Woman who won $1.3 million jackpot forced to give it all to her ex-husband — due to a costly mistake
Winning a lottery is all about luck, but sometimes not being cautious about the rules could rob a person of their new-found fortune. A woman who won the $1.3 million jackpot, unfortunately lost all winnings after keeping the lottery win a secret from her husband. Turns out that she tried to keep it a secret as she was getting a divorce from him and didn't want him to get his hands on the money. Denise Rossi found out the hard way that it was not right to hide any assets during divorce proceedings. Rossi who filed for divorce just 11 days after her big win attempted to hide it.
She filed for divorce from her husband Thomas Rossi back in 1996 after 25 years of marriage. When the case reached the court, Ms Rossi was found guilty of violating laws on disclosure of assets and funds by acting out of fraud and malice.
She later argued in her court documents that she was just protecting the money from him. Mr. Rossi found out about the jackpot two years after their divorce when he got a letter from a company that pays cash for lottery winnings. The letter was addressed to his ex-wife and said that the company had helped hundreds of lottery winners like her around the country receive a lump-sum payment. "I think he scratched his head for a while, saying: 'What? This can't be," said Mr. Rossi's attorney, Mark Lerner. “I couldn’t understand it," Thomas told People. "She wanted me to move out of the house very fast. It wasn’t like her to act this way.” “I was very happy to be free of this person that was like a parasite," the woman said in an interview, according to The Sun.
“If it wasn’t for the lotto, Denise and I would probably still be together," Thomas said. However, Denise said that she had been planning to leave him for years. It was later discovered that Denise had sent her cheque to her mother's address to keep it a secret from her ex. She claimed that the timing of the win and the divorce was close because she wanted to end the relationship as soon as possible. He then got an injunction a few days later and took his former wife to court, which ruled that his ex-wife must pay him 20 annual installments of $66,800 although Ms Rossi's attorney called the ruling 'very punitive."
Later Connolly Oyler, Denise's attorney, said that if she’d have disclosed her win to him he might have tried to save her from losing the fortune, by claiming that it was her separate property. However, the judge wasn't too happy about her actions, which is why all the money went to the ex-husband. “I could have argued successfully that it was her separate property,” he said. “Or we could have argued, and we would have reached some adjustment. But the judge got mad and gave it all to him," he added. While her lawyer admitted that the decision was not ideal, he also understood why the judge was angry.
