Chapter 497 - Truth Time (7)

26 May, Matthew's on-base accommodation, Military Base, City K 

Watching Dominic through the lounge window playing with the children of other military officers, Lexi said "I do not think he took that well."

Matthew now sitting in a chair calmly responded "You are right. We have upturned his world. But he had to hear that because continuing to hide the truth will only cause more harm than good. He loves Richard's parents but with what we are about to do, not telling him that will cause significantly more harm."

Lexi a little agitated, said "I am concerned that we could end up hurting him more then we already have when the court rulings come down."

"Lexi," came Matthew's somewhat concerned response, "You know as well as I do, that Richard's parents forced us down this path. We gave them two choices, accept the truth, and play a significant role in Dominic's life or continue ultimately an unwinnable fight and play a minimal role in his life. They opted for the latter, not us. If we continued to dance around the truth the one person, we would all hurt in the end is Dominic."

"But we are hurting him now," came Lexi's concerned and quiet statement.

"True," came Matthew in a similar tone. "I think though, we made the right decision now. Yes, there is hurt but it is much less then we would have caused continuing on the path that we had been. "

After a short pause, Matthew added "You know Richard's parents better than I do. How do you think they will react to the court decisions?"

"Which court decisions are you talking about?" came Lexi's quick questioning response.

"There will be a few." Responded Matthew with a sigh. "Initially, will be what we know will come down from the military court, being the decision to invalidate your marriage with Richard. They are not blind to the consequences all that."

"Consequences…?" came Lexi's questioning response.

"You know as well as I do, that the only reason they have control of a large parcel of Jax Corp shares is the pre-nuptial agreement they signed on Richard's behalf using the Power of Attorney they had, while he was overseas with your parents. That agreement, made it clear that while it was your dowry, Richard could not dispose of anything and had to pass it on to your children, and was prefaced on the fact that Richard would marry you legally. The Military court decision will make it clear, despite appearances to the contrary, your so-called marriage to Richard was never legal. As a result, the legal consequences all that is the shares and other assets that were part of your dowry could never have passed to Richard, and therefore could never have been legally put in the control of his parents. The question is where do they go? From what from Bronwyn has told me, there are only two options. Firstly, they will just go back to your parents estates, which means they legally become Andrew and Chester's, or in accordance with what the intention was for those assets they apart of a dowry that effectively becomes mine because of our legal marriage."

"How blatantly s.e.xist!" stated Lexi, angry with the options.

"Do not blame me. If I had my way, it would all simply go to you. But we must wait for that to be decided legally. If it is the latter, because of the law regarding the treatment of significant assets of military members everything will end up in the trust Phillip currently manages with all my assets in it. Without an act of parliament, I could not legally give you those assets until after I leave the military. My hope is that it is the former, as we know that the reason you were excluded from benefits of your parents' estates is because of that dowry. The fact that it was never legally given means you received no benefit and therefore the exclusion is contrary to their obligations under the law. That would then justify those assets coming to you, and while they have to fall into the trust for your assets that the law requires for spouses of senior military officers, you have more freedom to use and deal with them, then would be the case if they were in my blind trust. However, knowing how money hungry Richard's parents are, in particular his mother, the problems she will cause because of the loss of access to the assets and the money will be something we need to protect Dominic from."

"True," came the response from Lexi. "Do you think they will harm Dominic?"

"I can't see them, because all the way through these court proceedings it has been obvious, how much they love Dominic. They think I am stupid, but it is easy to predict what they will do. They will use Dominic in an attempt to extort huge sums of money and other assets from us on the basis, as they see it , of needing to maintain certain things so when they spend time with Dominic things do not change for him."

"Well," sighed Lex. "There is that. They seem to think, the world owes them, but we know that is not the case."

"Correct. We just need to be prepared that they do not try and use Dominic for their own benefit. If that means, we have to limit their time with him for a while then so be it."

"I just hope, we will not regret the potential impact of that on Dominic?"

"Lexi, in the end while Dominic might be upset, for a while, he will eventually understand that we have acted in what we believe is his best interest."

"I hope you are right."

"That is all we can do. But I think, once we deal with the legal consequences of the military court ruling in the civilian courts, we should go about re-establishing a good regime for Dominic to spend time with Richard's parents. In my mind, I prefer them over my own selfish parents, as Dominic's grandparents as I know they will fight for what they believe is in Dominic's interest rather than my parents who will simply attempt to impose they will."

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