Author's note: Long before I started writing and had a literotica account, the LW genre intrigued me. I'm very much a fuck around and find out kind of person, so BTB stories are a fun escape. Most stories here are American, but I'm not. So please accept this for what it is without the legal advice. I'm pretty sure most lawyers could find a million faults with my logic, but who would trust a lawyer? It's just a bit of fun.
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I don't know when my wife decided it was okay to cheat. Since the day we started dating, I had made it clear that where cheating was concerned, there would be no second chances or forgiveness. Cheating was an act of war, and as far as I was concerned, winning wasn't enough; I would not be satisfied until the world burned down in revenge. I had watched my parents cheat on each other as if it was a sport, and the only person who lost the game was me. I was just a reminder of their failed marriage, and neither of them wanted me. Thankfully or not, I was old enough to understand, and that unlocked an eternal hatred of cheaters. It also unlocked a hatred of marriage, but I digress.
I was already wealthy when I met Kathryn--not Kate, Katie, or even Catherine--Kathryn, with a K. My upbringing was upper middle class, but money never interested me. I could never determine the difference between a £1000 burger and a £10 one. My interests were simple growing up: a pub on Friday, maybe meeting a nice girl for the weekend and football with the lads on Saturday. These simple interests led me to play the lottery. Never to win, but to have a ticket and join the 'what if' conversations that happened every Friday night. It was all fun and games until I won. I was only 22.
£80 million. I wasn't rich, I was wealthy. I knew enough not to share the news. I knew how money could make or break relationships and didn't want anything to do with that. Almost immediately, I set up a complicated multinational Trust. Being mixed with an English dad and a mum from Botswana, I initially picked two law firms from both countries, but in a moment of inspiration, I expanded the trustees to include law firms from tax-free and secretive nations, including the Cayman Islands, Lichtenstein and Malta. Under the Trust, we established a series of companies that the Trust owns. The idea at the time was that I would have no assets; I would be a beneficiary of the Trust to that extent. I could enjoy its property assets and would paid a generous allowance to ensure they were maintained under the employment of the holding company. The trust would pay for any faults I found. There were two clauses that are now important: one, I could not get married without a pre-nuptial agreement; two, any legal children of the beneficiary would be entitled to an equal share of the trust with their siblings up to 25% upon their 25
th
birthday. Without a prenup, I would forfeit my access to the Trust's assets, and all my wealth would go to charity.
Despite my newfound wealth, my life didn't change. The allowance from the Trust more than paid for my living. Since I didn't go public with my win and my lifestyle didn't change, no one realised my fortune. I met Kathryn while volunteering at a charity that brought sporting opportunities to underprivileged children. She was beautiful; her 5'8" height complimented my 6'1". She worked with the younger children in football, while I worked with the at-risk boys in rugby, giving them an avenue to work out their anger. She was a recent graduate struggling to find a job and volunteering to boost her CV.
We had been flirting casually for a few weeks. One afternoon, we both had particularly tough sessions with our kids, so I invited her to the local pub for a drink to decompress. I guess it was inevitable; the weeks of flirting, the stress of the children and alcohol created a perfect storm. It didn't take much, but we couldn't keep our hands off each other. We spent the night in my modest flat, having sex. I don't remember that night well, but it was utterly unrestrained and limitless in possibilities and very little in the way of precautions.
We decided it was a meaningless night fuelled by alcohol and agreed to move on. That all changed when she came to me 8 weeks later and told me she was pregnant. I can't say I wanted to be a father at that point, but something clicked, and I was over the moon. I promised to support her through everything. Over her pregnancy, we got close, and our one-night stand turned into a relationship. I moved her in with me when she was 6 months pregnant, and by the time our boy, Craig, was 6 months old, I was head over heels in love and proposed. She said yes, and all was fine until my lawyers reminded me about the prenup clause in the Trust.
I explained the Trust and its clauses in detail, and Kathryn didn't care. She had fallen in love with me without knowing I had access to wealth and was happy enough with our position. Our little girl Miranda followed 3 years later, and we had our perfect family. By this point, the Trust had bought a house for us to live in.
We were happy. I had spoken to the Trust lawyers, and they increased my allowance to ensure our kids went to an elite private school. Kathryn started working me to take more money from the Trust; we needed to help her parents, who weren't getting any younger, so the Trust bought them a house. Then, her sister Nancy's children deserved the same education our kids did since they wouldn't get the same privilege later in life. I didn't mind; all of her family had been great with me, and after how shit mine was. It felt natural to help them. The problem was Kathryn also wanted to keep up with all the other parents at school.
We argued about it. I acknowledged that we could afford it, but it wasn't who we were. If I had to choose between wealth and giving our kids a down-to-earth upbringing, I would choose the down-to-earth upbringing daily. Kathryn hated that idea; she said that since we had the money, it was our duty as parents to ensure our children got every advantage we could provide. I wasn't totally against her thinking, but when she started buying the kids places in events, I got angry, and our fights turned nasty. Kathryn resented that I didn't embrace the wealth and restrictions imposed by the Trust.
Our sex life basically turned into hate fucking. We'd argue, I'd threaten to walk away, and she would suddenly turn submissive, and we'd fuck away our disagreements. That changed when Miranda turned 12. We'd discussed divorce by then. I was all for it. Kathryn fought me, saying it would hurt the kids. She thought it would be better to stay together and give the kids a nuclear family. I didn't naturally agree; having grown up in a house where my parents hated each other, I thought it was better to divorce on decent terms and lovingly co-parent our children. In my experience, it was better than parents who always fought, barely disguising their hatred for each other. She won me over by promising me counselling, saying my parents had never tried it.
I should have seen the signs. My parents made a sport out of affairs. I had lost her before the first counselling session. When she first started cheating, I had fallen for her lies. Convinced that my warnings about how I would react would keep her in line. I ignored the extra drink with the 'girls' to get a break, the yoga session that ran late, and she had to drive friends home. Good excuses as isolated incidents, but not in the long term. After we started counselling, we'd go to a café together and discuss the session and what we needed to work on as a pair and individually.
All too soon, she opted out of our time, claiming that she needed to decompress on her own. In the beginning, I accepted it, but then 30 minutes became an hour, and then an hour became two. And it became so obvious to me--not just what she was doing but how long it had been happening.
It took me a week to find a PI firm I liked. Being based in England, I knew the most my PI could get me was pictures of what she was doing in public when she wasn't with me, but I wanted a start. It took less than a week. She wasn't just cheating; she was working to steal my wealth; her affair partner, Keith, was the account manager for the Trust's accountants, and my PI found out they were siphoning money. Worse than that, everyone knew her parents, her sister, our niece and nephew, and our kids.
My heart was broken, but I kept a straight face. I had learned to hide pain when my parents started playing their games. I kept the PI on for a month. He recorded meetings and took pictures of my entire family together with the bastard. In secret, I spoke to the Trust's lawyers, who told me that I needed to get some legally admissible evidence of the affair. An associate of one of the Lichtenstein lawyers came up with the plan to screw everyone over.
Under British law, prenups aren't legally enforceable. Judges are allowed to give them weight, but they're not enforceable. First, the five law firms that acted as trustees had a vote, and then my British lawyer's rights as a trustee were removed. Now, the trust was exclusively controlled outside of Britain. Then, all of the assets' ownership was moved outside of Britain. Now, my British lawyers had no vote in the Trust, but they could represent me in the divorce without a conflict of interest. Now, for the easiest detail: our home security contract was on the verge of renewal, as the house's owners, the Trust, requested that security cameras be placed in every room except the bathrooms and children's bedrooms.
