Summary: A man is suing his ex-wife for insulting him on the alimony checks.
A New Jersey man has sued his ex-wife for harassment, after she wrote insults such as “bum” and “loser” on her weekly alimony checks to him in the memo line. Her contention is that she can write whatever she pleases, as it is a note to herself, but his lawyers claim the emotional distress has even led to heart attacks, exacerbating his bad health.
On the surface, this might amuse us, but a closer look at the situation bespeaks a lot of suffering, between 61-year-old Francis Wagner and 57-year-old Diane Wagner. As she explains, she endured 10 years of marriage intermixed with drunken bouts; she couldn’t afford a divorce trial, so agreed to pay her non-working husband a monthly spousal support of $774.
But then she got cancer in her lungs that progressed to her bones. Because of her cancer treatment, she can hardly afford alimony, but a judge in a Superior Court family division refused to reduce them.
“As far as I’m concerned I can write anything I want on the memo line because it’s a note to myself. I was the victim in that marriage. What more blood does he want from me? I pay him religiously,” Wagner said in a phone interview.
Trautmann & Trautmann law firm posted one of the checks on Facebook March 11, with Diane’s last name and street address blacked out, but with the memo line reading: “Alimony/adult child support.”
They commented “Alimony for the man! What’s funny is that the now ex-wife so hated playing our client – the husband — $800 for the next six years as alimony and she has written Alimony / Adult Child Support in the memo of the weekly checks – until we put as top that that harassment.”
In fact, she didn’t get a letter asking her to stop until July. It read:
“Please be advised that your writings are causing my client severe emotional distress and have led to him having sustained heart attacks in recent weeks. If you send a single check in the future with any writing on it other than what is required to process the alimony payment a complaint will be filed against you for intentionally inflicting emotional distress upon my client.”
Diane then wrote instead “FOAD” which the complaint alleges stands for “F*** off and die.” Diane claimed it was just a personal note to herself.
As she is suffering from terminal cancer, and he cancer and heart attacks, their mutual hate for each other is not much a balm on the sufferings of life.
Source: Daily Record