19

As Shakespeare said, Neither a borrower, nor a lender be.

I wouldn’t be too concerned, SbS. Given her rather churlish behavior, I have to wonder if your co-worker’s husband really “forgot” to not roll over the CD. I think she decided she would pay you back $100 here, $100 there, a sob story here, and a convenient excuse there and the original loan becomes a gift.

OTOH, I would have “reminded” her that I would be depositing the check.

20

Appalling planning by the coworker. It is really stupid to buy a 20,000 CD and keep nothing in the bank for emergencies. However, if I was dumb enough to find myself in that situation, I would still cash in the CD rather than borrow money from an acquaintance.