Good morning,

As some of you may know, my W and I should be starting the financial settlement soon. She recently brought up child support and how much she expects to get. She has a very inflated idea of what that will be. She is basing her expectations solely on my income and not the difference in our incomes and the fact that we have a 50/50 custody agreement. Anyway, that's an issue I told her I'll leave up to the lawyers.

The other big financial issue is retirement benefits. She's worked for a large corp for 12 yrs (we've been married almost 7) with 401k, profit sharing and stocks. I work for a small company with only some mutual funds I pay into, about $10k so far. As a matter of law, we are both entitled to a portion on each other retirement benefits as they are considered "marital property", regardless of whose name they are in. I have not mentioned any of this to her for a couple of reasons: 1) I didn't want financial issues to influence her decision and 2) that's her lawyer's job. If her lawyer is on the ball, she should have raised this issue with her. The question I have for you is should I bring it up? I don't want her to be blindsided (not my problem, I know) and it may give her something to think about if she hasn't already. In her state of mind (very foggy at times), she may not have given it any thought. On the other hand, she may just be playing mum hoping I don't make it an issue.

Also, a week or so ago I posted that I have given up. Well, the truth is I'm ready to move on, but haven't really closed the door yet. I was just wondering if before we get too involved with the financial issues, should I let her know one last time that the door's not quite closed yet? I haven't told her that in a while, things have been all "business" the last couple of months. I know what you're all going to say, but I thought I'd ask.

sad dad

<small>[ January 03, 2003, 07:08 AM: Message edited by: sad dad ]</small>

Dear Sad:
How sad would you be if you found out later that she was just waiting for you to make one last move?

All you can do is all you can do. Try it.

On the issue of the financial agreements, are you thinking that you want part of her retirement or not? I think I would leave that one up to the lawyers.

DB

DB,

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by dazedblonde:
<strong>On the issue of the financial agreements, are you thinking that you want part of her retirement or not? I think I would leave that one up to the lawyers.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yes. I'm entitled to it and it was money that was invested for OUR future. If we didn't have this option, we would have invested in some other retirement vehicle which would be split up equitably. Still may leave that to the lawyers.

I'll see what others have to say about "one last move".

sad dad

sad dad-

I'm sorry to hear that you're at this stage with the proceedings as I know it must be tough with the proximity to the holidays and all.

My situation was a little different in that my XW and I reached a out of court settlement, but she also had a larger retirement account than I did. I remember you mentioned something about selling a house and what we did was make up the difference by taking it out of her share of the equity. (Ex. Her retirement is 10K larger, she gets 10k less in equity) From what our attorneys told us, this is what the judge would've recommended. Sorry if this doesn't apply. Hang in there and God bless!

SD -

I'm playing devil's advocate here -

I think that you should ask yourself how you would feel if she actually decided to try. If your ready to move on, and ahe turns around, would this be what YOU really want?

At this point would it be more of a situation where you KNOW in your heart that she would say NO but are only asking to be courteous (sp?)?

I am all for reconcilliation and would LOVE to see it work out. I just think that you should REALLY examine your motives prior to making the comments.

If you decide that you want to offer one more white flag of truce - do it for the RIGHT reasons.

SD - I see two different issues here that should not be presented simultaneously to her, IMHO.

Second one first: one more try? I think you've got nothing to lose in reminding her that you still don't want to divorce and that you still think you two can recover to a better narriage - if you really believe this.

Financial matters: If you live in a "community property" state, you are each entitled to half of each other's retirement accounts. Period. Too bad for her that her accounts are higher. The opposite could have been true - as in my case by a LOT. So, I see some poetic justice in HER divorce costing HER money. Yes, perhaps I'm vicariously vindictive.

Should you alert her to this? Maybe. Have you worked out how much you owe her to buy her out of the house? Wasn't that also figured on a 50/50 basis? If this has been settled, she should understand the 50/50 basis. Perhaps she naively believes this doesn't apply to retirement accounts.

I think it's fair to clue her in, although not necessarily directly. A way to do this, perhaps, is to report all your holdings to your lawyer and ask him/her to query her lawyer about her holdings in order to pre-determine who will owe who. This will require her lawyer to breech the topic with her. Alternatively, you can just "advise" her that she should be aware that she may owe you some of her retirement funds since there has to be an equitable split.

But my main point is that these two topics are incompatible due to the perception she may form that they are linked. "Oh, I decline your last offer, so you retaliate by taking my money!!" or "You're using money to try to force me to reconcile!!"

WAT

SD,

If you feel in your heart that you could work thing out with your W again, then why not ask. What does it hurt?

I had asked my WW up till the very end that we could stop the D and at least try to make it work. For me, it removed any regrets If I did not try to reconcile with xW.

As far as the financial settlement, think if it this way. You take all of your monies, retirement benifits, home equity, cars and every else that has value and put it in one big ball. Remember that this should all be marital property. Once in the settlement meeting, both parties will try to come up with a percentage on what each party should receive. For example - W get 55% of the big ball and H gets 45% of it.

I found out that as far as retirement benifits, the lawyers would like them to stay put with the person it belongs to. If W has 50,000 and H has 10,000, then the H would receive 40,000 from the big ball that I spoke about. At least that's what happened in my case.

In what Kily's reply - he's right, but reading your replies for some time now, I think you would like to give it a final try. Just my 2 cents of course!

Good Luck

Dino

litch,

Good memory abut the house. I am in the process of buying her out. We have about $100k in equity which we are splitting evenly and she'll use her half to get a place of her own. I don't know what the difference in our retirements packages are (could be $10k, could be $70k). If she were to pay me my share out of the equity of the house, she may not have much left to put down on her own place. I know that's not my problem, but my daughter has to have a nice place to live when she's with my W. Whatever the final settlement is, she'll have to come up with the money somehow.

WAT,

Your are right, these are two seperate issues and the second is probably better dealt with first. If I do ask her one more time if this is truly what she wants, I don't want the financial issues "on the table" so to speak. As I said, I don't want $$$ to influence her decision, nor do I want it to come off like a threat as you experessed.

kily & dino,

I do still love my W and truly believe we can be happy together, but after two years of this (and 14 months of "divorcing"), if this is really what she wants, then it's time to get it over and move on. That doesn't mean I think it's the right thing to do. I'll probably never think it was. As I said before, things have been all "business" lately, which is necessary at some point, but I want her to know that in spite of that, this still isn't what I want, I'm just dealing with the real issues that need to be dealt with.

sad dad

SadDad, I highly doubt that enough "reality" has hit your wife yet to think that she might give you a different answer. Actually, I worry that by letting her know you're still open to reconcilliation she might just stay in the fog all the more because there is no doubt that you're still an available option. It wasn't until I realized that the DV was about to be final and that H was in fact moving on quite well without me (he finally withdrew enough from me that I noticed) that I dropped the pride and came out of the fog.

Have you EVER done a 180?? Have you contemplated it at all? The reason I ask it that in our situation it had the most effect on me. My H didn't do it on purpose, but by coming to a point of acceptance he started to move on and naturally a distance began to occur between us. I wouldn't have noticed it in Plan B, but because we were still in contact it had an effect.

Personally I'd just continue on as planned. If you don't want her blindsided by the financial issues then take WAT's advice and let it be introduced by the lawyer.

sad dad-

As Dino mentioned, your attorneys will most likely recommend that retirement accounts stay with each person and that the difference be made up somewhere else.

If you don't mind my asking, are you the plaintiff or defendant in this upcoming settlement?

-G

h4f,

Very enlightening answer. I'm torn between letting her know I still want our marriage (which will allow her to keep me in her back pocket) and accepting the situation as is and moving on (not to get some reaction but just as a natural course of things). A 180, hmmmm??? Very interesting. You must have read some "Divorce Busting" stuff.

Maybe letting my lawyer to introduce the financial stuff and dealing with CS issues is best. I really want as little to do with that as possible as I know it may get hairy.

Right now, I'm just hoping all goes well with the house. Thanks.

litch,

I am the defendent/respondent. She filed.

sad dad

<small>[ January 03, 2003, 10:40 AM: Message edited by: sad dad ]</small>

I didn't have much time here to read all the postings as thoroughly as perhaps I should have before commenting.

I just want to say that if you feel at all like there's hope, please let her know! We're on the flip side as I was the WS, but my exH filed. I asked him up until the very end before finalization if he would consider reconciliation. The answer was always, "no". It still is a blunt 'no', five months after final D. But, in the end, no matter where it goes I'll know I did my best in trying to reconcile and in trying to 'make up' for my HUGE mistake.

Retirement/401K--he got it all, and it was LARGE. I'd been a stay at home mom for years, I have very little retirement at this point. I did, however, get the house without having to pay him any money. It was rather even, with the equity here. Frankly we never had ONE FIGHT in our marriage , ever, about money--so I just let the attorneys handle it and I never cared too much about any of it.

Just had to at least post that I thought it was important to let her know how you felt. It took years for my 'fog' to lift, AND even more importantly it took YEARS to swallow my pride, end it with OM, and admit what a foolish mistake the whole thing was. I think many people who are in affairs hang on much longer as they're trying to 'prove' that it was 'true love', and it wasn't all in vain. If you could delay the divorce up until that point, and you're willing to forgive--there is a lot of hope, right?

Hope this has made some sense,
HP

I remember reading somewhere that 401K splits are dependent on years married -- 10 years is cutoff where the money is split irregardless of whose name it is in -- but this may vary by state.

hopeful,

Money has never really been that important to me, but looking out for my future is. My father worked for the same company for 48 yrs and didn't have a pension fund until the last 6 yrs. My parents never planned for the future, a product of the times I guess. When my father retired, they got about $500/month from his pension and $1800/month from social security. My father died 9 months after he retired and my mom's SS was cut in half, so she had about $1300/month to live on the past 11 yrs. Doesn't make for much of a quality of life. She passed away 3 weeks ago. I don't want to find myself in a similar situation. Hope that explains why it's so important to me that I protect my future.

sad dad

I think it is reasonable to try to protect yourself. You didn't want the D and were willing to make the effort to save it. Your W wants it so she must face the consequences.

My sis (in Idaho) has joint custody with her X, with a 50-50 time split. They divide child expenses equally. He could have gone after her for a small amount of CS- she made a bit more than him. He didn't. (But he remarried within a year of the D, and shares living expenses with his wife who makes a good living, so he's better off financially).

There was no infidelity- my sis initiated the D. My BIL was depressed, withdrew from her, and had no idea of how to save his M when my sis had had enough. (Example- she had to have her gall bladder removed- he wouldn't take a day off and go to the operation with her). They split everything 50-50. Maybe you'll have to contribute slightly more based on your higher income. But it won't be alot. Maybe 55-45 instead of 50-50.

Remember, when your W was building her retirement account, she no doubt had less money to contribute to shared expenses. Did you shoulder more of the financial burden of day to day? Could you have been building your retirement account up more if that wasn't the case? Why is hers so much larger?

But it is probably best to let the lawyers handle it. And if discussion about it happens, just refer her to your lawyer. You can say stuff like My lawyers are only asking for what I am entitled to under the law.

Re: contacting her to reiterate your desire to still work on the marriage. Do you think she thinks you don't want the M now?

Yes it's important to avoid linking the money and the M together. But I don't think she'd reconcile with you over a few dollars in a retirement account.

You could send a short note before the lawyers get into it- just saying that you are sorry that it has come to this, you value your M and would have liked a different ending to this story- but you accept she has different wishes. She ought to get the hint. I am sure your W knows you would take her back.

HI SD- I just wanted to throw in my two cents here also- if your W DOES change her mind and want to cancel the divorce it would take ALOT of work and counselling to get both of you to the point of having a satisfying marriage again. The night my H cancelled his D action our counselor said that it would be 18 mo MINIMUM to repair the anger, lack of trust, communication problems etc. caused by the spiralling down that was occuring before I found out about the A.This proved to be true because a year and a half later we were still in counseling and both still having serious issues with each other.The frustrating part is that after you work thru the incredible amount of post-affair damage you will still have the UNDERLYING marital problems that led to the emotional distance between the two of you before the affair to figure out and try to correct. I think if my WS wasn't really committed to this for the long-haul I don't know how we would still be together. I just want you to think long and hard about if you are REALLY are up to the recovery process if your W changes her mind about the D. Take care- lifeismessy

espoir,

"Did you shoulder more of the financial burden of day to day?"

Yes.

"Could you have been building your retirement account up more if that wasn't the case?"

Yes. I could have put as much as I wanted into my mutual funds, but I put what we could afford just to diversify a little.

"Why is hers so much larger?"

She works for a large corp with 401k, profit sharing and stocks. I work for a small company with only some mutual funds to pay into with no employer contributions.

I'm not sure if I'll say anything about the door still being open. Hope4future had some pretty sound advice on that from a WS perspective.

If I implied any connection between reconciling and $$$, that's not how I meant it. Two separate issues that just happened to be in the same post. In fact, if after the financial sh*t hits the fan she were to suddenly want to consider reconciling, I'd be VERY leery.

lim,

I doubt very much my W would cancel the D at this point, but as hope4future said, my W has yet to see enough reality up to this point for anything to change now. You raise some very good points, recovery would be a LONG process, but if the opportunity arose, I'd have to consider it, if for no other reason than for my daughter. I don't know how I'd look her in the eye if her mother wanted to try and I said no.

sad dad

<small>[ January 04, 2003, 12:00 AM: Message edited by: sad dad ]</small>