When this man is concerned about his wife's web of lies, he asks the internet:
Two days ago my son “J” (17) came to my job upset & crying. He told me my step daughter “K”(19) came home with a ton of new things & when he checked his room the $ he had been saving was gone. K doesn’t have a job & when she does have $ she spends it like it’ll burn a hole in her pocket.
My boss let me go home early & I went home to ask K who took her shopping? K told me she used her own $. I told her to tell me the truth & she told me to “mind my own business”. J has been working at Papa Murphy’s & has been saving it.
He was saving to surprise the dad of his friend who passed away (Beau) for his 1st birthday without him. His friends had given him $ to load onto his card to pay at the pump. It’s this weekend for 2 days & they were going to “treat” dad. Most kids would be saving for their 1st car or cool clothes, but he wanted to just “be there” for his friend's dad.
Instead of arguing back & forth with K, I checked the camera we have to check on the dogs. It only caught her legs but it was K going into J’s room. The rule in my house is we don’t go into each other's room, it’s a mutual respect of privacy.
I told K she was caught & that she needed to get everything to return it all. K started throwing every excuse “I had it saved for months”,”how do you know it was me?”, “someone must have broken in”.
Her mom came home & she burst into tears, saying we were ganging up on her. I showed my wife the video & what happened, K ended up saying “Why does he get to have all the money anyway!!?”.
He worked his ass off. I told my wife she needed to make K return everything & she said no that it would be “embarrassing” to return it all & that when K got a job she would repay J. I said “It’ll be more embarrassing when she gets arrested for stealing $400”.
We argue & I tell my wife K broke a non negotiable rule as well as the law by stealing, she is 19, she doesn’t pay rent & needs to leave. My wife says “if you kick her out I’m going too”.
So I asked if she was willing to replace the money stolen (we have separate bank accounts), force K to return, or she could give me her half of the rent early (we split all bills), “no”. They packed a few bags & left, I was not going to rip the bags of stuff out of her hands. I don’t think getting physical would have been the smartest thing to do.
Before you make me out to be the asshole, I do not have extra money for him to still go. I can only replace the small amount back to his friends & it’s not enough to make the trip. He went to bed without eating & has been crushed.
I posted to a sub AITA & was flooded with people telling me I should have called the police. So this morning that is what I did. The solution was that the officer would call my wife to bring K to the station to talk or she could return the items & pay back J. Sort of a scare tactic because I was told it is a civil matter.
My wife straight up fg lied to the officer & said she gave the money to K. Since I don’t have actual proof of J’s money, no proof other than her walking into his room, nothing can be done. I’m LIVID. I literally watched J get his heart broken at the police station. Through tears he said “how could they do this to me, what was this all for, I just wanted to see Beau’s dad”.
J is my son from a previous relationship. I had to lecture him on not keeping large amounts of cash in his room but he didn’t think it would get stolen. My wife & K have support, staying with family, this won’t affect them.
TL;DR: My step daughter stole my son’s money he had been saving all summer for. I went to the police & they fg lied. I've never been so disgusted & surprised in my entire life. My marriage is over.
beggychooose writes:
He needs to take their ass to small claims court. Or at least threaten doing it. Also if he can get her to admit in writing that she lied to the police.. they don’t tend to like that. K is going to have a hell of a reality check when she goes out to the real world and pulls this nonsense. Unless mommy plans to lie/bail her out of everything.
notrlyluc writes:
I think it's right that the wife had been planning to leave. It sounds like there were already existing issues in the marriage. I doubt this single event made an otherwise perfect marriage implode. It's awful that everything collapsed and involved J.
K found out and was like, "Screw it, I'm stealing J's money", probably because the mom told her she was planning to leave and take the furniture and anything else she could. OP probably would have come home one day and either found his home cleared out or maybe even all the locks changed. Yes, it's a rental, but logic doesn't stop crazy.
I wouldn't be surprised if K had already been stealing small amounts from J that he hadn't noticed, like $20 here and there.
I hope K and her mom have some horrible downfall and that J somehow gets his money back.
Sorry if this is a stupid question but my son basically got robbed by his step sister and I’m trying to figure out how to move forward. He had the cash saved up in his room and the police can’t do anything about it since my wife lied about it to protect her daughter and I don't want him to ever be in this position again.
He has a prepaid card that he adds money to at the register but it doesn’t offer any fraud protection if someone tried using his card in the future.
I thought about adding him to my bank account but I’m filing for divorce and I don’t know if that would affect opening a new account? He works at Papa Murphy’s and gets a paper check.
I know a lot of people are waiting for an update after reading my first post. It was removed because too many comments about $, please do not mention crowdfunding or gfm. I don’t know if this update will stay up before it’s taken down. I’m not deleting the posts.
In case you didn’t read my first post (message me if you want to read it), my 17 year old son had been saving all summer to go visit his dad’s friend on the first birthday of J’s friend since he passed.
I did not know he had so much cash in his room, I would have told him to put it in the safe but I'm not going to victim blame, my son shouldn't have to worry about someone stealing from him. The rule in my house is no one goes into each other's room. Parents included, it's not so much of a rule but a mutual respect thing.
My 19 year old step daughter stole his money, her mom refused to make her return the stuff she got & I almost took the bags from her but I’m glad I didn’t because my wife lied to the police about the money so she could have easily lied about me putting hands on her.
The police said it was a civil matter since my wife said she gave K the money, which was a lie. My wife said if I was kicking K out, she was going too. I didn’t stop them. My wife & K have support, staying with family, this won’t affect them.
This weekend my wife showed back up with a sheriff's escort. She came armed with receipts showing that she bought the furniture in our rental & that is all she needed to take everything.
I tried explaining I gave her cash for some of the items but guess what? Just like with J, cash doesn’t have a trail. Her family helped her move everything in under an hour.
With how quick this all happened the cynic in me thinks my wife had this planned well before what happened. My wife contacted the landlord & paid a lot of money to break the lease. Almost double the $ that K stole but of course she didn’t offer to repay J.
After everyone left & my landlord called I had a mini breakdown. Everything was moving faster than I could comprehend & honestly felt like I was watching a movie. J came up to me & said “I'm so sorry you lost everything because of me”. & “It’s not a big deal, I’ll tell mom it’s ok that K needed it more than me”...That's all I needed to snap out of it.
I told him HE is my everything, not her, not the house, not the furniture, not the food that was in the fridge.
Yes, super cheesy but there is nothing my wife can do, say, or give me to make me overlook or be ok with what they did to him. I asked him “are you going to feel comfortable around them, what about when you are gone? I don't want you to have to worry about “what will she steal next”. K is not going to get away with this.
My wife made a choice when the police officer asked her about K, she chose to defend & protect K just like I am choosing to protect J. If J isn’t comfortable, I'm not comfortable. And I told him that.
The people in my life have been slamming me online saying things like “I’m uncomfortable that he would choose his son over his wife” & “His son is almost an adult, it’s time to grow up and be a man”. It doesn’t matter what age I am, I will always protect J. I blocked everyone after that.
Yes, he is almost an adult but that doesn’t mean it’s ok to steal from him? Having a crime or something bad happening to you isn’t a right of passage to be an adult?? He is a responsible, hard working, honest, kind, “almost” man but he is also the 8 year old who used to run to me everyday after work with a huge smile like I hung the moon.
I cannot afford the full rent so luckily my landlord has agreed to let us leave by the first. The only place we have to go to is my mom’s who lives across the state.
This means I have to pull J out of his last year of highschool & transfer him. I have to sell what little we have left here & that might include selling J’s beater car but the silver lining is J & I can transfer locations for work. Maw maw has always been more of a mother to J than my wife, mom’s are healing at any age.
I’m not saying I’m not devastated, that I’m not suffering emotional whiplash, & I’m not saying the things that are being said about me in real life aren't affecting me, because it is.
But my son needs me. He is still grieving his friend, missing his senior year with his friends & I’m not the kind of parent to say “because I said so or we are moving & you don’t get a choice or opinion on it”. That isn’t me.
My son comes first & I just want to thank everyone who has sent good vibes our way. 8, 18, 80 he will always be my baby.
I'm not mad about her taking the things she took. I only added that part because my son thought I lost everything. Honestly she did me a favor. I have to drive clear across the state to get to my mom's & wouldn't be able to afford to store anything big since apartments have long wait lists. I do not care about what she took.
If you had told me 20ish days ago that I would be searching for a decent divorce lawyer who doesn’t require a retainer fee, I would have laughed in your face. For J’s sake I'm not going to “expose” you on social media but I won't hold back if I'm asked about it. Your friends & family have your back & can't believe I would go through the “shame & embarrassment” of a divorce.
It’s mind blowing that I’m getting the blame for this. Nobody cares about J except me. Ya’ll have shown your true colors. I realized that “your people” are the kind who victim shame. The “well what was she wearing, was she flirting with him, did she let him buy her drinks?” type of people. You are who you surround yourself with.
“It’s not our fault your dad is broke” “J should have hid it better. Finders keepers” “I’m uncomfortable that he would choose his son over his wife."
“Why did he have so much cash on him anyway, what did he think was going to happen?”
That one stings because wtf? He thought his belongings were safe in his room? It never crossed his mind that there was a possibility of him getting robbed?
K broke a house rule by going into J’s room. She flipped his room upside down looking for cash & once she found it she consciously put everything back in its place. She then took the money & went shopping.
When she was caught she got an attitude & told me to “mind my business” when I asked her where she got the $ because she can't have more than $5 before it burns a hole in her pocket.
She played the victim & cried to you when you got home because she was “scared of us for ganging up on her”. She wasn't scared. She isn't sorry. She doesn’t care. K is a fug sociopath. K committed petit larceny.
I'm not going to tell him that he will make new friends at his new school, that it’s only for maybe a year max, or that in the grand scheme of life this really isn’t “that bad”. I don't need to remind him that there are kids who are going through worse things. That he just needs to get over it because he is just a kid and I’m the parent so what I say goes.
He has to start his senior year at a new school. I have to pull him from the friends he has gone to school with since kindergarten.
He cried with me when I told him we would have to rehome our animals temporarily because mawmaw can’t have pets at her place which is where we are moving to. So I’m going to sit with him in the “yeah, this fg sucks” of it.
He came into my room with a bag of swedish fish to share to tell me it was okay to give up on staying here. He told me he was sorry that you weren’t the woman I thought you were & that it must really hurt me. He also cracked a joke that at least we won’t have to eat anymore of your unseasoned cafeteria food.
We can’t stay in our home because you have better credit than me so the landlord is requiring an additional security deposit for a new lease. I’ve been calling animal shelters trying to get info on temporary foster homes because my mom’s place doesn’t allow pets, & we can’t stay here.
Just know that there is going to be a time where you metaphorically, possibly quite literally, can’t bail K out. You are doing her such a huge disservice enabling her and cleaning up her messages because she isn’t going to learn any life skills. No one likes a spoiled entitled brat. Lord have mercy for her when she gets her first dose of real karma.
So reddit, this is my last update about this. I know I had a lot of people wondering what happened. K is still not being held accountable & my soon to be ex has moved in with her co-worker that I believe she has been having an affair with. They are fine. They are thriving. Their world isn’t crushed like ours is.
We have to surrender our pets and move hours away to live with mawmaw until I find us a new place and save up. It’s not fg fair.
I'm divorcing you. No, I'm not interested in marriage counseling. I’m not interested in “working it out”. I do love you but I don’t like you. I have no respect for you. I don't trust you. J is the best thing to ever happen to me and I will choose him over anyone or anything.