So, two days ago, we finally recieved all of our w2s to file our taxes. That night we put everything into Taxslayer and sent it off. The next morning, Lance checks his e-mail only to find our tax return was rejected. He scrolled down to find out the reasons for the rejection. The e-mail stated, your refund was rejected because one of your dependants was claimed on someone elses tax return. We immediately looked at each other with angry eyes and knew exactly what happened. Hayli had been claimed on her dad's tax return. Not only did he claim her without notifying me, but he also claimed her illegally. The law states that he has to recieve written consent from me in order to claim her on his taxes. I was never consulted on this situation and I would have never allowed it either. However, thanks to him claiming her on his taxes, we could no longer file ours online. We had to file ours on paper and mail them. We were so angry because that meant that it was going to take longer to recieve our refund. We decided to take a trip up to the Federal building in Richmond to the IRS to see what we could do about him claiming her illegally. I went in and spoke to the man behind the desk and he said the only thing we could do was file our return, claiming her, and the IRS will send both me and her dad a letter asking us to provide information on how long she lived in our home last year. Obviously, being that he hasn't even seen her since May 1st of last year, she hasn't lived in his house for at least 6 months, which is what has to happen before she can be his qualifying child. I called him, and asked his girlfriend to get him to call me back but he still to this day has not called me back.
On top of the stress of Hayli and Austin's dad, there has been stress in the family from Lance's side. Lance's brother Bryant has a daughter with his girlfriend Tiffany. There were worries from Lance's mom, when Tiffany first got pregnant that the baby might not be Bryant's. Their mom knew of a situation where Tiffany was either off on a hunting trip with a few guys, but without Bryant. She was not happy about that at all and was worried that Bryant might be committing himself to something/someone that may not be his. Lance's mom kept after Bryant until the baby was born that she wanted him to get a DNA test done to make sure the baby was his. He didn't get it done bc, Tiffany said that he would not have been able to put his name on the birth certificate if he had any doubt that the baby was his. After all of that, his mom left it alone and didn't bother with it anymore. The baby, Isabel, is now 4 months old. As she is getting bigger, Lance's dad is watching her features and is now worried because he doesn't see any of Bryant in little Isabel. He kept it to himself for a little bit but then it started weighing on his heart that he did not want his son carrying someone else's responsibility if she is not biologically his. Lance's mom started meantioning it to Bryant again and said that Isabel looks nothing like his baby pictures and there aren't even any features between him now and Isabel either. She also said, that doesn't mean that she is not his child. Also, Tiffany does not allow Bryant to be alone with the baby. She will not let him leave the house with her by himself, and when he is off for two days, she still has her grandmother come over to the house to watch the baby while Bryant is there. Lance's mom was starting to get bothered by that because it seemed like Tiffany was worried that Bryant was going to try and get a DNA test or something like that and find out something she didn't want him to find out. Donna (Lance's mom) has been telling myself and Lance all about their worries, so Lance picked up the phone and called Bryant to tell him how their mom and dad felt and that he should just go ahead and get the DNA test done to ease their minds. Lance had also texted Bryant about it too. Tiffany saw the text message Lance sent Bryant about the baby not looking anything like Bryant and that they needed to get a DNA test done. She got angry and posted a status on facebook about it. She said, Does Isabel look like Bryant or does she look like me.....just trying to prove a point. She had all of her friends comment on it saying the baby looks just like Bryant and Identical and other similar words. One of her friends decided to make a nasty comment about the family saying that Bryant's family needs to just stay out of it and keep their mouths shut and let him live his own life with his family. Tiffany had quite a few other things to say as well. I politely commented telling Tiffany that this did not need to be posted out on facebook for everyone else to get involved, and that was making the situation worse. She then said that she didn't feel that the situation was private anymore so she doesn't care who knows about it. Then she said that she wanted anymore questions or comments to be sent via text message to her phone and that she was done commenting on facebook. I then sent her a text message saying that I wasn't trying to make anyone mad, I just didn't think the situation needed to be plastered on facebook, it is something that needs to be handled between the people involved and not everyone else in cyberspace. She just said that the situation didn't even need to "be". I told her I understood that but she made the situation worse by putting it out on facebook. She said no it didn't. Anyway, I told her that she needed to go talk to Lance's parents instead of fussing at everyone else about the whole thing. She said it wasn't even about Lance's parents and that it was all towards Lance because he sent the text message to Bryant. I then explained to her why he sent it to Bryant and she just said oh well. Also in her comments on facebook, she put "If you want to waist $90 on the DNA test go right ahead, but I'm not going to pay to hear something I already know!" That comment was based on the conversation between Bryant and his mom so I know that whole comment and status was not posted just because of Lance. Donna feels that because of Tiffany's hostility and reluctance to do the DNA test, she is making it look like she has something to hide, instead of being willing (but understadably hurt) to do the DNA test just to prove that Bryant is her dad. She has, as she puts it, washed her hands of Lance and Bryant's family and won't talk to any of us anymore.
I know I pretty much just babbled on and on with the above situations but I needed a release as they have been weighing on my mind for the past couple days. I can totally understand if you get bored with my babbling and end up not reading this but that is ok. It helped me. I just pray that God will settle both of these situations easily and quickly so the flames can die down and the coals can settle and cool off!
