Woman breaks up with boyfriend after he tries to trick her into signing a contract giving him permanent authorization over all her insurance claims, past, present, and future, instead of handling one-time paperwork

AITAH for breaking up with my boyfriend because he tried to slip in extra terms to a contract I was signing?

canisalok

I had to make various emails and calls to my insurance company to help them cover some emergency costs, and my boyfriend of 2 years, knowing me well enough to know I hate this kind of thing, offered to do it all for me. He went to law school before he changed career paths, so I trusted him to get it right and said sure.

So this boyfriend started out cute, did what a good partner would do, and offered help with something his significant other hates doing. And because he needs authorization to handle it he’ll just write up a little doc on his laptop. So far, so good and that’s the last good thing about this story or him I will be able to say.

He then said that I needed to sign a contract that would give him authorization to handle this on my behalf. He wrote up the contract on his laptop, handed it over to me and directed me to draw my signature. I said “I’m just gonna read it first”, without really thinking about it (it’s normal to read a contract even if somebody you trust wrote it, right?), and when I said that he let out a massive exasperated sigh.

The next thing our girl knows, she’s being handed over a draconian contract with so much legal talk it sounds like an inheritance attorney wrote it on a Wogeu board.

And having your own partner try and trick you into a bureaucracy nightmare sounds much more Kafkaesque than Shondarhymes-esque. And that means the situation might be better, more well-written, but much less lovey-dovey.

I then read the contract, and he used the words (IIRC because this was a while ago) “in perpetuity” and “all insurance claims and authorizations” (etc) “past, present and future.” Immediately I was angry and confronted him about this, saying that I was obviously just allowing him to do this for me for this specific, singular, one time. He then got angry with me saying that he was making a commitment to me, and making the rest of my life easier, because bureaucracy is second nature to him and he knows I’m never going to be good with this kind of thing.

The funny thing is, I probably would have signed a one-time contract each time an insurance headache came my way if he had offered each time. But it felt like he was making a massive decision on my behalf without consulting me. Why would I sign something that says “in perpetuity”?

I refused to sign the contract and ended up spending half the day doing it all myself because I didn’t know what to trust. The next morning I broke up with him, because I felt that I can’t trust him and that he was trying to get power over me in a way.

But now I’m thinking maybe it was a mistake. He is caring, attentive, disciplined, ambitious. All of the qualities you’d want in a partner. Did I overreact? AITAH?

canisalok

So the twist in this story came on paper with “in perpetuity” and “all claims past, present and future.” Like a lifetime adoption paper. That clause turns a one-time favor into permanent custody of every decision. What he didn’t think about, though, is the possibility of that clause erasing his possibility of ever hearing “in sickness and in health” while looking at this specific woman. So he's now single and ready to have you sign a contract-ingle.