Chapter 3 - The transfer Wesley wanted
The folder on the restaurant table contained instructions to move:
$850,000
from my personal investment account into our joint brokerage account.
Why?
Wesley said:
“Liquidity.”
For what?
His company.
Kane Urban Development.
He founded it six years earlier.
High-end mixed-use projects.
Townhomes.
Boutique office conversions.
Good years at first.
Then two projects stalled.
Construction costs rose.
One lender tightened covenants.
A commercial tenant defaulted.
Wesley needed capital.
He had already put in:
$1.2 million
of his own money.
Then:
$610,000
from our joint brokerage.
I had agreed to the first $300,000.
Not the rest.
That was the problem.
The joint account originally contained:
My contributions.
His contributions.
Investment gains.
Once funds are truly jointly owned, tracing and marital-property rules become complex.
I understood that.
What I did not understand until later:
May you like
Wesley had begun treating every distribution I received from my separate holdings as if it automatically belonged in that joint account.
It did not.
