Sounds like you've got your head on straight eskie, good for you! I don't know how smart ex is, or if he wants to go out of his way to create trouble for you, but I'd get my property out of his place asap. If he takes it in his mind to claim that you've abandoned them, you're screwed.

When my cousin finally divorced the abusive jerk she married, a representative from the court was to accompany her to get her stuff granted in the divorce degree that he was holding hostage.

My mother, aunt, and several uncles brought three trucks up there with trailers to make sure that she got everything in one trip. It was scheduled for a Saturday morning. Court rep somehow had the wrong date and time. Ex would not let her or family on property to get her stuff. Frantic attempts to call rep (out of town) and police. Local police could not help because Marshal X was supposed to accompany her.

Next day he had a big old bonfire, burning all of her property. Called her and told her he was doing it. The police did come but couldn't do a thing about it, Marshal X had property list and they were unable to contact him.

When Court rep was finally heard from again, he simply told ex "you shouldn't have done that" told cousin "you'll have to go back to court and sue him for value of the property."

Kicker is, that her lawyer had just won the DA election, so she'd have to hire a new lawyer to do so. Easy right, single mother with two small kids and an ex that works for cash therefore has no income to pay his child support.

I really feel for you on the IRS thing, we went through that a couple of years ago. It was all worked out in the end, but it took 10 months. 10 months of hell; of dreading the mail delivery because there was another form to fill out. They lost our 2004 tax return, seems there was a glitch that year with the electronic filing. Presented us with a bill for over 10K. In the end, they owed us money, not a lot, but when I got that check in the mail I called them right away to make sure I could cash it.

In our previous contact they said we owed 6K and here I've got a check for $125 (ironically the same amount that our records indicated we were supposed to get back to begin with). Agent thought I was nuts, but I wanted to make sure that everything was straightened out. To this day I have no idea how the million forms we filled out went from us owing them to a check in my hand. I asked the Agent, all he could tell me was according to their records, we had an overpayment "What records, how did this happen?" So I guess I'll panic every year at tax time until 2011.