LJ Idol ** Non-fiction ** And then the creek will rise
It’s been one hell of a week.
Last year, my middle daughter, Taylor, moved in with me while she finishes school. She’s a Junior at the University of Texas in Austin. Despite getting grants and scholarships that pay for school, she wasn’t getting enough funding to continue paying for housing near campus. Since I live “in town” about 15 miles from campus she’s turned into a commuter student. Early last year we bought her an older MINI Cooper, with a manual transmission. It gets decent gas mileage and most importantly it’s the car that she wanted.
With classes not starting until after Martin Luthor King Jr. Day on Monday (Jan 20th) she had spent the last couple of weeks with her boyfriend in South Carolina who goes to Clemson. Before doing so, she drove to Houston to leave her car with her mom who needed it while her wife is out of town. Fine. While I’m not a fan of my ex-wife driving a car that has my name on it (since I co-signed for the thing) if she totalled it at least I had it well insured. Here’s where things go sideways.
My ex-wife is on disability as a disabled Iraq war veteran and needs transportation twice a week to the V.A. hospital roughly 30 miles from where she lives. When my daughter left to go to her mom’s I asked if maybe it wouldn’t be better for her mom to just get an Uber when she needs to go, that perhaps that would be cheaper/easier for us all. The answer I got was that, no loaning mom the car would be easier. This is the farthest thing from the truth.
On the 14th, I got a call from my daughter, “Mom took my car to her appointment today, and when she got home the engine revs up, but it won’t move.”
I asked a bunch of questions leading to the following facts:
Kid hadn’t driven her own car in a week and a half.
When she last drove it, the clutch was fine.
While in traffic, the car made a chattering metal on metal noise followed by a whining noise.
Mom shouldn’t have driven the car in bumper-to-bumper Houston traffic.
I hate trying to diagnose a car over the phone, but my immediate response was that my ex-wife had been riding the clutch in traffic and burned it out. I advised them to let it sit for a little while, let the clutch and engine cool off and see if after a little wait she’s able to get it to engage at all.
So on the 15th, I get the call that the car still wouldn’t move and they were having it towed to a mechanic. Fine. That afternoon we received the official diagnosis that the clutch was gone and that the repair would be $4400. This is where I reminded my kid that my advice had been for her mom to take Uber to get to her appointments, not the MINI. After I called the mechanic I talked him down to $3200. It’s likely going to need a flywheel replacement. That’s a $900+ part alone.
I called Taylor back and advised her of my recommended action from this point, including the fact that I did not authorize repairs, she needed to do that, and that I was willing to split the cost of the repair three ways with her and her mother. To be fair, the car has eighty thousand miles on it and was purchased used, so some expectation of clutch replacement needed to be in its near future, but I wasn’t expecting it now.
Her mom called the shop and authorized the repair, based on my discussion with them, then went out and rented Taylor a car for a week, since she had to be back in Austin on the 16th for an appointment at school.
After my daughter arrived home that night, we sat down and talked about this for a bit. When they went to the airport for her trip to South Carolina, her mom had driven the MINI. At that time she had trouble getting it into gear. For some reason she couldn’t find reverse and kept jamming it into 1st gear. When she got frustrated she tended to take that out on the shift lever. Not good. On top of this it has been recognized that the woman is easily distracted while driving, doesn’t focus on the task at hand and as a result is a terrible driver. She’s totalled multiple cars over the years I’ve known her, and because of her terrible driving habits I was concerned that she was the person primarily responsible for teaching our kids to drive. I made sure to get them both into an additional driving program after she had done her part, so they’re much better than she is.
Then as we were sitting there, talking of other things, my ex-wife calls our daughter and gave her a guilt trip over the car. She has no emergency fund, no emergency credit card, no allowance for anything to not go as planned in her life. As a result, Taylor needed to feel guilty because her mom had done mechanical damage to her car while it was in her care. The guilt trip went on to include the rental car that her mom had paid for, and apparently other things (that I wasn't privy to or interested in). My ex-wife's credit is in the dumper because of choices she’s made, so they end up paying too much for everything as a result and Taylor has already been well rehearsed on the phrase, “Mom, I love you, but I will not co-sign that loan for you.”
Not me. I have an emergency fund, but it’s been strained this month already. I pointed out that I didn’t kill the clutch, wasn’t a regular driver of the car, and was still willing to foot ⅓ of the bill. I assured her that one way or another we would get her car back from the mechanic with a working clutch.
So we’ll see how this mess turns out.