Scott’s first suspicious cash withdrawal occurred in the fall of 2008. He announced his “emotional affair” with Wendi in June of 2010. Had he been screwing her for almost two years BEFORE telling me, and even then, lying about the extent of his affair? I was shocked, confused and hurt. By now, these feelings were old news, since they returned with every new revelation about Scott. There was something more this time, however. I was furious with myself for being so gullible. Why hadn’t I monitored our finances more closely and seen the withdrawal pattern? Why had I believed him in the first place when he promised they had not had sex? Simply put, I felt stupid.

I couldn’t believe he would take that much money from his family. It wasn’t right and I wanted the money back for me and my girls. Staring at the withdrawals in the bank statements made me crazy – I wanted to know exactly how he had spent the money. Scott had lied for so long I knew sending angry texts and emails wasn’t the answer. So I decided to investigate what he had done. My lawyers advised if he had spent our funds while he cheated, I could get some of the money back.

Of course, the simplest answer was he had given it to the mistress. That would also explain the excessive credit card balances — he was spending the money on her. My imagination went wild thinking about how they could have spent the money. Perhaps he had bought her a love nest or at least, started paying her mortgage. Or maybe she was a hooker and the cash was purely for services rendered. Was she pregnant?

I tried to match the cash withdrawal pattern with what I knew of the timeline of their affair, but it didn’t add up. That didn’t mean anything as he had proven to be a totally unreliable source of information. But neither was the spending consistent with the starts and stops in the communications I had found looking at his cell phone history. So I wondered if there was something else going on, like a gambling problem. Drugs seemed unlikely because he just didn’t present that way at home. Did he have other investments he hadn’t told me about? Or maybe he had more than one girlfriend, possibly even an escort habit. Whatever it was, I instinctively felt it was bad news.

To my attorneys, I insisted I needed to know what he had been doing and how he had spent the money. Asking Scott would have been pointless. But I texted him about the suspicious withdrawals anyway, just to see what he would say, and — in all honesty — to rile him up. He said only this: “To the best of my recollection, the vast majority of the money you referred to in your text I spent on hotels/accommodations, food/restaurants, entertainment expenses (concert tickets, plays, etc.), transportation costs and gifts.” Sounded like lawyers’-speak to me.

In these text conversations, I confronted him with more and more details of what I had found but got nothing more from him. Finally, he must have realized I had quite a bundle of evidence, so he offered to tell me the “true”details. Still, he would only meet with me face to face, without our attorneys present, and with the stipulation the information could not be used in legal proceedings. Does this sound like someone with nothing to hide? I refused his offer. It was ridiculous and he would have lied anyway.

In an email, he even questioned my “ethics” for wanting to know the truth of his infidelity, adding he hoped I didn’t want the information “for some form of non-legal retribution.” He had quite a set of balls questioning my moral code given his track record! Clearly, Scott’s concern about me using the information suggested I was onto something. He must have been engaged in some nasty stuff if he was worried about non-legal retribution. I did wonder what kind of non-legal retribution he thought I would take. Send a group email to his family and work colleagues? Put the info up on Facebook? Take out a billboard?

The only way for me to get to the bottom of it was to continue investigating on my own. I was certain a closer examination of his credit card bills would reveal more suspicious spending. With credit card charges, I could at least see how he spent the money. I couldn’t hire someone to do the investigative work. Private investigators, forensic accountants and even paralegals were too expensive. Their fees for the work would swamp any money I could get back in the court proceedings. I was also in a better position to identify the suspicious spending. I could place his spending pattern within the broader context of our lives together. This was by far the most effective way to identify suspicious withdrawals and charges.

I needed more detailed information, both for the case, and my burning curiosity. So, I asked my attorneys to subpoena his credit card billing statements.

At around the same time the credit card subpoenas were sent, Scott’s lawyer presented his first settlement offer. The offer arrived on Valentine’s Day. Of course this was no coincidence, though I am sure Scott would have made that claim if I had confronted him on it. This was a low-blow even for him. A few days before its arrival, my lawyer Marianne spoke with Scott’s attorney, Duff. She learned, Scott wanted the divorce done “yesterday!” But Duff told Marianne he didn’t think the reason for the quick divorce was to marry the other woman. Based upon the spending I had uncovered, it was pretty clear why he wanted a quick settlement. He was hoping I wouldn’t follow the money trail, and was worried what I might find.

In texts and emails, Scott emphasized how “generous” his offer was. He offered up his legal expertise, saying he knew what a “typical court settlement “would be and his offer was far better. He tried to bolster his position by saying he had shown it to a number of “legal sources” who all agreed his offer was more than fair. My guess is his mother, father and sister– all lawyers– were those “legal sources.” Big surprise there! Whoever he showed it to, I am sure he lied about his misbehavior and its financial impact.

The offer didn’t appear generous to me. When I compared my rough estimate of his income with his self-proclaimed “generous” alimony offer, I realized he wasn’t even offering me the state ordered minimum alimony percentage (30%). He claimed I would be getting a 60/40 asset split. However, he reached his asset calculation by using excessive values on my jewelry, the two cars, and the contents of the house. He also saddled me with sole ownership of the house, despite my continued insistence I didn’t want it and wouldn’t be staying in Massachusetts after our youngest daughter graduated from high school.

My attorneys were clear with me there was no way to adequately evaluate the fairness of his offer without obtaining his financial documents as well as additional information from his employer. I forwarded this info to Scott.

After Scott learned my lawyers had issued the subpoenas, he lost it. He was fervent his “very fair” settlement offer was the best I would EVER get. He said he had given me credit for the financial implications of his bad behavior. He claimed “I actually do know all the data,” though he had said in a text, the night before, he had not kept any records of the cash as he spent it.

He assured me his “more than generous” asset offer was intended to include payback of half the money he had spent. However, his formal settlement offer stated I would receive more of the marital assets up front, but would get less alimony per month as a result. The offer itself made no mention of the money he spent or how it was to be paid back. I told him his assurance he was paying me back contradicted the higher asset/lower alimony logic in the formal offer and the contradiction was financially significant. I calculated if I accepted his deal I could be forgoing $50,000 to $100,000 of yearly alimony! So much for being generous.

He tried to undermine the motives and honesty of my lawyers, suggesting they were overly aggressive, and were just trying to rack up my legal bills. He even accused my lawyer Marianne, the former DA, of having a “feminist axe to grind.” Well if so, I’m glad I hired her! Even stranger, he claimed to know how Massachusetts divorce courts would view adultery and said I was being misled. Of course, it was not surprising Scott now considered himself an expert in Massachusetts divorce law, and wanted to me to follow his advice instead of my lawyers. It was so egotistical!

When all else failed, Scott tried the “we both need to move on” argument. He assured me he was a “changed man.” Even more, he arrogantly suggested I talk to my therapist about my failure to move on. His favorite move was to insist I was the one who needed therapy. It played to his “foremost authority” delusion since he believed he was more than competent to offer his clinical diagnosis of my issues. As if I was the one damaged, not him.

Despite all of his entreaties, I agreed with my lawyers that any settlement discussions should be put on hold pending our receipt of further information. This also allowed me time to thoroughly research the credit card statements, which arrived two months later, in April.

Bingo! His credit card bills showed a great deal more suspicious spending than Scott had acknowledged. I found $180,000 in suspect credit card charges over the four-year time period he had also withdrawn the cash. While the fishy spending was not a surprise, the nature and extent of the charges was quite revealing, including:

• Scott paid for preferred membership to dating websites that included
  • Singlesnet
  • Ashley Madison (on bill as ADL Media)
  • Match.com
  • Multiple “sugar-dating” websites, including Seeking Arrangements, Sugardaddyforme and others. For all of you out there lucky enough to not know, “Sugar-Dating” has been described as when a “Rich person contracts a poorer but younger/hotter person into some combination of obligations that includes but is only rarely limited to straight-up sex.”¹ The rich person usually is a man. Sugar-dating sites are internet dating sites devoted to making such connections. There were also some PayPal payments I couldn’t identify. I suspect these were for dating websites memberships as well.

• He had stayed at hotels (mostly 5 star) and had eaten lavishly at restaurants when our schedules indicated I couldn’t have been with him. These hotels and restaurants most certainly were not on his company’s approved list for reimbursable business lodging and the restaurant bills were substantially above his company’s food expense budget. There were suspicious charges in our hometown of Boston, near his mistress’s home in New Jersey, but also in cities such as
  • New York City, White Plains and Tarrytown NY
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Manchester, NH
  • Greenwich, CT
  • Las Vegas, NV
  • Seattle, WA
  • San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA
  • Chicago, ILL
• He seemed to like casinos – with charges at casinos in Connecticut, Atlantic City and Las Vegas — was this spending on prostitutes, blackjack or both?
• I found a series of payments to Virgin Mobile. Since we had our cell phones in a family plan with AT&T, this strongly suggested he had a hidden cell phone.
• I discovered he had paid for an anonymous STD testing service.
• He had made charges to spas, jewelry stores, Best Buy, toy stores, lingerie stores and department stores for items I did not recognize. Neither I nor my kids had received anything from these stores (in these locations). For example
  • On July 14, 2010 he spent $6,000 on one credit card and $5,500 on the other at Jewelry by Alex in Paramus, NJ.
  • On March 1, 2012 he spent over $600 at Best Buy in Paramus, NJ.
  • In November, 2010, he spent over $2,000 on two purchases at Nordstrom in Paramus, NJ.
• He made big purchases ($200 – $400) at liquor stores in towns I had never been (in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York).
• For months, he had a regular charge to Malaleuca, a direct marketing company like Amway, this one selling vitamins ( I never saw).
• There were a number of charges to Hotels.com but the charges did not indicate the hotel that was booked.
• He paid for airline tickets to Chicago purchased with Wendi Morton listed as passenger – these were charged to his business credit card!
• He paid for a train ticket with another woman, Renee Kent listed as the passenger.
  • I later googled Renee Kent and found this second woman had been arrested in Connecticut for credit card fraud. Scott was hooking up with some high quality talent!

My credit card research proved Scott’s infidelity was not limited to Wendi Morton. There was at least one other (Renee Kent in Connecticut), but potentially many more, given the number of cities, dating websites, casino charges, hidden phone and STD testing he had paid for. I bet Wendi, who I now dubbed “Miss New Jersey”, didn’t even know he had cheated on her with Miss Connecticut! I didn’t felt sorry for her. In my book, you shouldn’t be surprised when the married man you are seeing double cheats on you.

The sheer number of hotels and restaurants included in the list made me wonder how much work he had actually done when he was away on “business.” Then again, Scott had wanted sex to be our hobby. I just didn’t know he really meant it was already HIS hobby, which apparently absorbed quite a bit of his waking hours.

My research suggested additional information I could obtain through subpoena, including: Virgin Mobile for the phone records, Hotels.com for greater detail on the hotels he booked, and some of the retailers (the jewelry and lingerie stores for example). I asked my lawyers to send out an additional set of subpoenas to see what new information we might find.

1. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Searching for a Sugar Daddy,” GQ, August 27, 2015, http://www.gq.com/story/sugar-daddies-explained.