Victoria sat in the kitchen and clutched the letter she had received this morning from her husband. Everything had changed between them. They had once met in a climbing class together, Mark had been the coach and had been very supportive of her from her first steps up. He was a good teacher, but a guy who was awkward and inept. He had never been in a relationship before Victoria; he didn’t know how to woo girls. But did it matter if Victoria fell in love with a professional and thought how wonderful it would be to go with such a sporty guy to the mountains somewhere or go out to the lake with a tent? At first she thought it was a passing relationship, but an accident happened that brought them many times closer – Victoria had fallen off a low cliff and hurt her spine. Many doctors said that she would be paralyzed from the waist down and no treatment would help, but the girl herself refused to believe that she could not recover.
Mark was by her side the whole time, and after such a terrible trauma, he felt guilty and offered to marry Victoria. So they became legally husband and wife. He paid for expensive physiotherapist services, medicines, massages, which made him take as many working hours as possible. The work built a high wall between them, and meanwhile Victoria found new friends in the support group and slowly fell in love with her physical therapist. She thought he was just a good man who helped her start walking, but Philip wooed her handsomely – he gave her flowers, brought her home lunches, took her for walks in the park, and confessed his love. So Victoria succumbed to his charms.
She told Mark everything after Philip asked her to divorce and move in with him. Now he would take care of her. Mark, of course, didn’t like it very much. He had worked day and night for his wife, and she was with him like this?
“We’ll see how you sing when we file the divorce papers,” he said cryptically, with a threat in his voice.
This morning, Victoria received a summons to a new address – Mark wants to reimburse all the money spent on her medical treatment. He also wants to divide her property.
Philip argues that the court won’t let him, because Mark was paying on his own volition, but Victoria was accepting help as well…
Who do you think will win the trial and who will suffer material losses?
