"Bankruptcy from a Bad Marriage"

I filed for bankruptcy back in the early 1990s.

My bankruptcy story begins with a bad marriage. I found out that my husband was lying to me about almost everything and he had been lying for the entire time we were married.

When everything came out into the open I filed for divorce. He was unemployed at the time and had not left the home we were living in with our young child. I called us the "schizophrenic happy family" because we were trying to keep things as normal as possible for our child.

One Sunday evening we got a call telling us that my father had been killed in a car accident. I left with my child to go be with my mom and the rest of the family for the funeral and about a week afterward. When we returned my husband had moved out.

When I went to work the next day, I got a memo from payroll that the IRS had taken my entire paycheck. Apparently, there were back taxes owed to the IRS which I had no idea about (one example of the lies I mentioned earlier).

I contacted the IRS and was able to get my paycheck, but they wanted payments on the back taxes. I made payments for about three years, but with interest and penalties, I hadn't really made a dent in what was owed.

In the meantime, my divorce was finalized and I fell in love with a wonderful man who wanted to marry me. I didn't think I could marry him with this huge debt. He told me we could get married and he would help me pay it, but I didn't want to saddle him with it.

I was very conflicted about filing bankruptcy, but I didn't see a way to ever get out from under the huge tax debt. My ex-husband was not making any payments on it. So I talked to a bankruptcy attorney. Because the taxes owed were so old, I was able to get out from under that debt.

After my bankruptcy, I got married, we bought a house and we have been happy for over sixteen years now.

Contributed by Alice from Texas