Curious

I mentioned in a previous post about donating my late husband's van to the Purple Heart Cars that I had a problem at the bank. I've written about it before, but I'll give you the short version as an introduction to the rest of my post.

A couple of weeks after he died, I went to the bank to close his account. This is a bank where we had a joint account and we each had personal accounts. We also got our mortgage through this bank three years earlier. We had had the joint account since shortly after the bank opened, so between the mortgage and our accounts, we were well established.

When I went in, I was told that I wasn't listed on his account as either an account holder or beneficiary so I couldn't close the account. I explained that I was his widow and could provide a certified copy of his death certificate and our marriage license. As for personal identification, I could provide just about anything they wanted, including being identified by various officers of the bank. Apparently, this wasn't enough. Florida law requires that only beneficiaries or account holders can do anything with bank accounts.

I explained that neither of us were advised of this law when our accounts were opened. His personal account was opened last and I was with him with it was opened and I know this was never mentioned. I would have made sure that he was listed as a beneficiary on my account at the same time. And he would have listed me as beneficiary on his. The end result was that I couldn't have access to the money in the account, and I couldn't close the account. There wasn't much money involved, only about one hundred dollars at the time, but that's not the real point. The point was we weren't told of this law and so didn't comply with it. I admittedly threw something of a hissy fit and walked out. I eventually closed my accounts and went to another bank. I have listed my brother as beneficiary on my accounts with the new bank.

Anyway. Shortly after that, the news began to report that the bank was having problems. Turned out they had loaned money to people on real estate speculation and the builder involved couldn't complete the buildings. This involved millions of dollars. The builder went bankrupt, the bank was sued by I don't remember how many people, the stock plummeted, and things just went downhill from there. The question was, would the bank survive, be closed down, or sold off? It was eventually sold. The stockholders lost lots of money, the bank people and the builder involved in the loan process were under investigation and there was lots of negative news for months.

This got me to thinking. Over the years, whenever someone has "done me wrong" bad things have happened. For a while, I thought it only involved jobs. When I went on job interviews and not hired, companies went under (another bank and real estate company), politicians lost by a landslide (I had interviewed for a job as a legislative assistant), and other companies suffered a reversal of fortune. One very big company (yes, if I told you who, you would know it) has not yet really recovered from the problems they had after I interviewed for a job and was told I was overqualified. Several people tried to stab me in the back at work - some succeeded, others didn't. Only one of them is still working with the agency today. Some have been fired, some retired under a cloud, and some have died. Some just retired. I was actually hired as an activities director at a retirement center. On my first day of work, I was advised that the man who hired me didn't have the authority to do so and I didn't have a job. They offered to pay me for a day's work, which I never got. Eventually the company went under and the retirement community was sold.

I swear, I did nothing to cause these problems for the people who "did me wrong" or didn't hire me, or hired me when they shouldn't have. I didn't curse them or cast the "evil eye" on them. This is because of one thing: treat people right or the karma will come back to bite you big time!