Left at the Altar? Sue For $150,000!
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: debt, marriage
I think it was about eight or nine years ago—and it happened overnight, perhaps on a Tuesday—that marriage became all about money.
Consider the case of RoseMary Shell and Wayne Gibbs. You can read the article for the full story, but here’s a quick summary of what went down in short-attention-span format:
- Guy likes girl; girl likes guy. Guy and girl date.
- Relationship goes nowhere. Girl moves away for $81,000/year job.
- Guy proposes a year later. Girl accepts, leaves job and friends, moves back with guy.
- Guy wants to postpone wedding. Eventually guy and girl break up.
- Girl moves away, takes crappy $31,000/year job.
- Girl sues guy, wins $150,000 from him.
It really makes you wanna run out and get engaged now, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I wanted to highlight this story because it provides a lot of great examples of how money and marriage can interact.
- The debt of one… The girl in the story brought a boat-load of debt with her going into the relationship, though she disputes just how much that debt was. When postponing the marriage, the guy indicated that undisclosed debt was one of the reasons. Lesson learned: Tell the poor schmuck you’re marrying if you have tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
- Beware of leaving your life behind for love. Regardless of how debt-saddled the girl in the story was, she was doing something about it by making $81,000 a year at her previous job. All it took was a shiny five-figure engagement ring to make her give it all up. (Though you have to wonder why this woman went from making $81k to $31k a few years later.) Lesson learned: Keep your financial future secure before, during, and after any major relationship.
- If you’re going to pay off someone else’s debt, know what you’re getting into. The guy in the story must be fairly wealthy if he can afford to pay off $30,000 of the girl’s debt and still have enough in the bank to give her an enormous engagement rock. (Or maybe he charged it all on credit cards.) Lesson learned: Marry her first, then give her lots of money.
- I don’t believe in pre-nups, but… how about a pre-pre-nup? The couple in this story could have benefited from continuing to lead their lives separately until their wedding day. This way, girl would have had her $81,000 a year job to fall back on, and guy wouldn’t be out $150,000. Lesson learned: Have a plan for what happens if the engagement falls apart.
- And about that $150,000 judgment… what the hell, jury? Engagements fall apart all of the time and you don’t see couples suing each other for six figures. (That doesn’t happen until the marriage falls apart!) In a way, I hope this ruling encourages couples to use their engagements more wisely to examine their relationships and finances; but in another way, what the hell??? Lesson learned: Stay out of Florida courtrooms. Heck, just stay out of Florida altogether.
Oh, and ladies, if you’re having problems getting your man to commit to the idea of marriage now, wait until he reads this article. If stories like this keep making headlines, I fully expect the divorce rate will plummet… because no one in their right mind would commit to getting married!
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15 Responses »
1.
s. jennifer rose
August 6th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
I’m torn on the issue of pre-nups. I’d be interested to hear your take on them since you’re against them. We haven’t discussed pre-nups explicitly, but if my boyfriend and I get married I do not think we would have a pre-nup, but I can understand situations where you might want one. (Maybe you have a child from a previous relationship and you want to protect his/her inheritance? You’re a saver and he/she is a spender? You just don’t trust that slutty bitch/man-whore?)
2.
tom
August 7th, 2008 at 9:27 am
The jury in the is case is made up of idiots. So now the precedent is set where you can no longer change your mind. I’m siding with the dude:
This woman was making a bunch of money,
the dude throws huge rock at her,
she leave job and joins him with her enormous debt,
he finds out about she has some debt and says, “Here is $30,000, pay it off and buy yourself something nice.”,
She says “Thanks baby, but can I have another $12,000?”,
he says “WHOA, whoa, whoa, wait, what?! No, if your like this with the little money you make, what are you going to do with the HUGE money I make? sorry, sweetheart, I can’t risk that, bye bye.”
She sues because she just lost her sugar daddy and she didn’t disclose the debt she had (she says she did, but I highly doubt it, otherwise why wouldn’t he just pay off the rest? whats another $12K?). Let’s also not forget that $42,000 in debts is freakin’ HUGE!!! What the hell was she buying? Surely not student loans, she’s freakin’ old! I would have said “peace out” to her too. She’s lucky he didn’t sue her for paying off 2/3 of her debt.
3.
Kyle
August 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Too bad you can’t sue somebody for being stupid, because I would take every one of those jurors to court and clean them out.
4.
Tom
August 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Wow! Thanks for ruining my hopes of ever getting married.
It’s because of examples like this one that divorce rates are so high. Everybody is so independent of one another.
5.
Brad
August 7th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Holy cow. It’s stories like this one that make me happy that my girlfriend and I are so open about where we are standing financially.
And also that she is so committed to paying off her debts. With her money.
6.
Jerry
August 9th, 2008 at 12:52 am
It has to be the heat and humidity down there, or something, that leads to this kind of nonsense in Florida. Not real interested in moving there, thanks. Premarital relationships do not come with an insurance policy - that comes with the pre-nup, I guess - but for a jury to claim otherwise is sheer idiocy.
Jerry
7.
Obbop
August 9th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Obviously, just one bloke’s opinion but it’s MY opinion and as far as opinions go it is an opinion even if it is an opinionated opinion.
Never married, over 50, and numerous times over the decades other males have declared they should have followed the path I took.
So very very few happy couples I have met over the years.
Children and/or economics traps so many married folks.
Had the chance over the years to marry. One gal was from a very wealthy family and a job awaited her hubby in the family firm. No thanks.
Another gal was a nurse with a good income and she was model cute… heck, cuter than most models I have seen. She looked akin to the quintessential California surfer-girl. Cuter than cute AND, shockingly, with a sweet personality. No thanks.
Freedom. A wonderful thing. Peace in the abode. No strife or quarreling. No demanding female to smother my joy in merely being alive.
Perhaps the two military tours overseas when I was 18 then 20 led to the realization that marriage was not for me. Especially with an American female who, after experiencing several other cultures, are, in my opinion, the most spoiled self-centered insufferable class of females in the world.
Sure, there are exceptions but, it seems as if American females are trained via many sources to consider themselves as “princesses” and deserving of whatever their hearts and feeble brains desire.
Such simple creatures but emotion-laden and so often incapable of logical rational thought.
Swayed so easily by shiny baubles and trinkets.
Chock-full of demands for every right and privelege imagineable yet woefully lacking when responsibilites jump at them.
It is a shame that society allowed the simpletons to attain the vote in 1920. One can date many of today’s societal woes starting with 1920.
An intelligent male aware of the many dangers contained within vacuous irrational females knows of the perils in allowing those creatures into one’s life.
Until American females make some huge changes in attitude and actions towards males I believe the marriage rate will continue to fall.
As for the growing number of females expressing the inability to find a suitable mate (read; a guy with the bucks able to afford my wants, demands and desires due me simply for being female) may I suggest adopting a cat from your local animal shelter.
8.
Business Cash
August 11th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Okay, so I feel badly for this guy, and I agree that it’s pretty uncool of her to not mention her debt to him, but you really shouldn’t be getting engaged to someone if you haven’t had an in-depth conversation with them about your respective financial situations. As far as I’m concerned, the big lesson learned is this: get to know your significant other before offering your hand in marriage.
9.
Investing For Beginners
August 11th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
the courts favoring women in child custody and financial matters makes prenups a basic necessity now days. i hate sounding like a sexist, but when it comes to marriages and children, the government usually favors the estrogen. very unfair to fit fathers
10.
Debt management
August 12th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Get your debts under control before even thinking about marriage! Getting hitched costs a fortune I think the average here in the UK is now something stupid like £20,000!! And that level of debt isn’t funny punny!
11.
Cath Lawson
August 17th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
That’s pretty bad. I paid off someone’s debt when I was married to them - even then it’s not always wise. People who get bailed out all the time will keep on getting debt if some other shmuck is willing to save them.
Some of this reminds me of the Adam Sandler film where he asks the girl to marry him, to save her being transferred to work in another country, then finds out later that she is only a voluntary worker.
12.
Promotional Products
August 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Why do people not take responsibility for their own actions these days? This sounds like a classic case of “the grass is greener on the other side” eh?
13.
paul
August 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am
i think that story is insane on so many levels. first, shouldn’t people know each other well enough that all these topics are discussed before they go and do this? i mean, this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. and as for the judgment, that jury is crazy and set the precedent for the lawyering to begin. blah.
14.
Karen Davis
September 12th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
The cartoon is funny but you hit the truth. Money and marriage somehow connect with each other.
I believe that we should be responsible in everything that we do.
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