00:00Once upon a time, Ms. Stiff and Mr. Stiff were married and had three children together.
00:05But like many marriages, theirs eventually fell apart, and they divorced.
00:11About a year after the divorce, Ms. Stiff was living with her two younger daughters in a rental home,
00:16paying $1.900 a month in rent. She received $9.52 a month in child support from Mr. Stiff,
00:23but no spousal maintenance. Then, one day, Mr. Stiff approached her with an unexpected
00:29proposal. I'm planning to buy a new house, he said. Why don't you and the girls move in with me?
00:36It sounded strange at first, but also practical. The two made a private agreement, instead of paying
00:43child support, Mr. Stiff would stop the monthly payments, and in return, Ms. Stiff wouldn't
00:48have to pay rent. For both, it seemed like a win-win. She saved almost $1,000 a month in rent.
00:55He saved nearly the same amount by not paying child support. The new house was purchased in
01:02Ms. Stiff's name $4.468.000, with a monthly mortgage payment of $2.400. At first, the arrangement worked
01:11fine. But as often happens when exes try to live together again, things didn't stay peaceful for
01:17long. Tensions grew, and before a year had passed, the relationship broke down once more.
01:25Then came the dispute that brought them before Judge Judy. Ms. Stiff asterisk asterisk claimed that
01:31when the house was being purchased, Mr. Stiff needed to take a 401k loan for the down payment,
01:37but before he could do that, he had to pay off an older 401k loan. According to her,
01:43I paid off his old loan, about $4.800, with my own money so that he could get the new loan and buy
01:50the house. It was a loan to him, and I want my money back. But Mr. Stiff had a completely different
01:57story. He said. It wasn't a loan. She wanted to help. She was living in the house, even her boyfriend
02:06was staying there for a while, and she insisted on contributing. I told her I didn't need the money,
02:12but she wanted to pitch in because she knew it would benefit both of us.
02:16As Judge Judy listened to both sides, she laid out the facts clearly.
02:21You both benefited from this arrangement. She saved money on rent, and you saved on child support.
02:28It was a win-win, as long as you could get along. But when that stopped, so did the deal.
02:34The heart of the case now came down to one question.
02:37Was the $5,000 a loan, or a voluntary contribution, asterisk asterisk?
02:44If it was a loan, Mr. Stiff owed the money back. If not, Ms. Stiff's claim would be dismissed.
02:51In the end, the story revealed a familiar truth, when love, money, and old emotions mix,
02:57the line between fairness and misunderstanding can get very blurry.
03:00In the end, the story of the story is a mystery.
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