Fiance's dad used to be a manager of a car dealership. Made good money for a while when they were kids, enough to support several girlfriends who would drive around bentleys, but not quite enough to help with her college tuition. Eventually his alcoholism cost him a number of jobs and took over his life leading to divorce, unemployment, health issues, and ultimately a severed relationship with his two kids. My fiance kept in touch and they would speak a few times a month and see each other a few times a year. He would have his good periods followed by bad ones.
She had mentioned to him that she wanted to start looking for a new car because her lease was up in a year. He offered to help her get a good deal through one of the dealerships he used to work with. They upgraded her lease and he took over payments for the final year of her current lease. Unbeknownst to me, his payments were being made directly to her, and the lease stayed in her name. Insurance payments as well.
First months went OK, he was sending her payments for the lease and insurance. Then, nothing. Payments stopped coming in. Phone calls, voice mails, text messages, went unanswered. After three months, we haven't heard anything. At this point we're out almost $1500, with the next month's payments due soon, bringing the total over $2000.
My fiance was devastated that her father could do something like this to her. It reached a breaking point where I was furious about the pain he was causing her. Knowing the dive bar that he basically lived at, I had to step in and handle the situation. Showed up with the spare set of keys, got in the driver seat and drove away. Car contents included several empty Coors light cans in the center console with straws coming out of them, a 6 pack of coors light pounders, 3 airplane bottles of cheap vodka, a sleeping bag, and a change of clothes. Sure enough, i received a call a few minutes later, asking me to bring the car back and offering to make the payment to me (actually he offered me one month's payment).
I explained to him it's not happening. He has to figure it out himself. The guy was so delusional he believed that $400 was all that he owed us.
It was a tough situation to deal with. Since then we have eliminated him from our lives, which was a deicision I left up to her. Coming from a good family, it breaks my heart to think that someone's father could screw them like that.
TLDR: FIL screwed us out of $2k in car payments, so I repo'd the car that I think he was living in.