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Lawyers Share Their Craziest 'How Am I Supposed To Defend You Now?' Experiences

Lawyers Share Their Craziest 'How Am I Supposed To Defend You Now?' Experiences
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A defense attorney's job isn't necessarily to prove a person is innocent. Sometimes people just aren't. In those cases, it's more a matter of making sure the person is getting a fair shot.

Sometimes, though, even that is impossible thanks to clients who just seem determined to mess things up for themselves.


One Reddit user asked:

Lawyers of Reddit, has any client ever made you go "How the f*ck am I supposed to defend you?". And if so, how did it go?

And it turns out there's not a whole lot you can do when your client is really determined to ignore your advice, leave out key details, curse out a judge, or is just plain flat out guilty as sin and shows no remorse or ability to not flaunt that guilt.

It's interesting to hear what attorneys do in these situations, though. Proceed with caution, some of these responses do include mentions of rape, other violence, cruelty/harm to animals, drugs, and more.

A Volunteered Confession

My client gave a textbook perfect confession to a robbery the police had no leads on.

He had walked into the police station and told the front desk that he thought the cops were looking for him. He then volunteered that he and a friend robbed a gas station last week. Then, after police arrested and warned him (right to silence etc), and after he spoke at length with counsel (not me)...he repeated his confession in an audio/video statement. He wasn't forced or coerced. He hadn't been detained for an unreasonable time in cells first. They hadn't even interrogated him. But as a result of his confession, they were able to get a DNA warrant and matched him to blood swabbed at the scene.


And the best part? The police had no idea beforehand that it was him. My client and his friend had covered part of their faces, the surveillance video was horrible quality, and they had bear sprayed the store clerk (a 16 year old kid) immediately upon entering so the kid hadn't been able to provide the police with as description beyond "two males." And since he had no criminal record, he wasn't in the DNA database from previous crimes. He had just heard a rumour that police were investigating, and assumed they knew it was him.

I had to laugh when I got the police report and read all of this. I then focused on securing him as fair plea deal because he had no chance at an acquittal.

-zugzwang_3

The Shaggy Defense

Giphy

I'm a criminal defense guy, so I have had plenty. Most infuriating one was a guy that got busted for selling rocks to a confidential informant.

The CI was wired for sound and video so the whole transaction is crystal clear. Plus the cops id'ed his car as the one that drove up the scene and he was stopped a couple of hours later with the buy money in his possession (serial numbers were recorded). He had three prior convictions for drug sales.


The prosecutor offered him five which was the mandatory minimum. He absolutely declined to even consider a plea, insisted on a jury trial, insisted on taking the stand and telling a ridiculous story about how it wasn't him in the video. There wasn't any doubt. It was absolutely him.

I felt like Lionel Hutz trying to string together a closing argument with a straight face. He got 20 years.

- WinterPush

Premature Celebration

Sitting in court waiting and the case before ours at the time (theft) was going on much longer than it should have, Defense lawyer calls for a motion to dismiss, claiming lack of evidence. The judge says he will entertain said motion after lunch, hits gavel says court will reconvene at 1 pm, court dismissed. Defendant stands up and says loudly, "Told you i could get away with stealing that sh*t!"

He thought his case had been dismissed.

- peoplewillknow

Pass

I had to try to defend a man who walked into a convenience store with a knife demanding money. He wore no mask, just his casual clothes, and walked through every aisle before he robbed it being spotted by every security camera in the store. After the robbery he ran back to the hotel he was staying at, also carrying an open back pack full of money and being seen by the hotel's security cameras in the process. He then went into his room, threw the bag on the floor and hid under a bed until police arrived.

I spent a long night thinking about it before passing the case to somebody else. Because I have no idea how to defend someone who has so much evidence against them.

- Haywire70

A Tit Guy

My friend's mom was a defense lawyer for a hospital- her job was to represent doctors accused of malpractice or anything relating to doctor/patient interaction.

I forget all of the details, but she had one case where a female patient had accused a male doctor of assault. The claim was that the doctor groped the patient several times during a procedure.


Allegedly, the doctor had been coached to say that during a routine procedure, it's possible that he had inadvertently brushed up against the patients chest, and that if it happened, it was an unintentional consequence of following standard procedures.

So they get to the deposition, and I guess the first question the doctor gets is something along the lines of, "walk me through what happened" and the doctor says, "I don't know what you want me to say, man. I'm a tit guy. Always have been."

They settled.

- WatchTheBoom

A Baby Attorney's Mistake

I had a client come in and spin me this yarn about how he owed all these child support arrears and the payments are killing him and could I file a petition to have the payment reduced. He spins this tale of his spouse alienating the children and that's why he never saw them. I filed the petition and the clerk called me aside one day and said I might want to review his actual divorce file, not just his child support file.

That was a wild ride. Orders of protection due to stalking, losing his visitation due to meth use, not making a single child support payment in 14 years. I do the best I can until he admits, on the stand, that he smokes a carton a week and drinks over a liter a day .... so that's over $200/week in cigarettes and liquor (and a little weed sometimes).

It did not go well. I was a baby attorney at the time and I could tell the judge wanted to tear me a new one for even filing this, but I was so beaten down by the end of the hearing that it would have been child abuse at that point.

- fingawkward

These Actors Seemed Miscast But Absolutely Nailed The Role | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

The Actors Who Seemed Miscast But Absolutely Nailed The RoleFew people bought into the idea of Bryan Cranston in the role of Walter White before Breaking Bad...

Cat Killers

Giphy

A group of three young boys in my city drowned their neighbour's cat and recorded themselves doing it with their phones. The videos were copied by their friends and would inevitably be shown to the jury in court.

It was a case of the evidence speaking for itself. All I could really do was to argue for lighter punishment using their age as defense and the disastrous effect that group mentality can have on young people.

- wegwerfer9

Trial Hasn't Even Started Yet

Young lad, bail hearing for weapons and drugs charges, had a decent shot at getting bail. Then he decided to give the judge the middle finger and told him to F off. Safe to say bail was denied. It'll be at least 4 months between that hearing and when trial starts...

- Dropbearsocietyaus

A Secret Family

I had a family client whose ex wasn't letting him see his kid. So we were in court with him explaining how important parenting was to him, how much he loved being a father, etc.

After 45 minutes of this the mother says 'I don't know why he's saying this, he abandoned his other kids'.

Cue me who has never heard him mention having other kids. Turned out, yeah, 100% abandoned them. Has had no contact for years, never made any efforts.

Please give your lawyers important information especially if another party involved knows your secrets.

- amgirl1

Being A Karen

My 1L summer I worked at a criminal defense firm and got tasked with watching all the police footage from our OWI (operating a vehicle while intoxicated) cases, my FAVORITE involved a woman (our client] calling police on some teens swimming at the apartment complexes indoor pool.

She claimed they were drinking, they clearly weren't. So, the cops ask them to try and keep it down and are about to be on their way when, for some insane reason, our client drives up to the community building (her apartment unit was across the street) like a bat out of hell.

You clearly see her almost hit an officer, then have the audacity to start yelling at them to do their job. . . You see where this is going right?

Homegirl was drunk. It was obvious from her entire demeanor. Also she left her home only wearing one shoe. She was legitimately in no risk of police conflict prior to this.... she definitely got an OWI. 🤷♀️ mind ya business folks.

- Dissenter2021

Half A Bottle Of Vodka ... And Mom

I had a client come in for a DWI. She was about 40 and her mother came with her. She went into this story about her medications and how she wasn't drinking and she was framed by her ex that was the supervising sergeant of the officer who arrested her.

There was some difficulty getting the video from the prosecutors, but eventually we got it. Up to that point she had insisted on a trial. I took her (without her mom) to watch the video. She was wasted. Couldn't walk straight. Clearly intoxicated. Admitted on the video she drank half a bottle of vodka before driving.

I asked her if she thought we could convince the jury she wasn't intoxicated. She then agreed to take the reduction I had worked out for her (thankfully the prosecutor hadn't watched the video yet). Her mother was furious with me. I told her it was the clients decision; not mine or the moms.

Client eventually reached out to thank me for not showing the video to her mom. Weird relationship.

- Rsee002

A Klepto Client

Giphy

Late night closing on a multimillion dollar deal. This was about 120 billable hours into my week (worst week of my career). Client came into our office to sign the papers and finish the negotiation. We finally got the deal signed up around 2 in the morning with the bankers set to initiate wires when businesses opened.

As the client was leaving, he took a decorative vase from the front desk of the firm on his way to the elevators. I was finishing up documents and didn't see it happen. Earlier in the week he'd been talking about taking some of our office chairs because they were nice and he was paying the bills anyway.

Long story short, client was a kleptomaniac and it cost the partner on the deal about $20k out of his own pocket because his client was stealing random items from our office.

- bread_cats_dice

Payment Up Front

I'm an employment lawyer. I was representing the guy accused of sexual harassment. He did it. It went poorly for him. I made sure I got paid up front.

- I_Walk_The_Line

My Brother's Stalker

I'm pretty sure the lawyer who served the girl who sued my brother had that same question for her.

My brother started dating the girl right after he and his first fiancé called things off. From the get-go this new girl was bat-sht. He brought her home to hang out and she burst into my room without warning to introduce herself and tried to hang out with me.

She told my brother she wanted him to get me, our mom, and our step-dad together downstairs so we could all meet and play board games. She found our dad and stepmom on Facebook and friended them. She was the weirdest clingy girl I've ever seen. My brother wasn't looking for that kind of relationship so he ended it with her.

This girl proceeded to fck with our house, his car, his friends, she started making calls to the local police saying she'd seen criminal mischief happening and she thought it was my brother. After months of trying to ignore her and hoping she'd go away it didn't work.

My brother came home and found her sitting on our porch with this other girl. Apparently they were in a relationship and they wanted my brother to have sex with them and get them pregnant so they could have kids. My brother snapped after months of stalking and basically threatened her with violence if she didn't leave him the hell alone.

A few weeks later he got served to show in court to determine an order of protection against him filed by that girl. He didn't bring a lawyer and he didn't expect her to have one.

Anyway, her lawyer started talking about how my brother had threatened his client and she felt like she was in danger and how my brother deserved to be locked up. She also tried to have him banned from being near the local elementary schools, for reasons unknown to us.

My brother was entitled to call witnesses so he called our mother, me, our stepdad, and the three friends. Each of us detailed the months of stalking and property destruction. Then my brother presented the photos he had of everything she'd done, the screenshots of messages sent to him, to me, to our relatives, on cellphone and social media.

Based on the look on her lawyer's face she hadn't mentioned (and had probably lied about it) she'd instigated everything. My brother was given an order of protection against her, that she ended up breaking a few weeks later. She moved away after she was released from county jail and last I heard she sells her body for drugs and money.

- carmelacorleone

Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or ":zipper_mouth_face:" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.

Things People Didn't Realize Were Expensive Until They Became An Adult

Reddit user ForeignReviews asked: 'What item did you not realize was expensive until you became an adult?'

I was very fortunate that my parents were able to pay all expensive not only through adolescence but even through college. However, they made it very clear that once I graduated, I was on my own.

I made every effort to make sure I could afford to live once I graduated. I made copies of all the recipes my parents got when they bought stuff for me, and started saving my own receipts, something I didn't do through high school. I calculated monthly expenses and created a budget for the future.

When I graduated, I had accounted for all the big expenses: take-out food, the expensive skin care essentials I needed to keep my acne at bay, and utilities (heat, AC, electricity).

What I didn't realize was that small expenses are not so small. Microwavable meals went up by $2. Gas, which was pretty steady while I was in college, seemed to shoot up daily. And things that don't seem expensive at first glance, such as toilet paper, become big expenses as they add up.

I'm not the only one who had these realizations. Redditors have too, and are eager to share what items they didn't realize were expensive until they became an adult.

It all started when Redditor ForeignReviews asked:

"What item did you not realize was expensive until you became an adult?"

Yummy, Yummy

"Food is both more expensive and goes bad quicker when you're an adult."

– BriSnyScienceGuy

"I know right! I honestly love grocery shopping, so when I started driving I would go grocery shopping when I had the car and so nowadays I do maybe half of the grocery shopping. But, it's just so expensive. I often look for deals and will buy generic/store brand on most items but, still."

"My biggest tip for "goes bad quicker" is to always get from the back, because usually that's where the longer lasting stuff goes and when it's stacked, get from the bottom. When it's stuff with longer shelf life like cereal and canned stuff, I don't usually bother. But I mostly do that with bread and dairy products. My mom taught me that when I was little."

– ariana61104

"Yes! Having to feed yourself and your household is getting too expensive and so tedious. I really admire my mom for making dinner every night when I was growing up. Thankfully I don't have kids so me & my husband are okay with just eating snacks sometimes."

– WildMoonWitch

So Sweet

"My parents split up when I was a kid in the 90s, and I remember going to my dads apartment in another city, and him cooking us steak on the grill. I always loved that."

"Once I moved out I was like "wait steak is how much? Why the hell did Dad keep feeding us this?""

"Then I realised he was eating poverty meals all week to treat his kids on the weekend."

"For his 60th birthday us kids pooled our money and took him to arguably the best fine dining restaurant in my province for the full tasting menu. Seeing him light up at trying things like caviar and truffles for the first time made me realize how much he has sacrificed for us."

"So yeah, steak is expensive."

– KFBass

"You guys are awesome; what a nice story. He raised y'all right."

– Augustus58

Where Do I Sit?

"Gotta be furniture."

– harrisrichard

"When I bought my house I only had a bed in the master bedroom and all my friends kept saying “you make good money just buy furniture, you could have it furnished in a month.” Then they themselves bought houses and now understand why it took me a year to furnish my house."

– Stetikhasnotalent

They Don't Need To Be That Nice!

"Rugs. Why did no one tel me a ‘nice’ rug was $18,000."

– BenSadfleck

"But it really ties the room together."

– alittlec4

"Dude, you could fly to Morocco and get a hand made wool rug for that much. What the heck are you buying?"

– mofukkinbreadcrumbz

"My dog isn’t going to want to butt scoot on anything cheaper than 10k."

– iamaliberalpausenot

Car Accessories

"New tires. Most unexciting $1,000 purchases I have ever made."

– PRCraig

"Also why the hell are oil changes so expensive now!?"

– johnstonb

"Bro fr I swear they were just $20 just a second ago now it’s like $60?? I asked my dad to teach me how to do it myself as a teen and he said it was so cheap that I might as well pay someone else. That didn’t last."

– greeneggiwegs

Walk It Off

"A good pair of shoes will set you back a bit, especially if you need more specialized ones for whatever reason."

– sedition-

Part Of The Family

"Pets."

– TeacherLady3

"They have gotten a lot more expensive due to expected care changing dramatically, and how we feel about them."

"The idea that you would put a pet down because a vet treatment costs too much is horrible now, but was pretty common in the past. Outdoor cats were the norm so they pretty much fed themselves and you had far fewer litter changes - litter was just clay, and you tossed the whole thing."

"Dogs ate table scraps and whatever they hunted down, or cheap as dog feed made of whatever ended up on the slaughter house floor (bones and all)."

"While purebreds were probably still super expensive, most people had a mutt or tabby, that the found/were given, instead of buying."

– RandomChance

"All true. But I waited until I was in my 50's and had raised my kids until I could afford a pet. Like kids, I wasn't going to be a pet owner until I could provide the care they deserve."

– TeacherLady3

The Cost Of People

"Kids."

"I'm amazed how my parents could afford me."

– only_stupid_answers

"My parents had 5 of us. It amazes me to this day, that my fathers paultry salary at the time had to support it all. How the f**k could anyone do that today?"

– The_REAL_McWeasel

Vroom, Vroom

"Cars, all grown-ups had them, maybe even multiple. I still think its insane that some cars are more expensive than a 2 bedroom apartment."

Tommer_nl

"I remember people restoring cars all the time when I was growing up. I would love to do it but even a rough condition rolling rust is super expensive now for even common things people aren’t super after."

Pup5432

"Yeah what the hell!? I feel like everyone's dad (mine included) had a project car that they were tinkering with."

"All of my 'tinkering' is to keep my single, daily driver running!"

disisathrowaway

Shiny Teeth And Me

"My teeth."

– Bumfuzzled_Hobgoblin

"Teeth are luxury bones, don’t ya know? Why on earth would regular health insurance cover them? Hahaha. The fact that vision and dental are separate from the rest of your body is absurd."

– Blackfoxx907

I See You!

"Glasses. I have awful eyesight and an astigmatism and got quite a shock when I had to pay for my own prescription glasses for the first time."

– Heavy_Mycologist_104

Time Flies

"Free time."

"As a kid I had loads of it and gave it away. now I can't afford even a minute !!"

– TokenFeed

"I took a toll road home today for an extra hour of free time and it was the best money I ever spent."

– squidkiosk

What I wouldn't give -- or pay -- for some extra free time!

businessman straightening tie in dim lighting

Ben Rosett on Unsplash

In the 1987 movie Wall Street, actor Michael Douglas' antihero Gordon Gekko infamously said:

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Wall Street GIFGiphy

The quote became a perfect representation of rampant corporate greed and corruption prevalent in the era during and after Republican President Ronald Reagan's stint in the Oval Office. The Reagan administration pushed deregulation and elimination of consumer protections.

While the government may not always step in to thwart shady or harmful businesses, consumers have one way to control them—their money.

Money talks.

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Young kid laughing outside of school
Photo by Moses Vega on Unsplash

When we hear the term "class clown," we inevitably can think of a specific person who filled that role when we were growing up.

And in some cases, we can recall a time when they took their role much too far.

Curious about jokes gone wrong, Redditor Sharp_Emu6639 asked:

"When did the class clown go too far?"

Cancer Isn't Funny

"Kept making ‘Yo Mama’ jokes to my friend who’d just lost his Mom to cancer. My friend snapped and broke his nose."

- darksaber522

The Speed of a Fire

"When I was in High School, we had a Firefighter Explorer program where we could go and do shadow work at a few of the local departments."

"One all-volunteer department let some of us Juniors and Seniors respond to specific calls to do minor light work (hold stop signs, carry the ladders, fetch tools, etc.) and allowed us to have a code to their cipher lock. They gave the code to the four local kids so we could get there, unlock the doors, and open the bays and get trucks started and ready to roll."

"One night, the class id**t decided to go into their fire department and play 'pranks' on them. Took all their hoses off the trucks, strung them around the bays and looped them through the axles, discharged all the foam out of the main engine, and screwed with everyone’s bunker gear by swapping boots and removing the liners of structural gear among other things."

"Naturally, it ended very badly when a call came in for a structure fire and when the actual firefighters showed up the entire house was in such disarray that no truck could even leave."

"They ended up calling a town 20 minutes away to respond."

"Two people passed away in the fire. Naturally, all four of us were the top suspects, and it didn’t take the police long to figure it out as the place was full of surveillance cameras. He was arrested, his parents got the bill for all the damages, and we never saw him or his family again after that. They just skipped the area and vanished overnight."

"The fire department killed almost all ties with the Explorer Program and stopped allowing us to respond to minor calls. I went on to get certified as a firefighter and spent five awesome years with them where I still seasonally volunteer (during wildfire season) with them."

- JimSpieks

A Ruined Presentation

​"We had a student teacher for like six months when I was in sixth grade, and towards the end of her time with us, she had to record herself teaching a lesson to the class and then provide the video to her school (as a final exam or something)."

"We had this class clown who had to sit in the back, which happened to be near the camcorder. During the recording, he kept saying things like, 's**t, pen*s, f**k,' quiet enough for no one in class to hear but loud enough to be obvious on the recording."

"The student-teacher ended up having to redo the entire video and we had to sit through the exact same lesson a week later without the class clown present."

- sloppyjoesandwich

Deflected Trouble

"Art class. Teacher leaves. Class clown says, 'Dare me to eat this paint!?'"

"My buddy and I ignored him. He got real pushy about eating paint."

"We told him to do whatever the h**l he wanted. He stood on a chair and ate two bottles of paint before the teacher walked back in."

"He got marched to the nurse. We breathed a sigh of relief that he was gone."

"Later that day, my buddy and I got called to the principal's office. We were informed he was at the hospital getting his stomach pumped and it was OUR fault."

"I had never been in trouble before. I spent one hour in isolated detention to see if I 'wanted to share more,' literally just locked in a tiny a** room."

"I got a really long lecture about if I told someone to jump off a bridge and they did it, it would be my fault. I denied any fault again. Then I got put back in isolation until the end of the day."

"My parents went nuclear when I got home and told them what happened."

"The clown showed up the next day just grinning and laughing because he heard we got in trouble."

- Remz_Gaming

Boy Cries Wolf... Or Eats Candy

"Slightly off-topic, but our class clown choked on candy. We thought it was another one of his jokes."

"The whole class laughed at him, even the teacher. Then his face started to go red, his eyes got bloodshot, and he started slamming the table violently."

"Luckily somebody gave him the Heimlich maneuver and saved his life."

"Dude nearly died while everyone sat laughing at him."

- seneca_7

Enough Said.

"A classmate thought it would be funny to light somebody's mullet on fire in the middle of class."

- DrDWilder

A Graduating Vandal

"He came back to the school after hours and put caulking in the locks, and spray-painted pot leaves everywhere."

"Of course, he didn’t know there were cameras so it didn’t take long for him to be caught."

"This was right before graduation too so needless to say, he didn’t walk at graduation and his parents had a hefty damage bill to pay."

- Ozziwulf

Senior Prank Week Gone Wrong

"In my school district, it was tradition for the exiting seniors to pull a prank. One year, a few of the class clowns decided it would be funny to cover all the tile floors with cooking oil, cover the handrails of stairs with Crisco, and put large puddles of oil at the top of each stairwell."

"A girl already on crutches broke her jaw. We had to be evacuated to the bleaches outside. It was super not cool."

- QueasyAd7509

A Ruined Graduation

"Public school, small town. The graduating class only had 54 students in it."

"The kid smeared his s**t all over the bathroom. Walls, floor, sinks, everywhere. The principal had no way of knowing who it was, so the solution... they took the bathroom doors off the hinges."

- PhatWhiteCheeks

No Future in Serving Drinks

"He spilled formic acid on another kid who ended up with some light scarring on his chest."

"To be honest, it was a terrible call from the teacher to get him to carry it around for people to smell."

- CoolioMcCool

Substitute Teaching is Already Hard Enough

"They put staples in the substitute teacher's coffee... I went to school with some real monsters."

- This-Ad-1886

A Traumatized Teacher

"In seventh grade at a public school, our class was on the second floor."

"The class clown stood up in the middle of class, said 'I can't take it anymore,' and ran to the back of the classroom, opened the window, and jumped."

"The teacher screamed, and we all laughed. There was an addition to the building and the roof was under the window where the class clown was standing with a big grin."

"The teacher quit shortly after due to this and several other incidents in her class."

- OMOAB

Targeting the Substitute Teacher

"Sophomore year biology class, we had a substitute teacher during fetal pig dissection week."

"She had stepped out of the classroom for some reason while we were working on the dissection."

"The class clown took out his shoelaces, wrapped one end around the piglet, and rigged the other end to the door so that when the door was opened, his piglet would raise to eye level."

"He scared the teacher when she came back in and he was suspended for a few days."

- Ambitious_Misgivings

Caught Butter-Handed

"We had this kid who would take the small butter packets from the cafeteria and bring them to fifth-period history class. At some point, he would scoop out a glob with his pen and flick the dairy bullet on our history teacher's a** when he walked by."

"He did this probably five or six times without getting caught."

"One day, he f**ked up and scraped the teacher's butt with his pen."

"The teacher checked his pants and found the butter smear."

"The kid's eyes got super wide like a true deer in headlights. He had no excuse for why he did this prank. He just kept apologizing like it was an accident."

"Lol (laughing out loud). Who accidentally flicks butter on an old man's a**?? I'm pretty sure he never graduated. Not surprisingly."

- CannabisaurusRex401

Fun for the Students, At Least

"He stole the English teacher's substitute plans and rewrote them, giving us all a free period instead."

"Terrance, wherever you are, you're a f**king legend."

- jeconti

We can all agree that these pranks, jokes, and even assaults went much too far, whether the class clown was of minor age or not.

Sometimes a prank can be funny, when when it scares someone, severely scares them, or even injures them, it's obviously much too far. A joke is only funny if everyone involved is genuinely laughing.

Young man looking defeated with face to palms
Christian Erfurt/Unsplash
Maintaining romantic relationships takes work, and if the people are invested enough in them, they will be willing to do everything they can to stay together.

After all, the honeymoon phase is not forever.

Eventually, reality sets in for those who want to be in it for the long haul as the lovebirds gradually start discovering weird idiosyncrasies that can either be perceived as cute quirks or aggravating annoyances.

Is it worth it?

That depends.

Curious to hear of make-it-or-break-it moments in relationships, Redditor The_King_Of_Spades_ asked:

"What is something that an S/O has done that made you go, 'F'k this, we're done'?"

These exes had no regard for the lives of others, some literally.

Serpent Murderer

"She unplugged the heater on my red tail boa's tank. Since the tank was in the spare room I only checked it every couple days. It was winter and I had just fed it so I would always leave it alone for a few days after so it wouldn't stress and have issues digesting. She went in right behind me an unplugged it after arguing with me for weeks to rehome it, which I refused to do."

"I went to check on it a few days later and noticed it froze to death. I asked her if she knew anything about it and her response was 'oh bummer, now I guess you can throw all that sh*t out.'"

"The next day when she was at work I packed all her sh*t and threw it all over her sister's front yard, since her sister was always the one telling her to just do things if I don't give her her way and had told me numerous times to get rid of my snake or else."

"RIP Doobie. I'm sorry buddy."

– burkechrs1

Funeral Brawl

"She started a fight with someone at my gran's funeral."

– LapOfHonour

"That's odd. Nobody is looking at ME for some reason..."

– VAShumpmaker

"Ummm...ex-CUSE me! I'M the ALIVE one here!"

– PicaDiet

Family Comes First

"Gave me sh*t for skipping a minor league ballgame with her family so I could go visit my grandfather in the hospital."

"It was the last time i saw him alive."

"Edit - ok i get it, the last sentence is confusing. I’m referring to gramps."

– chickentimesfive

You never know about a person's true colors.

Dodging A Bullet

"Physically barricaded me in the bedroom and forced me to change into the exact outfit he wanted me to wear before we could go out to meet his friends. I put it on just so he would let me leave and then ran a couple blocks away while he was locking up and called an Uber to my friend's house."

– Particular-Natural12

The Freeloader

"My ex drove my truck and returned it with a drop of gas in the tank. Then she took my bank card from my wallet and filled up her SUV and went to work. I started my truck and got to the gas station, opened my wallet and my card was missing. This was back when I was kind of poor and didn't have any credit cards, just a debit card. I had no cash in my wallet, so no gas. I tried to make it back home but I ran out of gas. I called her asking for help, she refused."

"My buddy picked me up on the side of the road. I went home and packed up my stuff and immediately moved out. I stayed on my friends sofa for a couple weeks while I worked out new living arrangements."

– macmac360

The kids will always be priority number one.

Scared Child

"My 12 year old son was struggling emotionally and it was causing issues with his grades. Boyfriend told him he could go live with his dad if he was going to be a loser. My son called me scared because he thought he was going to have to move to his dad’s. I was out of town at the time. I broke up with him the moment I got back and my son and I moved out."

"F'k you Chris."

– Fickle_Freckle

You Don't Go After The Children

"Called my daughter (not hers) a 'f'king b*tch that ruined our relationship'. Hard no from me."

– javawong

"Thank you for prioritizing your daughter. So many single parents don’t."

– CowboyLaw

Those who abuse animals are not relationship material.

The Last Straw

"Kicked my (our) cat."

"He pushed and pushed to get a cat. I wanted one but didn't really want to spend the next 10 years cleaning litter boxes every day. I eventually gave in because he was so persistent."

"After a few months, he came home from work in a mood one day and the cat got under his feet - as cats tend to do. He kicked her and screamed at her, and she ran and hid under the bed for hours."

"Things had been pretty sh*t between us anyway, but this was the last straw. I told him that if he can't watch where he's f'king going, he shouldn't live with a cat. He responded with something along the lines of 'well f'king get rid of her then!', and I told him I'd rather get rid of him."

"I told him to pack a bag and find somewhere else to stay. He went to stay with his mum, and I only saw him once after that day when he had to sign some paperwork to confirm that he'd moved out of our flat."

"P.S. Still got the cat. She's perfect and I love her so much. She still trips me up almost every day."

"Edit: I do feel like I should clarify (even though ex doesn't deserve it) - he didn't like, kick the cat across the room or something, but he did kick her a lot more aggressively than just tapping her out of the way with his foot. She wasn't hurt at all, but was scared. Had it been any worse, I probably would have flipped out on him even more."

– aerialpoler

Always listen to your gut when it comes to being in a bad situation.

Vulnerable individuals who are deep in love have the tendency of ignoring warning signs and realize until too late that they are with someone they never should've been with in the first place.

That's the tricky thing about pursuing love.

You don't really know a person until you spend more time with them, which is all the more reason to not rush into things.