Well it's done. At least the shouting and arm waving. Twelve hours of mediation with lawyers on Friday is how my marriage ended. STBXW agreed to the permanent parenting plan with me as the primary parent in January. On Friday last week, a mediator helped negotiate the financial aspects. A couple of suprises occurred.
If you provide honest appraisals of properties, your spouse may get really inflated appraisals to skew the numbers that a mediator cannot negate and simply split the difference. The difference in her appraisals was $250,000 in her favor for two properties. That's a lot of money to split when you're confident your appraisals are middle of the road. I would have skewed them my way if I had thought about it. I'm considering going after one of the appraisers for fraud his estimate was so high... I guess we'll see.
A second surprise was that my STBXW gets to count her plane tickets from Paris to Seattle as child support. EXCUSE ME?! The mediator said that was the law and it had been upheld in the Washington supreme courts. He looked at me and asked how I would feel if I were the moving parent. I said " would hustle my butt back to where my children were." I could see the cause if a parent moved a child away from the non-custodial parent's area, but in this case she voluntarily renewed her assignment overseas instead of returning to her post in Seattle as is promised by her contract with the government. Seems like a re-write to the State law is in order there too! It doesn't affect me, it affects our 9 year old.
The final surprise was pleasant. It seems our 19 year old is still covered under financial aspects of the divorce. So he was added into the agreement to pay for his college over and above what he makes at his job. That's good news for me since my STBXW had cut off money to him in January for a short period. This way she can't do that by court order. I can obtain a student loan for him to meet my part of the obligation, so I'll work that out with him in the Spring.
This should all be wrapped up by the end of the month... so it's been a long year. I'm scheduled to meet with the pastor at a new church on Wednesday, and life is slowly getting back to normal.
SIS <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
