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First of, let me sincerely congratulate you on wanting to do your civic duty and holding the view that citizens do have duties and responsibilities as well as rights.
Six kids (that you know of) and he's not even forty yet? Chad is definitely doing his bit for the TFR!
Okay, that's the only funny part of this whole mess. The kids are definitely never going to have Dad in their lives, much less ever get to know their half-siblings. Misery all round there.
"They are in “love”."
I'm glad to see you share my cynicism around "being in love". Seeing the likes of many such cases and people going "but I love him!!!" (more rarely, "her"), this is the stupidest damn reason to blow up your life (and the lives of any kids), and I'd love to destroy with fire the entire romantic fantasy industry that has convinced people that Romantic/Erotic Love is the greatest and most important thing ever.
"Shortly after moving in together, he gives her access/control of both his personal bank account and the joint checking account he sets up."
And this is why commingling of finances is such a pain in the neck for divorce cases, because people when they're coupled up think of it as "our money" and then when they split up, it suddenly and bitterly becomes "my money". Though for working class/lower middle class people of older generations, this kind of arrangement isn't unusual; man brings home wages, hands them over to wife who runs the household budget, she reserves the money for the standard recurring bills and running the house and hands him back the remainder as an allowance to spend as he likes. This works when it's a married couple and neither are selfish or dumb (e.g. he would spend the rent money on booze or, today, party fun drugs; she squanders the housekeeping on treating herself).
But they weren't married, and that's the big problem here, and frankly Becky was an idiot. She was paying for his divorce? That says (a) you are the other woman in an affair, and they rarely end up married to the guy and (b) he was in no damn hurry to sort out his affairs. Why should he be? Ex-wife can waste her time chasing him through the courts, new squeeze is handling everything for him, he can go out and get into bar fights to his heart's content.
Absolutely right the defence lawyer should have gone after "what was this 22k you took out of his account?" Either they were extremely incompetent or they knew it would make their client look even worse if they revealed the details of what precisely these payments were for, maybe it was Becky getting money back that Chad had promised "just lend me X grand to cover this bill, baby, you know I'm good for it when my pay is deposited, yeah go ahead and take it out, you don't need me to sign anything". Can't say the guy was cheated or defrauded when it turns out he was a total idiot who gave blanket permission for her to do exactly this.
And then after all that, when she has paid his legal fees for the divorce and set up house with him and had two kids by him, all under the presumption that "once he's free we'll get married", he dumps her. For being controlling, which means "asking him to grow the fuck up and take accountability and responsibility for his life". I am not surprised she went after him in court, it's just a pity the light had not dawned on her before the first baby.
I think you are not taking into account that being a military spouse of 32 years, she might be way more familiar with the Chads of this world and how that shakes out when they join the armed forces than you 😁 If the guy is a sergeant and he gets deployed, then on active service either he can get it together and be responsible, which doesn't let him off the hook for how he handled civilian life, or worse he is this slapdash and pushes responsibility off onto others, and that kind of carelessness gets people killed.
I think your conclusion is broadly correct: $35k that Becky paid into their joint finances less the $22k she transferred over leaves around $11k Chad owes her back. That lines up with the $12k you would have gone for.
I think the idea of punitive damages was some faint hope that this might make Chad grow up, but I imagine that he's already moved on to Partner Number Four and may be repeating the same old cycle all over again. Paying child support for three sets of kids by three different women is going to leave him even more broke, but since he clearly doesn't care about whether or not the new broad he's with gets knocked up, and there is always a new broad willing to run his life for him and pay his way, I have no reason to think that Baby Number Seven isn't on the way.
Unfortunately I would not be willing to bet against you on this. What I expect a normal person to see as a wake up call, probably went over his head. I imagine woman #4 will help pay for his legal fees against woman #3 (this one), until at which point he is living the barracks again because all of his money is going to a recursive loop of legal expenses and child support.
I am amused to read this article on Tumblr today. From 1885, Chad and Becky have long antecedents!
"She knew I was married" "No, I did not!"
Gave her money for the wedding dress, showed her a furnished house he said was where they would live after the wedding, then the morning of the wedding called it off by telegram.
Jury awarded damages of £75 which, considering he claimed his income was £2 per week, was a hefty fine. I think there may have been some proto-Karens on the jury, but then again the jury at that time was probably all men? 😁
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Agree that becky was very stupid and chad was reprehensible. But what bias would you expect a woman who got the exact deal becky thought she was offered to have?
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