Recommendations for post-divorce mortgage communication?
October 6, 2015 1:01 PM   Subscribe

I need a legally-enforceable, semi "public" method for my abusive ex to communicate to me evidence of his compliance with his legal responsibilities. We are in dispute over previously shared property but I have insisted on no contact and do not wish to enable my ex to contact me over any issue but the property. I don't want him to have my email address or that of an alias/other account in case he uses that address to send abuse, threats, or any other kind of unnecessary and unwanted correspondence.

Until now all communication has been through our attorneys, but the latest developments in the case require him to send me regular documentation confirming his compliance with an agreement, and my lawyers think it would be too cumbersome/expensive to continue to go through them for each of these. I understand there are services like Talking Parents and Our Family Wizard but they are designed for child custody purposes and I do not have children with my ex. Please suggest some way of allowing him to electronically send me documents in a way that discourages him from any other direct contact (and that would be accessible by the courts if that should be necessary).


thanks!
posted by LetticeLeaf to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)
 
Best answer: Can you share a dropbox or google drive folder where he puts the PDFs into the folder, and then you either check the folder or get a notification that the folder was updated? (I'm imagining that this is monthly evidence that he paid the mortgage payment or something and the receipt could be easily printed to PDF.)
I assume with both dropbox and google drive that there is a way to see the records of when files were uploaded and by whom, if such records were needed.
posted by k8t at 1:06 PM on October 6, 2015


Got a priest you could ask to accept for you?
posted by taff at 1:06 PM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Easiest/cheapest would be a dummy email account that you can have a trusted friend screen for abusive messages.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:06 PM on October 6, 2015 [8 favorites]


Could you set up an email account that forwards to your personal email, and set up a filter on the pass-through email to delete everything except things that have $keyword in the subject line? Then make it clear to the ex that you will not receive any email at that email address that does not contain $keyword in the subject line.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 1:07 PM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I agree with those who suggest involving a third party. It's not a technical problem — there are lots of ways to allow him to drop documents for your perusal, but no way to keep him from dumping abuse into these documents. If he knows that you will not be reading the documents at all, he will have little incentive to do anything except provide what's required.
posted by ubiquity at 1:10 PM on October 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


prize bull octorok has it. You will need a human to be screening these messages to make sure they're not abusive; there's no software solution to that problem.
posted by Aizkolari at 1:10 PM on October 6, 2015


Response by poster: thanks for the quick advice! Yeah, I know the most straightforward thing is to involve a third party, I just don't want ANYONE to have to see his bullshit - my family & friends have suffered enough from his abuse and attempted manipulations - so I was hoping that there might be a "semi public" technological solution that would put him on notice that anything he sends there may be viewed by my lawyers/the courts, while not leaving him any wriggle room like "I sent it to your other address" "you must have deleted it" etc. - I want a clear and simple audit trail that will not be easy for him to obfuscate if we come to another dispute.

The safest thing would be to continue to have him go through my lawyers who at least are paid to deal with bullshit and are professionally detached from it all, but they are mindful of my expenses and as, yes, it will be proof of regular payments, they have suggested we find a cheaper alternative for this routine correspondence.
posted by LetticeLeaf at 1:18 PM on October 6, 2015


I would use Dropbox and possibly pay a US-based virtual assistant to monitor it or accept emails if necessary. I specify US-based because that person can always easily swear out an affidavit.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:21 PM on October 6, 2015 [5 favorites]


Would it be sufficient to receive notice from the recipient of the funds if he doesn't pay?
posted by teremala at 1:22 PM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I would hire a friend-of-a-friend for some nominal fee and then set up an email like acmedocumentretention@gmail.com to make it seem all professional. Tell him you have arranged for a "document retention" company to handle this communication.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:33 PM on October 6, 2015 [9 favorites]


If it's proof of payments you need - I would try to work with the bank, or whoever the payments are going to to get access to regular statements, or at least notification when the payments are delinquent.

Is there an online account with the bank that you can get access to?
posted by sparklemotion at 1:36 PM on October 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


If he gets an electronic receipt or statement for this payment (or could), then could that company set the receipt to be sent to an Gmail address that forwards to both of you but keeps all the messages in its own inbox? I agree that Dropbox sounds good but will still expose you to anything that could possibly be sent to you over email. That way, he'd never be communicating anything with you at all, you'd both separately receive the message.
posted by Sequence at 1:54 PM on October 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Another option would be to set up a "blog" and give him an email address he can use to post to it. Anything sent to the email address is immediately posted to the blog, and he can't take it down. One of your lawyers could change the password after you set it up if he's worried about you deleting evidence of his compliance. (This may be trickier for arbitrary documents beyond text and images--here's an example of a Wordpress plugin that might work.)

But this does assume that knowing what he says will be public record is enough to stop him from sending abuse.
posted by cogitron at 2:11 PM on October 6, 2015


Best answer: And then, if I did what Sequence suggests, I would set up a filter so that that email notification could be sent directly to a folder instead of showing up in my inbox. Then I could check that folder as needed WITHOUT the time bomb of seeing it in my inbox.
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:12 PM on October 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I think that having a neutral party monitor the correspondence would be better than a purely technical solution that might expose you to seeing the content of what you sent. I understand he has and probably will send nasty messages but if the person reading them is unrelated to the problem, it should be relatively easy for them to block it out emotionally. So, it would be not a burden on them (since it is not personal to them) to have to take a quick look at what was sent and determine if it appropriate of not.
posted by metahawk at 2:20 PM on October 6, 2015


Response by poster: I went with the new email address, which forwards to a folder in my own account, with a filter that "hides" it from me. I set the new address to forward a copy to my lawyer, and my lawyer has amended the agreement to put my ex on notice that they will also receive a copy of all correspondence.

Hopefully that will be enough to prevent him posting anything extraneous or offensive. I'll have a friend or neutral party check the new account periodically to make sure he's complying, without the danger of me seeing anything that might trigger an unpleasant reaction (I've been treated for PTSD related to that relationship.)

thanks to all for such good suggestions. Yes, i was trying to solve an interpersonal problem with technology and yes, the best way to deal with this is to involve one or more other humans! I hope that this solution minimizes time, cost and PITAness for all involved.

cheers
posted by LetticeLeaf at 2:29 PM on October 6, 2015 [6 favorites]


Best answer: Since you mentioned wanting an audit trail, could you use your accountant (or an accountant) to track this information for you? Perhaps for a modest monthly fee (surely more modest than attorney's fees). A bookkeeping service, an off-site office management type service, an extremely parttime assistant...
posted by vignettist at 2:39 PM on October 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Does your lawyer's office have a paralegal or legal secretary who can bill at a lower rate? Or advertise on craigslist or even MeFiJobs.
posted by theora55 at 3:42 PM on October 6, 2015


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