I’ll never forget the experience of going to bankruptcy court to process my bankruptcy. It was located in Downtown L.A.
First, you waited in a big room, packed with people, where you sat for hours. This was pre-pandemic Los Angeles, and so nobody was masked.
It was like being at the DMV. There were people from every walk of life: people who looked rich, people who looked poor, and people who looked middle-class. All races and ethnicities.
But one thing linked us all. All of us had made terrible financial decisions that had landed us there.
After a couple of hours of waiting, my name was finally called. I was directed to a windowless office where a civil servant was waiting for me.
He asked me a bunch of questions. He kept telling me to speak up because I was speaking in such a low voice. He was recording the whole thing.
I felt too mortified to admit what I’d done so I kept whispering as if that would make this whole thing go away. I was so angry at myself. I’d taken out a loan for my husband to invest. He invested the money in a Ponzi scheme.
When the scheme fell through, I was the one left owing money.
In short, my husband bankrupted me.
As you can imagine, this felt terrible.
Seven years into our marriage, I let my husband take out a loan in my name. You might say this was a stupid thing to do. At the time, I…
