Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

He's not honest about spending, neither is she. No WONDER they're over their heads in debt.

And I suspect they enable each other on the spending.

Run FAR away, bud. Your partner's spending habits, past and present shape NOW and the future. That she's gone broke multiple times is a sign of serious pathology (unless it's related to medical expenses).

And "the love of his love" might just be "bleeding him dry." (and I smelled sexism in the original Salon story, now with this new--and CRITICAL piece of info--I smell craziness, serious craziness).

Would someone be so kind as ot instruct Andrew Leonard in the correct use of "reference" as a verb?

"The first bankruptcy in 1998, five years before Patty and I got together. It occurred because Patty's former husband, a producer of TV commercials in Los Angeles, didn't file income tax returns for five years. Patty, who was a stay-at-home mom and wasn't earning money, was blindsided. She had been signing returns, but he hadn't actually been filing them. Because her husband's business income was reported on their personal tax returns, she had to join him in the bankruptcy filing."

You've _got_ to be frickin' kidding me. One of the first rules of financial survival is "Don't mess with the IRS." What woman with any sense doesn't make sure her tax returns are filed? Just because she's a SAHM and isn't working does not let her off the hook if she and husband are filing jointly and her name is on the returns. And once again, she's letting the man handle all the bothersome financial details while she lives in spendthrift denial. As I said before, Mrs. Andrews is an entitlement princess who wants to be taken care of and approaches SAHM-hood as an escape from reality, _not_ as the serious job it is. She's the kind of SAHM who gives the sensible, hardworking, financially-aware ones a bad name.

"deering" sneers at a woman whose husband didn't mail the tax returns, but really... what do you expect, other than 20/20 hindsight?

Omniscience? Pathological mistrust ahead of reason? Paranoia?

How do you make certain the 1040 you sign is mailed, unless you mail it yourself? And if you do, how does your spouse know it was mailed? Must every couple in the country sign, seal, stamp, and mail their returns together, never leaving the envelope out of mutual sight for a SECOND? Is there a law to that effect? Would this be fool-proof despite tricks such as slight of hand?

Or might one trust your partner to do what he says he's doing? Because until you know different, after all... he's your partner? Can the country and the American family operate without trust?

I don't think so.

Even if the wife's first bankruptcy was involuntary (I can accept a spouse being kept in the dark by the other) it doesn't change much. She knew the problems caused by a bankruptcy firsthand. A prudent person would make every effort to avoid spending beyond her means and try to clean up her credit. That didn't happen and this time there is no sneaky spouse to blame.

Mr. Leonard used the word "references" in an acceptable manner, per the exerpted section of the dictionary definition I have included below. Have a nice day.

tr.v. ref·er·enced, ref·er·enc·ing, ref·er·ences

To supply references to: "Our memories are addressed and referenced . . . by significant fragments of their own content" (Frederick Turner).

To mention in a reference; refer to: He referenced her book in his speech. See Usage Note at allude.

ref'er·enc·er n., ref'er·en'tial (-ə-rěn'shəl) adj., ref'er·en'tial·ly adv.

Maybe his wife's bankruptcies were not a direct contributing factor in Edmund Andrews' mortgage problems, but a lot of people might have suspected otherwise if he'd mentioned them in his book. My guess is he deliberately left them out to make the book more believable.

However, I think he's screwed now that the cat's out of the bag. Regardless of whether or not the bankruptcies were a factor, lots of people are going to cite their omission as proof that the book is bogus. I don't think this will help sales of his book.

What was he thinking? AFAIK, all bankruptcies involve the courts, and it's damned near impossible to hide all records that they happened. He had to know that someone would go digging and find this, so why did he take the risk? Or is taking that kind of risk for possible profit what got him in trouble in the first place?

Mr. Andrews article implies that part of him knew that what he was doing was logically impossible, but he kept getting offered escape hatches. The stress on his relationship was partly that he kept agonizing over the fact that what was happening shouldn't be happening. If he was writing fiction, his editor would have objected to the crazed sub-prime purveyors overlooking his new wife's past and present bankruptcies. So he probably thought, no one will believe me if I add this extra layer of absurdity to my circumstances in a non-fiction piece. It's too bad, because in terms of illustrating just how insane the sub-prime lenders and bond packagers were, shrugging off a new spouse's multiple bankruptcies is a pretty effective image.

Sorry, there are just some things you don't take a spouse's word for no matter how solid your marital partnership is--and whether taxes have been filed is one of them. That's way too important--and too potentially disastrous--to just let slide. As Mrs. Andrews found out to her cost...

So should a husband always wear a condom just in case his wife is lying when she says she's on the Pill?

You must live a very strange and paranoid life...

And your post smacks of some sort of deeply ingrained bitterness about your own marital status (or lack thereof), what with all the stuff about Princesses.

In my home, I do the taxes and mail them. My husband signs on the dotted line. That's because WE TRUST ONE ANOTHER. He doesn't have to know that I actually went to the post office. In fact, as someone else stated, how on EARTH do you imagine people go, hand-in-hand, to the post office and mail their returns? How does one innocent spouse know that the other has done the taxes correctly, or withheld some critical stuff (hidden freelance income, or deducted the cost of the new kitchen as a "business expense")?

That is making assumptions about how people do taxes (together for every second, checking and rechecking each other's figures -- and all in a maximum state of complete distrust and paranoia) that is extremely unrealistic.

My problem with the Andrew's family is several-fold. First off, Mrs. Andrews didn't file bankruptcy "once" -- she did it TWICE, and the second time was within weeks of the minimum time between filings. ONCE your husband could fool you, or mess things up -- the SECOND TIME, you'd think you'd go to H&R Block, knowing he was either duplicitous or a moron.

And in his NYTimes article (I haven't read the book yet, since it just came out), Mr. Andrews describes going to the mortgage broker, several times, to get and then modify his loan. But he never says "I went alone, because my wife had 2 bankruptcy filings and poor credit". In other words, he got a loan as a single signer, because he was HIDING her poor credit and multiple bankruptcies. He wasn't "blindsided" by her background, he was in complicity with her.

When Andrews describes some really painful, embarrassing domestic arguments, he paints a very unkind picture of his 2nd wife, and her spending habits and refusal to accept their bad situation. But if we'd known about her bankruptcies, and her willingness to stay for many years with her first husband (who earned an average of $100K a year or more, but was not declaring his income to the IRS), we'd know this wasn't just airheaded denial or a "spoiled Princess". We'd see clearly that she had been down Bankruptcy Lane twice, and she knew the twists and turns; she knew that you live the high life, run up huge bills (knowing you will never pay them) and then...thanks to the bankruptcy system, you get your slate WIPED CLEAN...you get to keep all the "loot" and then you start over...and of course, you still have your high income jobs (the very jobs you claimed you could not pay your debts with, not even partially).

She wasn't being stupid, she wasn't in denial, and she wasn't being a Princess. She was doing what more than a few people who use and abuse the bankruptcy system are: she was being a deadbeat. And she was dragging Mr. Andrews down with her.

I don't have a shred of hope for their marriage. And that has nothing to do with mortgage crisis, or the eventual loss of their house (that is, the house they are living in RENT FREE for the last 9 months, while he continues to collect a six figure salary). It has everything to do with the lies their marriage was based on, and the fact that he was willing to talk nastily about her in a tell-all book.

The single greatest predicator of divorce is NAME-CALLING, being willing to trash talk your spouse. I can't see what Andrews really hoped to accomplish with this book, unless he was already unhappy in the marriage and figured this was a sure way to send her packing. It's just plain embarrassing, and Megan McArdle's excellent investigative reporting clearly shows that Andrew's woes have only a little to do with the mortgage crisis, and everything to do with a sad second marriage on the skids.