Advise : nice widower with a child...

Hi,


I have met this nice European widower with a lovely little 5 years old child last year. He said very quickly he wanted to commit, we should settle together as soon as possible and start a new family. We are both in our forties. The guy used to be a lawyer, has his own business in Singapore. We met online.


We met in August 2011, started a relationship in November 2011. In March this year, we found an apartment we both loved. He dealt with it but at the last minute, it happened my name only was put on the lease.


In the meantime he asked me to go on his own to Bali while I would take care of the child (he works at home, can take his leave whenever he wants : he decided to go when I was going to be one week off. I founded it worrying). A few days later, I realised he was seeing again his former helper, with who he used to have sex. I suggested a breakup. He refused it, said I was insecure. If there was not the child with who I developed a very strong bond, I would not have made the move. Anyway, I tried...


To cut it short, in 4 months the guy paid only (with difficulties) 2 month rent and was cheating on me with no possibility of discussing it, no matter what I tried. He was not working either, spending his days lying on the coach with a newspaper, chatting on internet and exchanging sms : nothing to do with the busy schedule he mentioned when we met.


We were on our way to Europe to spend 3 weeks together at my parents when I decided to break up, sure he would enjoy the free holidays and then treat me as badly as before. We agreed on an amicable breakup and still went for 5 very civil days to my family, where everyone was very nice to him, his child and his mother (who joined us).


When we returned, I moved to a friend of mine : so far, we never had a loud exchange. On the weekend, when I returned to my apartment with lugages, I found out he had locked me out of it. I filed to the police and he let me in at night, only when I mentioned the police report.


We met again a couple of days later after having exchanged polite sms to settle the financial matters and exchange pictures and movies of the child. He had just bought himlself a new flat screen TV and when I arrived, he threw his child and the maid away before saying he would not pay a single penny. He also demanded I would pay for the rent + maid's fees for the 11 first day of August when I was out of the apartment waiting for my moving out to happen (in between, I had made a lease change with his name only on the papers). He was brutal as usual but I was no longer scared of him.


I moved out calmly last Saturday : on that very same night, his former helper settled in the apartment. He is hiring her and firing our helper (who wanted to leave anyway as she is scared of him). I know he will probably continue looking for women with money and play the family good guy role while trying to keep his mistress at home as the helper (that would have happened to me if his helper would not have sent me sms to share about their intimate relationship)... To cut it short I feel relieved it was just a one year story in my case.


Anyhow, my question now is : is there anyway I can get my share of the rents back...?


I am also wondering if there is any association (e.g. women rights association) who could help me work this through. I am not especially a feminist but I am quite sure he might play financial tricks on someone else again, so if there is a file opened somewhere with with his name on it, it could help the next lady ...


I would be great to get advices..

"Anyhow, my question now is : is there anyway I can get my share of the rents back...?"


Quick answer - NO.


When you have paid rent to a landlord, and you have lived there, unlikely you can get your money back. If you have been in a relationship and paid rent on a shared apartment, well, just coz you break up, doesn't mean you can get your money back from that person you rented with (or in your case, the person you paid rent for).


Its like saying, ok, so I paid for your dinners for the last 2 weeks we were dating but you were screwing someone else, so now that I am dumping you I would like you to pay me back for all the free dinners I hooked you up with.


Know what I mean?


Look at this as a very expensive lesson learned from a total failure of a relationship.


NOW...


If you are concerned about how this douchebag may do this to some other hapless unsuspecting woman and its true from your location indicator that you are based in Singapore, I suggest that you inform the government about this and file a report with the police. Singapore is pretty militant about who they give visas to, especially when it comes to foreigners, so it should take care of the fact he will be blacklisted somewhere somehow and that should take care of your worry for the next woman to come.


Good luck.

it's quite bad, this situation. i hate to be judgmental, because we all want to build a nice relationship and trust our partners, and sometimes we make stupid choices because emotions blind us, but seriously signing a lease that only has your name on it? why would you do that? unless the amount of the lease was so small that you couldn't care less if anyone else contributed to it or not, you really should not be signing a thing like that...


i am not even going to ask how "it happened my name only was put on the lease"


so getting rent that you have paid on a lease that you have signed for an apartment that you lived in is a... NO, as JC said.


as for reporting the bloke, what exactly is his legal crime to be reported in this situation? staying at the apartment his girlfriend was renting? sleeping around? not working? being an irresponsible boyfriend? not exactly crimes... because from waht you wrote, he didn't really get any money directly out of you, only stayed at the flat you were renting. and if that was something to be reported, we would have the "directory of gold diggers worldwide" published a long time ago.


also, i would be careful before reporting any kind of thing without really solid proof, because it could be treated as defamation... and you don't wanna go there.


i know you are angry, you have lost time, money, ability to trust people maybe, but my advice is to move on.

Thank you Lunatic and thank you again Justin.


If I ever felt anger it is more against myself than against him : for having given credit to someone who was in the end, a crook. I still feel sadness however, but for the child, not for me.


Now regarding why someone would sign a lease with their name only on it the answer is very simple : the best crooks, they sound very honest don't they?...The truth is we never spoke about money, when I tried he acted like this was no subject between us, we were above it... He did not pay the first rent and when I kindly tried to discuss the second rent he very brutally replied "We will have this discussion later and I will pay when I want". It was like the smoke disappeared all of sudden and I could finally see his true colors. I then tried to discuss by emails about the rent, the groceries, the utilities and the furniture I bought for the maid's room : no reply...I sent emails again and he said "We have settled this already", which confirmed he was a crook as it was not settled at all. At the end of the relationship, he sent very polite and soft spoken emails to say things like "Please tell me how much I owe you" and collected some of my bills, saying we would discuss it after the holiday when we return to Singapore - in reality, of course, he did not pay anything : I suppose the emails are related to the lawyer tricks who protects himself in case I would report him...


Now regarding filing somewhere so the next person who finds herself in trouble with him has some support, it makes sense to me : It is not reporting a bad boyfriend or whatever you may call him, it is about reporting someone who takes financial advantages of others, threatens and tries to put a hand on your personal belongings (as it happened at the end of our relationship).


Anyway, thanks again. If I find a way to get back the shares of the rent back, I will post it here. And for the rest, yes moving on is the solution : I can hardly imagine meeting worse next time...so it can only be better in the future...

Indeed, but before you get too hopeful (and in the future, frustrated with grief) I would suggest, as I did before, to quit (altogether) this notion of recovering your rent money. It won't happen. Heck, if you are thinking you will be able to recover it from him, a law-intuited con man, then you obviously have not been reading the extremely clear writing on the wall, you will not get one red cent out of this di**wad.


So on that, move on, really, for your own good.


Now on reporting him, I think it would be the civic minded thing to do. This isn't just a matter of you feeling you got a lousy BF, its a matter of you fearing he is a con-man and that you got screwed in a very premeditated and calculated manner. You were naive, but then so are many people who think the world is a wonderful and happy place full of safe and bright paths and no dark corners.


So I for one would say, yes, you should at least TRY to talk to some department of the law, worst case scenario they tell you what Lunatic did, that you are barking up the wrong tree, no way you can really get anything to stick and look at it as a lesson learned. But it doesn't hurt to try, right?


I think its the right thing to do, if you genuinely feel like you are doing this for the good of future naive women this dude will con, yep...thats my opinion. Its sad that you got attached to the kid, but then that was his "in" with you, and possibly will be his "in" with other women too. A man with a child, a widower at that, seems so harmless, doesn't he?


Happens to a lot of people who get into relationships with single parents, they end up more in love with the child than the parent and when the relationship ends they lose two people and not just the one, so yeah, its something to think about in the future if you want to save some of yourself...maybe don't get involved with someone who has a kid...at least, don't go moving in with him until you have known him an appropriate period of time to feel you are fully clued in on who he is.


Also, in the future, don't pussyfoot around with e-mails. Just talk in person. If you had done that all along I think you would have dealt the killing blow a lot sooner than you did, I mean, with all this e-mailing back and forth with a person you supposedly live with (I mean, WTH, right? Thats like facebooking someone in the next room to ask what they want for dinner! Don't grown ups talk face to face anymore?) one would only assume that you are either a person who fears confrontation or a poor communicator...or both...so yeah, you would have saved yourself a lot of time by just dealing with it face to face...and yeah, I won't even go into the whole "going on holiday and telling him on holiday that I want to dump him and then playing nice happy family with him and the kid for my folks" thing...Boggles the mind. Maybe make a mental note about that one too, never do that, ever...ever again! Dump someone and go on the holiday alone.


Hope he paid for his own trip to Europe! Psshhh.


Anyway, chin up, chica. You will be fine (and stronger for it) once all the dust settles from this almighty blow up! I wish you all the best, and a strong head :) for the future.

Thank you Justin : you made me smile ;-)


I am not that naive (anymore) : I was worried when my name only was put on the lease. But as I wrote somewhere above : I tried, even though things were not perfect - they cannot be, otherwise it means you don't live in a real couple. Plus me being in my early forties and he being in his late forties, I believe there is no time to waste at our ages when taking a move (he was the one to say he wanted to commit, I was the one to say wow,wow,wow calm down : but this is a quite usual scheme about male-female relationship no? The male wants to rush things whereas the female is more cautious. Then you are into a relationship and whereas the guy might have second thoughts the female is now committed. So in his urge to settle together, I saw nothing but this scheme : I did not think about a manipulation.

Also there are things you can only find out about someone when you move in with them, no? Dating and living with someone can be 2 very different things I believe (and experienced).


As for a man with a child, I will go for it no matter what if I have feelings for the father : I love children. I also know I can be into a relationship without children but from this experience, I have also understood something important (to me at least) : I now get why so many people stay in crap relationships when there are children involved. It is truly is because of the children : no matter if your partner is not nice anymore, when you go home there is a little someone who is extremely pleased to see you, wants to share there day, stories, games with you, calls you Mum and make drawings especially for you, to let you how much they care. And this, to me, is priceless as it gives a stronger meaning to life...So you wont be surprised to read that if we still went to my family after breaking up (my parents were informed about it), it was to spend a few last days with the child who like me, was so happy to have (at least for a short while) a new family.


As for communicating by emails : how do you do when someone refuses to talk to you about a topic? I mean like pretending they didn't even hear you talked? To me it is a way to stress there is situation and try to deal with it calmly. In this relationship, I was rather reserved and trying to avoid brutal confrontation after I experienced it (some men can be threatening: I told him he was scary sometimes and he said his late wife used to say the same...)


Anyway, I am going to follow your advice : forget about the rents and focus on other aspects. For the moment I have no clue where to address for what you suggest. However, that will be an interesting topic to discuss in my surroundings as it is always interesting to learn more about this country.


All the best to you as well, hombre

Just to correct, my point was not that it is wrong for you to report him, it would be great to protect other women from experiencing something similar. However, please consult before doing anything on what is legal and what not. Because if you report him and he finds out, he can sue you for defamation, and judging from your post and the facts that would be presented in court (facts = things that can be proved to have happened vs. things that actually happened), I think you would not win that case. So protect yourself from further trouble with that guy.


And just another note, if your partner repeatedly refuses to openly communicate with you, there is a very serious issue and/ or lack of respect towards you regardless of what gender they are.


Good luck in the future!

Thank you very much for your sound advice. I will look more at a women's right association and see what I can do, like building up a "file" that someone else might find helpful in the future.

As for lack of respect, thanks for your comment : you got the picture indeed...

All the best to you