Girlfriend Has Stolen My Disability Payments

[flashalex]

I live in Alabama and I deposited my disability backpay ($10,000) in a joint account with my girlfriend of 10 years. She closed the account and put the disability in her personal account at another bank. Said she did not like the bank we had the joint account at and we would open another joint account at either her bank or a different one and put the money there. There always seemed to be a reason why we could not open a new account so, until we could come to a decision on a bank, I have been giving her my monthly disability payments for the last 5 months to keep with the lump sum backpay. Discovered she had been taking the money under false pretenses. She is now interested in someone else (and evidently has been for a while) and wants to move out and start a new life. Says she needs my disability to do so and feels I owe it to her. What, if anything, can I do to get my disability back?

[aardvarc]

Quit depositing your money into the account. Open an account in only your name, and put it there. Money she has already withdrawn from a joint account is likely to be money lost. When you live with someone for 10 years and co-mingle money, that's what the courts consider as "living as if married", except that since you weren't married to her, you don't have the benefit of the divorce process to ask the court to divide up assets and liabilities. You can always attempt to file a police report, but since her defense is going to be that she used the money to pay for living expenses for both of you, most prosecutors won't touch such cases. But you have nothing to loose to try. It's not "stolen" money, because you knowingly and willfully co-mingled money with her in a joint account. That means exactly as much hers as yours. This is a lesson most people learn the very hard way.

[Janke]

You might try small claims court to see if you can get any satisfaction, but I bet the outcome would be that you willingly gave her control and ownership of the money when you put it in a joint account. A hard lesson to learn. If you file a small claims court action, at least you will have done something.

This is not either a Social Security or a criminal matter.