The last few days have not been great for me. My spouse managed to ruin my holidays - something she has always been very adept at over the nearly forty years we have been married. Yesterday, the mail arrived as I was walking past our front door. You see, in my neighborhood, the mail carrier walks from house to house delivering incoming mail and picking up outgoing mail. As our mailbox is mounted on the wall next to our front door, the mail carrier has to walk from the sidewalk, along our front walk, and up four steps to our front porch where he then leaves our mail in the mailbox, taking any outgoing mail with him. Because we have a Ring Doorbell, anyone walking up the steps sets off the motion detector, which in turn sets off alarms on my watch, my phone, and every Alexa in the house (which is three rooms on each floor of the house), making it obvious that someone is here - even if they don’t ring the doorbell.

As I was near the door, I grabbed the mail just after he dropped it off. With Christmas being only a week away, our incoming mail has dropped off considerably - fewer sales flyers, fewer catalogs, and fewer greeting cards. In fact, we only had two pieces of mail that day, which is probably what made the item in question stand out. What was it you say? A letter from our primary bank (yes, we use more than one), TD Bank, the address showing through the window on the envelope had my spouse’s name, and what I thought was mine. So, I opened it. To find out that it was not my name, but rather her’s, then my oldest son (whose name is also Dallas), then my middle son, and then my youngest son. In other words, everyone in the family except me. I did not notice this right away, rather not until I had read the letter.

A letter explaining that a certificate of deposit in the value of some $108,000 was maturing in six months, and would be automatically rolled over unless the bank was given other directions - what we referred to as UNODIR in the service. In and of itself, not a big issue.

What upset me was that this was when I figured out that my wife had taken $108,000 of our savings and put it into a CD, which didn’t bother me as we had discussed doing that - in fact, we have multiple CD’s as the interest rate is higher than our regular savings account, so we utilize them for a portion of our savings while keeping about half in more liquid accounts for ease of access. So the CD itself didn’t upset me. What upset me is that I was not listed on it!

She took over $108,000 out of our joint savings, and put it in her name with my children listed as the beneficiaries if something happened to her. She essentially took a chunk of our joint wealth and locked me out of it. When I confronted her about this, she made out like it was no big thing - that we had discussed putting money into CD’s. Which we did - but not in just her name! She apparently sees nothing wrong with this, and tells me that if we need the money she will simply move it back into another account. Somehow, she sees nothing wrong with putting over $100,000 of money which belongs to both of us into an account in just her name.

So we have not really been speaking for the past two days.

So I am sitting here wondering if I need to check with the bank regarding whether this all the money she has done this with, whether I should go do the same thing in just my name, whether I should be placing a call to my lawyer, whether I should get my kids involved in this, or whether I should simply make her put my name on the account - although I don’t think that can be done.

So, needless to say, I am not having a very Merry Christmas this year.