Crime and Punishment - and God's Grace

".... to pay to the court the sum of fifteen thousand, two hundred eighty four dollars and sixteen cents, the equivalent of back taxes owed plus penalties and interest accrued during said time, to be paid to the court within two years."

Crack! went the gavel.

So it was official. My husband now had a criminal record. Huh. The lawyer motioned to us to follow him to an adjacent room.

We were still reeling anyway because he told us that his opponent had agreed not to mention where my husband worked, so as to keep that organization's name from becoming tarnished. He'd not kept his promise. We knew that this would hit the paper because our newspaper published court cases in the Saturday edition in a column we liked to call "Voyeur's Alley." The media would eat this up.

Anyway, we followed the man to the little room off the courtroom and he explained how the fine was going to work. "Don't worry about the time limit. The court will allow you to ask for an extension, six months at a time of course." We nodded. He told us where to send the fine payments and shook our hands. "I know that this is hard," he said. "But all things considered, I think it turned out well."

We nodded again. We exited the building in a daze.

Within a few days, we sat across from the bankruptcy trustee, as it was nearing the end of our nine month process. He told us, "You've handled your finances in an exemplary fashion and in the last nine months I've been able to collect over four thousand dollars from you, and that will be divided among your creditors. I am recommending that you be discharged fully from the bankruptcy process. You won't have to make any more payments to me after ... the end of June, two weeks from today." It was kind of like an anti-climax with all the other things that had been happening. We were relieved of course - but still...

And then it was Saturday. The story of the court case hit "Voyeur's Alley" in the local paper. "XXXX Employee convicted for tax fraud" - oh great - a headliner.

And then we found out who our friends were.

My husband's father disowned him. He believed everything - at face value - that was in the paper. No questions; immediate judgment. That really hurt.

His mother, on the other hand, maintained contact... even though she couldn't quite figure out the difference between the bankruptcy and the court fine. She thought it was all the same thing. For a while she even kept giving us meat from the grocery store (see last blog entry). We had to tell her (out of conscience) that she didn't need to do that anymore.

I remember that first day after the paper ran my husband's "story." We used to sit in the back of the church so the kids could play without disturbing anyone. We were back there when one of the pillars of the church walked by in back of us. He rarely spoke anyway - but he took the time to come over and squeeze my husband on the shoulder before going to his seat. That meant a lot to us. No words were spoken. But it was obvious he didn't believe the spin on everything he read in the paper.

Over the next few days I fielded phone calls from various people, people we knew and I never expected to hear from ever again. This one fellow called, one whose Bible study my husband had attended for years. "I know your husband well, and he would never knowingly do what they said he did," he said. "And I know those folks at RevCan. They were using him as a scapegoat and they chose him solely because you guys couldn't fight back. I just wanted you to know that my wife and I are in your corner. We're praying for you."

When I hung up from that call, my throat had a lump in it that felt like the size of an orange. As I remember that incident, lo and behold, there's that lump again! Bless you Albert, wherever you are.

Since the bankruptcy was discharged, and the fine loomed, it was time for me to seriously think about getting a job. The kids were old enough to be in school and daycare - so I started casting around for a job. I found one as a bookkeeper for a while, then as a technical support person at a local internet support call centre. While I was there, I got a call from someone in "Staffing" at what was then called the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. My name had come up next on an eligibility list I'd forgotten about. Huh? Guess where I ended up working on and off for a couple of years? - at Revenue Canada!! HA! The irony! The timing!

All through that time period, I was whittling away at the court fine while paying day care charges, and my husband paid as much as he could on the fine after the regular bills were paid. Still, it wasn't coming down as fast as we wanted it to - and we had to ask for a couple of six-month extensions. We were nearing the end of the second six-month extension and screwing up enough courage to approach the court (hat in hand, so to speak) to ask for yet another, when something happened.

To let you understand how all of this came about, I have to back up just a few months. My mother-in-law called me one March morning when I was in between projects at the Tax Department (oh, that still makes me laugh...) and she asked me to once again explain to her the difference between the bankruptcy and the court fine. I told her again. She said finally, "So, you used to not be able to take gifts of money, and now you can?" I said yes, that was right. "Oh...I thought -" and she went on and on about how it all happened at the same time and it was so confusing. I let her talk.

Okay now - fast forward to the end of the second six-month extension; it was early August. Basically put, there were some serious health problems with my mother-in-law. She would forget she took medication, then overdose. That kind of thing. It landed her in the hospital with a heart attack. She wasn't herself - she was having to be told when to eat, what pills to take, etc. She recognized people, but she just wasn't ... right somehow. Anyway, to make a long story short, she passed away.

In the midst of grief, we got a phone call from her lawyer. About a week after she and I had talked in March, she had gone to her lawyer and updated her will. She'd made my husband the executor, and redistributed her assets to account for a death in the family (see my August 3, 2010 post).

After all the dust settled from her estate, which included her own father's annuity to be liquidated on her passing, there was just enough money willed to us and also from executor's fees - for us to pay off the rest of the court fine, which at that point was some five thousand dollars.

Just like that.

We viewed it as the gift she had wanted to give to us for such a long time and couldn't.

Her final gift. We were - and are - so grateful.