My husband had always been the one to handle the money in our marriage. He paid the bills and balanced the checkbook. He made sure we were always on budget and that we were able to put back some money in our savings each month. We had a Christmas Club account, a vacation account, and even an emergency account.
He was a computer engineer and I was working for Toyota. We were not wealthy but we earned an honest wage and keep our spending under control. We generally had some money in the bank, even if it wasn't a huge amount. If I wanted to buy something for myself or the house I just let him know and we saved accordingly.
He was also responsible for taking our W-2's to the tax preparer every year. It wasn't a complicated tax return since we both worked for someone else and we didn't have any extra income coming in from odd places. We didn't have tons of doctors bills to take off or mileage or anything like that. He simply took the forms in and the taxes were filled out by the preparer.
He always picked them up and basically told me what we would get back or what we had to pay and I signed on the lines he showed me. He mailed the tax returns to the appropriate addresses and that was it. I never really paid much attention to the taxes, and he filed them away without a second glance from me.
One year he was away on business when the tax returns were finished. Normally, I would have waited for him to get back from his business trip and let him pick them up, but this time I decided that I'd just swing by the office and have it over with. I picked up the returns from the tax preparer and headed out to do my errands. When I got home I was tired from my day and sat down to look over the mail when I noticed the tax return envelope and decided to see if I could decipher where I should sign.
I looked over the papers probably for the first time in our marriage. I noticed that there was some income that I was not familiar with. I didn't know where it had come from and I thought it was a mistake. I made a call to the office to see if they had mistakenly added this in, and they assured me that all the figures were correct. An extra 25,000.00 a year that I was unaware of was showing up in the paper work. I was shocked. I had no idea where this was coming from and more importantly where it was going. Because it definitely was not in our bank account.
I decided to wait until I could talk to my husband in person before I blew up completely. When he arrived home I was ready for him. He was shocked that I had not only picked up the taxes, but that I had discovered his secret. Not only was he receiving over 25,000 dollars a year in consulting fee's but he was placing this money in a private bank account that I was unaware of. He tried to tell me that it was all going to be a surprise and that he had planned out our retirement. That he intended to surprise me with a vacation home. He came up with many elaborate ideas, and excuses, none of which I believed.
His private bank account ended up having over 375,000 dollars in it. He was the soul person on the account, but I had my suspicions. I never found out if he had a mistress who was benefiting from that money or what he had truly intended to do with it. I was angry and heartbroken that he would lie to me in such a drastic manner and we divorced not long after I found out about his little secret.
It just goes to show you that you can never be too careful. You should always look over your tax papers. If I hadn't gone and picked up those forms I might never have known that my husband was lying to me about that money. He may have been honest about his intentions, I don't know. But he was still keeping secrets from me and the tax papers were the key to his deception and his undoing.