By: Revanche

Cutting off my father: update 3

February 7, 2018

Quick recap: I had to cut off my father. I started the process (1), and immediately ran into resistance and manipulation (2). Yet I still hoped that this would be the last update. Tsk.

After I knew he had the signed title in hand, I emailed instructions on completing the process. I’d done everything needed short of signing his name, including filling out the statement of use, verifying that this was a family transfer and therefore should be free, but of course it still took him five days to bother to confirm receipt and, naturally, offer an excuse not to complete it.

The registration was due in a month, which is no impediment to transferring because you don’t have to pay til the due date, duh, he claimed he wouldn’t be allowed to re-title without paying the registration so I’d have to wait for him to scrape up that money.

That was not true, and I told him so, but we both knew it was a transparent ploy pressure me into paying. After privately fuming at the DMV, because this could have been avoided, I decided to pay the registration to remove that handy excuse. The alternative was to give into his delays until late fees were charged or, worse, come up with another excuse not to complete it which would trigger Plan B (the pain of flying down and repossessing and donating it).

My “oh turns out it was paid last week” email produced a promise to get the transfer done on the next business day. Before I had a chance to let out a premature sigh of relief, friends, what do you think happened next? If you placed a bet on him lying to me, you’d be right!

An email notice from our insurance: a claim had been received on that car. The incident report was dated January 5th. OF COURSE. This was exactly what we were worried about.

I got on the phone with the insurance. The other party reported the incident, their report made it sound like it was his fault, and they waited weeks to report it so both cars were clearly still driveable. The liability portion of our insurance, should he be at fault, will cover losses on their side, but we’d have a $500 deductible if we wanted to use the insurance to cover the repairs on this car.

I confirmed that since only the two of us are policyholders, and he just the named driver, we are the only ones who can decide to exercise the comprehensive/collision coverage. He can’t decide to go for the repairs and stick us with the deductible.

Given that he, again, lied by omission, and has been hiding the incident for weeks, I’m not footing that bill. Maybe someone else more generous than I wouldn’t take it that way but he could and should have told me. Clearly the car is still functional and thankfully no one was hurt.

I have enough of a headache, I’m not going to volunteer to fix this, nor was I even going to mention it to him. My focus stayed on getting the car re-titled.

He was asked to send confirmation of the transfer on Monday. Monday came and went.

Tuesday, he left a chirpy “call back when you have a minute!”. My gut told me to delete the message, it was just another ploy. Instead of calling to ask him if he’d done it as PiC suggested, which would give him an opening for making up excuses and my temper to boil over, I stopped by AAA on Thursday. They confirmed that he still hadn’t completed the transfer. My gut was right. It has been every time.

I stuffed my anger down long enough to email him a reminder to send me the paperwork. Cornered, he let rip a big stinkin’ lie, “he’d been deathly ill the entire week so there was no way he could have taken care of it!” You could hear the fake coughing. It’s like he doesn’t even have a passing acquaintance with the truth.

I wanted to scream at him to stop lying. Instead, I vented a bit, then listened to my gut, honed by years of dealing with my brother, the pathological liar, sharpened by understanding Dad’s psyche which has convinced himself that he only does what’s best for me. Calmly, like the mature adult I play on TV, my reply asked him to send the confirmation by Friday morning at 10 am, take his medicine and feel better.

Spotting an opportunity, he completed it that night and sent it with a new sob story of how he dragged himself out of bed to get this done, right away, because he sensed my dire, urgent need! Two weeks after he should have done it, he’s trying to paint himself a hero.

Right. [many, many eyerolls] He forgets that I still pay the phone bill and can see that he averaged 15 calls a day all week. Definitely the behavior of an invalid.

With the proof of re-titling in hand, representing three weeks of stress, I gave myself a weekend of not thinking about him. A weekend of friends and family time, big deep breaths, just not thinking about what other strategies I have to put in place to remove him from our financial lives and protect my family. The worst part, the part where he could and did hold me hostage, was done and I deserved a little break.

But not too long! The next week, it was back to it because we still had financial liability exposure.

The insurance part was simple, thankfully. We signed the paperwork to release the insurance policy and transfer ownership of the policy to him. I could have cancelled outright and gotten close to $50 refunded but that would have required making contact to explain that he needed to get insurance immediately on his own. Add that $50 convenience fee to the $150 registration paid, and the $80 AAA membership fee, to have someone else be the bearer of that change. I basically paid $50 to avoid a conversation with him. But it’s not a patch on the $2000 a month rent.

The phone is less straightforward. I’ve released ownership of his number and gave him until the end of the month to port it elsewhere. Since it’s been a week without a reply or acknowledgement of that message, it’s safe to assume that we’ll need to be ready to trigger the “if he doesn’t comply” consequence of canceling the number. Crafting that message was taking far too long, until I remembered that whether in English or not in English, a statement of what needs to happen is all that’s needed. No lengthy reasons or explanations are needed.

With that last item in the works, just about everything on the Trello board is checked off except freezing my credit reports.

It costs $10 per agency, and they charge for temporary lifts, so I’m debating whether this is necessary. It’s going to cramp my credit card hacking style if we do. (NOTE: Most importantly, I wanted to be able to refinance the rental easily because I’m still shopping for lenders but I suppose that’ll be worth the charges to temporarily lift the freeze.)

He doesn’t have our current address. Only 1 family member does and she wouldn’t give it up for anything. I routinely scrub my online presence so those data scrapers shouldn’t reveal it, either. (Oh how I despise these data scrapers! There are so many of them and it’s a pain but worth it. I’ll write about that later.)

He shouldn’t have my social security number. Mom memorized them and did all our paperwork, but he never did any so he shouldn’t remember it. We’ve retrieved all old tax documents from my old desk and shredded them, he doesn’t have access to any recent filings to pull it from there.

He probably doesn’t remember my birthday, though other family does, and definitely doesn’t know any of my financial obligations (auto lender, that we have a mortgage and the amount, etc) that might be used to verify identity.

Without those pieces of information, it seems like he shouldn’t get far getting credit in my name.

:: Am I missing anything crucial here to protect my identity? Would you still freeze your credit reports if you were in my shoes?

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