Later, she offered to return to work for Palfrey because she needed money, but subsequently filed for bankruptcy and "it became a nonissue," Dickinson said.
In a phone interview yesterday, Gladstone said money was Dickinson's main motivation for working as an escort.
"I think it's fair to assume that money was a driving force," he said. "I can't imagine it was anything she would have been doing if she didn't need money."
Details from Dickinson's December 2006 bankruptcy filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia provide a sketch of a woman who was grappling with a broken marriage that separated her from her three young children, while she navigated a sea of turbulent personal finances.
In November 2006, according to court papers, Dickinson tapped her father to pay the $1,000 fee for her bankruptcy attorney. She filed under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code, a liquidation.
Her assets at the time, she stated, included $233 in cash, $3,300 in furniture, clothing and other personal property, a 1999 Dodge Durango and two house cats.
Her largest asset was her home in Duluth, Ga. The single-family dwelling was valued at $166,000, but she carried three mortgages on the property, totaling $177,000.
Dickinson's spending habits are reflected in a long list of unsecured loans and liabilities reported to the court, which totaled $106,000.
They included more than $58,000 in debt on 20 credit cards, including cards from VISA, MasterCard, gasoline companies, clothing stores and three jewelry stores.
Her largest credit card balance was $22,000, owed to the Navy Federal Credit Union, in Merrifield, Va., a private, not-for-profit credit union that serves Navy personnel and their families.
In all, counting three personal loans, a car loan, her second mortgage and the credit card debt, Dickinson was in hock to her credit union for more than $107,000
She had also accumulated debts to three payday loan companies, a debt-consolidation company, her tax preparer and another lawyer.
Her court filing also noted a $12,000 loss, in July 2005, in what she described only as a "money order scheme."
Among the monthly expenses she listed for the court, Dickinson reported $1,750 under "alimony, maintenance or support paid to others." She also noted spending $709 a month for "travel to see children."
Gladstone said he believes her three children live with their father - Dickinson's ex-husband, Edward B. Dickinson - in Georgia.
