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8,293 posts, read 16,157,144 times
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I think Shuke is one of those super achievers and what he's done and how he's done it, is probably the only way he can live. Shuke thrives under pressure and less than that is not good enough. It's in the blood and nothing in the world can change super achievers. That's just the way the cookie crumbles.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that Shuke. I understand perfectly. Some people are born to sit around and others can't stay still.
See Shuke has already planned how he's going to get himself right out of the hole and be back in full swing and control.
Your wife sounds like she is very unhappy. Hopefully you will both be happier after the divorce.
It's too bad this couldn't have been resolved sooner.
Yes, she is unhappy, I'm sure... but I don't think I'm the reason she's unhappy! I think she's unhappy to begin with, and, if anything, I'm the 'goat because I'm not making her happy. So she's trying to fill the void by spending like a drunken sailor.
How are things Shuke? Hope and pray everything works out for you.
muchas gracias, jenna! Well, let's see.. heart still beating, still suckin' air... I'm ok.
I met with my attorney for a couple of hours yesterday. So far, I'm fairly impressed with this guy. The firm has 9 attorneys in the practice, and all they do is matrimonial law... nothing else. He's not a screw-em-to-the-wall type of attorney... He flat-out said some attorneys out there follow a scorched earth policy when handling a divorce and he's not that type because the parents still have to get along in dealing with the kids. My wife and I, for example, will have to sit through IEP conferences at school and continue to make joint decisions rationally for some time to come.
That said, he did give me a pretty good idea of what to expect as far as division of assets and payment of alimony and child support is concerned. As far as division of assets goes, I'm really most concerned about my 401(k) account because there's some serious money in there... it's one way I was able to sock some money away for retirement while living with someone who spends it before she has it. So that normally goes 50/50, but I may get more than 50% in our case because my wife basically cannot afford to buy me out of my 50% interest in the house, so he thought I may be able to trade my equity in the house for a piece of what she would ordinarily take from my 401(k)... that idea is attractive to me, but there are still some issues surrounding the house we'll have to iron out.
As far as any other assets are concerned... I'm pretty sure I'll have to sell my airplane to pay for legal fees... I'm ok with that. And the missus pretty much wipes me out every year with her spending habits, anyhow, so the notion of getting wiped out by legal fees is really sort of immaterial... just a matter of who's going to screw me at the end of the year... normally it's the wife, but this year it'll be the attorneys. But I'll be in basically the same position at the end of 2008 that I would be if I didn't do the divorce anyhow. But if I can get out from under having to pay for her lifestyle, that will easily get me coming out ahead on this deal in the long-run.
As far as child support and alimony go... he basically said I should figure on paying out maybe 35% of pre-tax gross, weighted heavily toward alimony. I need to ask him if that 35% will change depending on whether i get physical custody of our boy... I would hope I would get a little break on that if he lives primarily with me, but that's another issue for discussion. Otherwise, the 35% number doesn't really scare me. As I have said, I can live a lot happier on a lot less than what I have right now. And if that 35% is weighted heavily towards alimony, that will make it all the easier for me.
As far as the wife goes... she's going to have some problems, though. While we aren't setting out to hurt her, he made it sound like much of the settlement she'll get is formula-driven and will have only a certain range within which she can negotiate. And however the pie gets cut, she's going to have a hard time affording that house... even if I surrender my interest to her in exchange for a bigger piece of my own 401(k). She'll have to find a way to pay her own P&I on the existing mortgage, the real estate tax, homeowners insurance, and utilities.... tally all that up and it's over $50k right there. Then she'll still have to buy food and clothing and pay her own car insurance... my attorney basically said she would probably be required to get a job to make up any shortfall and, even then, things are going to be pretty tight for her. She'll have to cut loose the maids, the landscrapers, and the doody-calls people, I would imagine.
What will be interesting is to see how her attitude changes when she figures all this out. The first thing my attorney did was to ask if she had an attorney and, if so, who was it. I know the name of the attorney she has spoken to, but I know she hasn't paid any retainer yet because I would have to pay that retainer. But I do know who she has spoken to... in how much detail, I don't know. My attorney did say that if hers was conversant in how this all works, that her attorney would be telling her pretty much the same stuff as what he was telling me. The attorney I know she has spoken to practices "family law", a good part of which certainly includes divorce cases. But she also does some estate planning and stuff like that. My attorney had not yet dealt with her attorney first-hand, but had heard about her (vaguely), and his initial reaction was that she was "ok", in that she knows how this all works.
So this morning, as I was getting the kids some breakfast, my wife did make some snide remark about my getting angry. Now, I was not angry at all... she was just taking advantage of the opportunity to point out to the kids that if they didn't sit down, I might get angry. Fact is, I'm quite patient with them and when I get angry, it's usually with her and related either to her spending or to her not pulling her share of the load around the house. Anyhow... I just told her we needed to have a talk this weekend about our marriage.
Right after April 15th, she had asked me if I wanted to give marriage counseling (yet) another try... by this time I had pretty much decided that was a waste of time, so I answered "no" at the time, to which she replied, "well, then, we need to have a discussion... mark me in your calendar for some time." So when I said we needed to have a talk this weekend, she just said, "is this the talk we were going to have a couple of weeks ago", to which I replied, "probably closely related to it."
So there we have it. We have our 12th anniversary this Sunday, 5-4-08, and we'll probably agree to proceed with the divorce at that time. I just hope we can do it relatively peacefully without having to do the "scorched earth" thing my attorney referred to.
It's not that big a deal... single engine, four-seater Piper Cherokee 180. Good for daytrips, weekends, etc... but I wouldn't try flying it up to Telluride or anything like that.
Location: Lots of sun and palm trees with occasional hurricane :)
8,293 posts, read 16,157,144 times
Reputation: 7018
Quote:
Originally Posted by shuke
It's not that big a deal... single engine, four-seater Piper Cherokee 180. Good for daytrips, weekends, etc... but I wouldn't try flying it up to Telluride or anything like that.
It still beats a car in holiday traffic. Weekends are good enough.
I'm trying to catch up. Left off the other day middle of page 1, had replies ready to go and lost them to Vista rebooting last night
Shuke - this is an edit after posting... go consult with a few of the best firms so there will be conflict of interest & she can't use them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shuke
That's a good point. I do think she places her own desires ahead of those of the kids. In many respects, I feel she is very self-centered. And she does have a habit of disappearing to her room, leaving the kids to run around on their own. If she's really tired or otherwise "out of it", those kids quickly learn they'd better not disturb her when she's isolating, too! But yesterday, for example, seemed to be one of her better days. I know she went out and spent some money, but I don't really know much of what she did before I got home. When I did get home, she was up in the bedroom, as usual, and the kids were down in the newly cleaned playroom watching TV. Our boy was looking for me to come home, and he greeted me outside, while the girls came up from the playroom after I came inside. The wife had some frozen lasagna baking in the oven for dinner. I have a meeting every Tuesday night from 7:30 to 8:30pm, so my boy and i changed, put ran a couple of miles together, shot a few hoops outside, then I got changed and left for my meeting. When I left, she had served dinner to the kids and was eating her own dinner. My main meal is at lunch (we have catered lunches), so I usually just grab a quick bite after my meeting. When I got home, all the dirty plates were left on the table, half a pan of baked lasagna was left on the counter, and all 3 kids were watching tv in the playroom, while she was upstairs in the bedroom watching her own tv. I put the 3 kids to bed and cleaned up the worst of the mess in the kitchen, and got the kids' laundry running. That's about the best it gets in our house because she was relatively functional and there was no yelling.
Shuke, sounds like she had a fairly good/up day yesterday. I wonder if she sense something going on?
Your kids should be able to tell their side of the story. They can tell a mediator how their day goes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shuke
So I think she and I had a big expectation gap in this regard. And I still feel she doesn't fully understand that the lifestyle to which she has grown accustomed simply cannot be supported on a 9-5 job. yet, I think that is what she expects. She wants her hubby working the 9-5, no more, yet able to provide what she is presently enjoying. That's simply not reality.
The other problem I see is she is not willing to do anything to help you not have to work so much. Heck, if she knew how to shop, that would save you time from doing it and give her more time in the end.. same with cleaning / house chores. If she saved money by shopping sales, you would also feel that she is looking out not only for the kids (they get nice stuff still) but also concerned about your future as a family.
I have to say my hubby is pretty proud of me. I taught him how to shop sales (just about everything goes on sale) and that yes, we can have stuff from more expensive stores for half the price
Quote:
Originally Posted by shuke
No, I fully expect this will pretty much wipe me out. But remember... I look at what will happen in the long run. If I don't do this now, I will get the same result, at the latest, when the youngest child moves out of the house - but I will have fewer earning years left and it'll cost me a lot more then. Contrast that with the notion that I am convinced I can start with nothing right now and wind up with more in 20 years than I would have by staying married to her and assuming no divorce ever. So from an economic perspective, I have no problem doing this right now.
Shuke, I give you credit. You know there is a price for your happiness; I wish I could say the same for my dad.
He was in a love-less marriage. I have the same memories as you, work was brought home. He was an immigrant from the 50's that worked hard to get where he was when he passed.
He actually spoke to a few attorneys, they all said it would wipe him out so he listened to them and stayed. I can tell you that when he died, it was not "his wife" (yes, my "mother") that took care of him, but me. He had cancer, very sad story. Was diagnosed right before closing on his new house, 7 blocks from me, his favorite of 3 daughters. He had dreams of us spending time together, building computers and selling his work stuff at the local farmers market.
He had a 14% chance of living, spent his 69th birthday in the hospital sick as a dog. His "wife" visited him maybe a handful of times out of the 10 weeks he was in. The last time he was released from the hospital, she said "don't bring him home, send him to a nursing home", I didn't. She & I had a big fight over this, to this day we don't speak.
Anyway, did he wish he would have divorced her? Yes and had he lived he would have, although she doesn't know this. After she said to send him to a nursing home, that was the last straw, but he passed a few weeks later.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crazyworld
Shuke....we had friends who ended up in divorce court with a situation similar to yours....she did not work or if she did, she kept quitting...when it came to a settlement the judge awarded her $1 and told her to get off her butt and get a job!
See..there's hope.
When I divorced my ex it was due to domestic violence, I was not working. Since he cleaned the bank accounts out, I had to get a job & worked part time. By the time we got to court, while the judge was sympathetic to my situation, told me that I've worked (full time) before and need to do that again. He didn't want to hear about my daughter being in school (grade K) & said I'd find a way to figure it out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shuke
Not a bad idea, Marlow. I had actually thought of just letting her get what she axed for without a fight. You know the old adage, be careful what you ask for... you might just get it. I may ask about that tomorrow, but what would concern me the most about that is that, rather than letting me have them more and more, she might see the kids as a burden and get angry with them, resulting in lots of yelling by her at them, still no decent food, still no effort at maintaining a clean house by her, and so forth... basically, those kids could have a tough go of it before I could step in to get the situation corrected.
I don't like this. For one, you have a son with a disability. Can you trust he won't just get up and walk out of the house to "find you"? The youngest is what 5? Can a 5 year old be unsupervised every night?
Quote:
Originally Posted by shuke
It is possible that my wife might ask to leave the state with them. She's from West Virginia, and I know she yearns to return to the South. She never has really liked New England. But I would fight that one hard on a number of grounds... quality of schools is significantly less, and quality of medical care is significantly lower. And our boy is seeing a specialist at Mass. General Hospital (MGH) for his condition... this doctor could not be replaced except by a select few doctors in the country, so she would have a hard time saying he could get adequate care down in the 'holler.
Her leaving with the kids should be written in the divorce that it has to be a mutual agreement.
THANKS! Yeah, the hardest part was coming to accept that I probably won't get physical custody of all 3 kids. And all 3 are much more attached to me than to their mother. But I am hopeful I could at least get custody of my 7 year-old son, who has special needs and with whom my wife has great difficulty dealing. It is likely, though, that my wife will get physical custody of the two girls. I would expect we'll have joint legal custody of all 3.
And yeah, by all means.... hit me with any pearls you may have!
I made a post elsewhere 2 weeks ago, I'll copy some of it in.
Both of my ex's live over an hour away. We meet 1/2 way, or what is supposed to be 1/2 way; which is very generous considering I don't know any other custodial parent that does drive 1/2 way. This is especially useful if she takes the kids out of state.
We are supposed to do every other weekend on Friday, usually 4pm, but depending on what school they've been in, 4 is not always realistic, so between 4 & 6 pm. Sunday the drop off is 3 or 4 pm, no later as I not only have to drive but get home & cook, unpack her, wash her clothes, when she was younger it included me giving her a bath. Keep all of this in mind, especially if one of you moves farther.
We then do every other holiday, if I have her Christmas morning, she goes to her fathers Christmas night. I don't recall if it is in my custody arrangement that she spends a week in the summer, alternating spring & winter breaks. Most people I know get a total of 2 weeks a year with their child.
Birthdays - decide now if you will see them on their actual birthday, because if you live close you can, when someone moves farther it's hard. It could be that you both make plans for the child on their birthday, then the kids have to choose. If my ex was living closer, I would alternate. I am also supposed to have my child on my birthday & mothers day, he gets his birthday & fathers day.
Medical - he pays for insurance. It was me paying the 1st $250 of uncovered (including co-pay) then splitting it 50/50. When I stopped working due to my back, it changed to him being responsible for 75%.
Income tax - if the custodial parent is able to claim head of household, the non-custodial can claim the child to even it out. When the custodial parent marries, the child will be an alternate deduction for odd or even years. Since you have more then one child, and a different situation, figure out now who claims what child.
Phone calls - you might want to think to have a set amount of times to call and time of day. You would not believe the number of men I know that don't speak to their kids because the woman won't pick up the phone or have the kid call back.
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