what did she know and when did she know it?

The Casey Serin story has taken some weird twists over the past couple of weeks. Serin apparently jetted off to Australia to "work on his book." Some people think he actually slipped back into the US and has been cleverly faking photos to make people think he's still in Oz; others think he's still there and trying to set up new scams.

I don't really care one way or the other. What interests me is the focus that Serin's disappearance suddenly shifted onto his wife, Galina.

What did she know and when did she know it?

I can't answer those questions. Unless you're personally involved with either the players or with California law enforcement, you probably can't either. Some people are convinced that Galina Serin is an innocent spouse who was complicit only to the extent that she trusted her husband too much. Others see her as a fraudster in her own right.

In all the discussion I've read of whether she's innocent or guilty, there's one key point that seems to be missing: It was Galina Serin's responsibility to understand the family finances and she chose not to do it.

I've said this before elsewhere, but it bears repeating: Both partners in an adult relationship need to know where the money is coming from and where it's going. Simply trusting one partner to provide is a complete and utter cop-out. As you can see from Galina Serin's current situation, cleaning houses for cash with a mountain of community property debt hanging over her head while her husband stages idiotic emo photos in Australia, it's also stupidly dangerous in the extreme. I don't have a clear sense of the legal options that are open to Galina in this situation, but according to information provided early in the year by Serin himself, a good chunk of debt is in consumer credit opened in Galina's name. Whatever happens with the debt created by Casey, Galina's most likely stuck with the credit card debt to which her name is attached. It's going to take her years to pay it off, and her FICO score is undoubtedly in the basement. There's simply no easy way out for her.

Could Galina have avoided this situation if she had paid attention to the family finances? Possibly; it's hard to say. Should she have had a clear idea from day one about the family cashflow? Definitely. Even if all she could do was damage control after the fact, doing anything at all while Casey was losing houses right and left would have been better than doing nothing. If the available information is a reliabile indicator, as the Serin family finances imploded nothing is exactly what Galina did.

The Serin case is an extreme one, but you can look anywhere in the country and find financial disasters that might have been avoided if both partners took equal responsibility for knowing the household finances and participating in decision-making. Another extreme example is illustrated in the book Prince Charming isn't Coming by Barbara Stanny. Stanny is the daughter of one of the brothers who created H&R Block, so she grew up surrounded by wealth. She had more than a million dollars at the time of her marriage, but she cheerfully gave control of her finances to her new husband. Said new husband took Stanny to the cleaners and fled the country, leaving her destitute.

Does that sound like anyone we know?

The point I'm trying to make is that in an adult relationship, no one gets a pass for being uninformed about the family cash flow. It doesn't mean that disasters won't happen; of course they will. Rather than allowing oneself to be in the position of simply responding to events, however, it's critically important to be continually on top of the information flow. There may come a time when any one of us has to make some tough financial decisions without a lot of preparation time. Having all the facts at one's disposal greatly increases the probability of making good decisions that are appropriate to the specific circumstances. In addition, knowledge allows people to take proactive control of their financial futures, instead of simply responding reactively to external events.

Knowledge is power, my friends.

Galina Serin probably knows that now.

Too bad she chose to learn it the hard way.