She tried to keep the winnings secret but a judge ruled she must give them up.
She tried to keep the winnings secret but a judge ruled she must give them up.
This article was one of Herald Lifestyle’s best-read stories of 2024.
A woman in the US who won US$1.3 million (NZ$2.1m) in the lottery was forced to give the entire sum to her ex-husband after trying to hide it during their divorce.
Denise Rossie filed for a divorce from her husband Thomas Rossie on December 28, 1996, after being married for 25 years.
However, only 11 days earlier, Denise had hit the jackpot. She had picked up US$1.3m - worth around US$3.1m (NZ$5m) in today’s money - in a California lottery after splitting the US$6.6m (NZ$10.1m) total prize with the co-workers with whom she had bought the ticket.
Thomas only found out about her winnings two years after the couple had divorced, when he received a letter in the post from a company that pays out lump sums when someone wins the lottery.
The letter, which was meant for his wife, said the company had “helped hundreds of lottery winners like you around the country receive a lump-sum payment for the present value of their future annual lottery payments”.
Thomas’ attorney Mark Lerner said: “I think he scratched his head for a while, saying: ‘What? This can’t be.’”
Denise Rossie in a TV interview in 2008.
A few days later, Denise’s ex-husband acquired an injunction and took her to court, where a judge ruled that she had violated laws pertaining to the disclosure of assets and funds and acted in fraud or malice.
Denise, then 49, was forced to pay her ex-partner, then 65, 20 annual instalments of US$66,800 (NZ$108,000), amounting to the value of her jackpot win.
Denise confessed to hiding her lottery winnings because she didn’t want her former husband “getting his hands on them”.
The lotto winner had organised for her cheques to be sent to her mum’s home to hide the prize money.
“I’d wanted to get out of this relationship for years,” Denise revealed to the Los Angeles Times. She said that her lottery windfall was a spout of luck and that her ignorance of the law was the reason she failed to mention her winnings during the divorce.
Denise Rossie was forced to pay her ex-partner 20 annual instalments of $66,800. Photo / 123RF
However, Thomas admitted he was blindsided by the divorce.
“I couldn’t understand it,” he revealed to People in 2004.
“She wanted me to move out of the house very fast. It wasn’t like her to act this way.”
Making matters worse, Denise’s lawyer, Connolly Oyler, said she may been able to keep the winnings had she told the truth about them.
“I could have argued successfully that it was her separate property,” Oyler revealed at the time.
“Or we could have argued and we would have reached some adjustment.
