Rainy, I cut that WAY back so it would be very clear and concise. It needs to be short and sweet. Remember, this is someone who is emotionally detached and in a fog so he is not apt to read through a long, sentimental message. I also added the conditions of resumed contact: he ends his affair and commits to the marriage.

I am wary about your SIL being the IM, but if you think she could do it well, I would give it a try. She needs to act as a SPAM filter and NOT let anything other than pertinent information about child visitation and finances go through. He will try to send through long fogbabble letters lecturing you for going dark and blaming you for the affair. That cannot get through.

Will your SIL agree to do that?

I would also change your locks so your H does not come barging in.

Has your atty gone after your H for the maximum support? What about filing on grounds of adultery? Can that be done in your state? You should be going after your husband to make sure you have the MAXIMUM benefit from a divorce.

Here is my suggestion for your letter:

My Dear Husband,

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to write, something I have mentally worked on for months and hoped I would not have to do it. I would like to acknowledge and apologize for my part in the demise of our marriage. I neglected your needs, and failed to give you what you needed many times. I am deeply sorry for this. I know I helped to create an environment that made it possible for this affair to develop.

I have said this before and I want to say it again: I am willing to do whatever I can to put our marriage back together in a mutually satisfying way. I have learned a great deal through all of this. I feel that I am learning a lot about how to be the type of woman that I hope you would feel proud to call your wife. I so want to put the past behind us and build a better and beautiful life for us and for our children.

Your affair has been the most painful event of my life. The past 4 months have been the worst. I have felt so much hurt and pain, disbelief, and despair. I never thought I could survive something like this. It is because of this that I must separate from you completely.

It is simply too difficult, too heart-wrenching, too anxiety-inducing, for me to see you or to be in contact with you. This is not in any way meant to punish you. I will not see you, talk to you, or communicate with you directly in any way. Please respect my need to do this under these circumstances. Any pertinent matters regarding the children or finances should be sent through IM. Legal matters should be communicated through our lawyers.

I ask that you do not contact me until you have ended all contact for life with OW and are committed to saving our marriage.

I love you, my sweet husband. You are the love of my youth, the father of my children, the man I shared my life with, my husband of 22 years. I want to finish raising our children together, be grandparents together, grow old together. I want to love and support and care for each other through the rest of our lives. I love you with all of my heart. You know what I am willing to do. You saw it. You saw what our marriage could be, what we could do together.

With all my love,

Rainy

Agree 100% with this.

I posted it in her thread earlier on, but I'll post it again for her.

Here it is rainysweet.
IM Training School

rainy, if you can't find someone you know to act as your IM give me a shout.

Thank you all for the advice on everything. I appreciate the support. It's helped me to feel more hope and more in control of my own life than I have for awhile.

Agree with everyone on shortening the PBL. And I think blackraven would make a great IM for you. I definitely would strongly consider using her over your SIL...

ITA.

rainy, I will vouch for blackraven. I have met her and even had dinner with her! She is a wonderful lady. Now, who will vouch for me?

Thank you so much, Black Raven, for your generous offer. If I cannot come up with another plan, I'll let you know. I am considering asking one friend.

Thanks for the vouching, Melody , SusieQ, and Scotland.

I am in the process of revising Plan B letter, taking into consideration the suggestions given to me by some of you (thanks to ML and IG for all the time spent on that, especially!).

Couple more questions for you all:

I mentioned my husband seems bent on pushing through a divorce. Do I appear to be weak or in denial if my Plan B letter does not address that? If it says under what conditions I am willing to work on the marriage, and I ignore the D word all together? Would it be better to acknowledge what I would agree to in a D? Or to simply tell him I'm cutting off contact with him? Or do I want to say I'll work on the marriage when the OW is completely out of the picture and he's committed to MR, like I did?

He threatened me that if I ever contact OW again he will take away all support. He could, theoretically, do this. He owns his own side business, relatively small although plenty of income for him to live off of, which he can easily hide income from. He could quit his regular job, and it would be very hard to nail down how much money he makes, and impossible to garnish his wages. He told me his plan flat out. Of course I could fight him, but he could make my life very difficult in the process, and my children would certainly suffer if they lost their house, etc. I have no idea what he is capable of anymore, so I can't doubt that he might very well follow through with the threat.

That said, is it worth sending a copy of Plan B letter to Ms. Amazing, as Dr. H typically recommends? She is very insecure and controlling, so I'm sure it would inspire another round of fits from her, and insisting on his pushing the divorce through. Possibly worth the conflict, and her wondering? Or just forget it and don't bother with her?

No mention of D in letter other than what Melodylane suggested about 'all legal matters' in her post up on the top of the page.

Send OW a copy?.....I would. Basically, it says, I am sending him off with these conditions. I am still in the game.

Will she be peeved and will he pull the financial rug out from under you? Maybe.
But are you going to be scared of his actions the rest of your life? He could hide his money any time he wants and could decide to do it anyway.

YK?

Don't mention D at all. Just outline your conditions, and let that be that.

Do NOT acknowledge what you would or would not do in a D. Right now, you are all about marriage.

Rainy, I would not mention divorce in the letter. Word it just as I laid out. In the meantime, you should countersue on grounds of adultery and abandonment and go after as much money as possible for as long as you can get it. If you can, have that ho subpoenaed into court to give sworn testimony about her adultery.

Be certain and send that skank a copy of your letter with a note attached.

As far a your husband threats to hide money from you, don't worry about that. A good attorney will easily catch him and you can give testimony about his threat.

I'm reasonably sure this little entity we have that is known as the Internal Revenue Service could assist in this little matter if it came to that. Their computers are slightly better than our PCs and MACs.

Your last post is all about your fears. But you cannot make good, sound decisions based on fear. Your decisions should be based on sound judgement driven by reason and logic.

Your husband should hear about the divorce when he is served with your counter suit by an armed sheriff. He doesn't need to hear about it from you.

Feelings follow actions rainysweet.

We know you love him, but,
he doesn't know who he is messing with.....

powerful and sure and true...... the mother to his children.

Booyah.

If he chooses to be giving up his position as head of the house, he will need to reckon with the attorney representing the new head (aka you).

Exactly as the others have posted. Do EVERYTHING MelodyLane suggested. She will NOT steer you wrong.

Okay, but I am the one who filed the legal separation. In that agreement, WH gives me more money than he is legally obligated to. So if I get ugly, I will actually get less money. I tried to put grounds of adultery in there, but my attorney told me it would only make me look bad, like I was trying to be vindictive and slanderous, and could actually hurt me in court with regard to child support, alimony, and custody issues. Apparently adultery is not viewed as a big deal in the legal system these days. Worse to come across as a scorned woman than as a home wrecking whore.

So, yes the sewer rat tramp deserves to be called into court - no doubt. And the dark part of me would love to knock her right off her high and mighty pedestal, as well as make WH look like the jerk he is being. I would love all that.

You're all correct that I can't let my fears run me.

BUT . . . as a logical, rational adult who is responsible not only for my own life, but for the lives of 4 other people, I can't afford to be selfish like WH and OW and only think about what would give me thrills and self satisfaction in the next 5 minutes. These are the facts:

WH pays me more than he has to right now. Guilt can be used to your advantage if you time it right:) I'm sure it was partly the grace of God that his heart was softened during Nov/Dec as I have said, the timing was perfect, and he actually helped get the kids and me out of an apartment (albeit he put us there - out of our nice home) and into a decent home that is ONLY in my name - yahoo! It is much smaller than our family home, has no yard, etc. But it is MINE - he cannot take it away or enter without my permission. It is nice, great for me and the kids, simple, less complicated, and I'm very grateful for that. NO WAY would he be willing to do that for me the way he is right now, so a miracle really.

So my children's lives are not the same certainly, but he does help enough that they can be in a house, participate in activities, etc - things they likely could not do with minimum child support. Less disruption in their lives than there could be. I'm a teacher - enough said about my salary. I could look for a higher paying job, but I'd rather be on the same schedule with my children, more time with them.

Also, while it is sad that he is so uninvolved in the children's lives, it is a blessing that he has largely left them alone, especially recently, with the way he is right now. Time with him is time spent in total misery for them at this point. If he could be a decent dad, that would be another story. But he isn't. So it makes all our lives easier that he mostly leaves them alone.

The legal separation agreement can be converted to a divorce with both our signatures. He has signed that. I have not. He is therefore motivated, due to pressure from OW, to perhaps give me more money than he has been to get me to sign. If he does, I'll take it gladly at this point. I feel no pity for him at all. I'lll take anything I can get. It either goes to make my children's lives better, or goes to pay for the bimbo to lie on the beach. No guilt there.

If I try to redo it all I'll have to start over with a new attorney - a huge expense. The one I have is good, reasonable, and fair. He's not a pit bull though, doesn't want to make it ugly if it can be avoided.

I could get more alimony for a longer period of time. But I'd rather have more child support now, while I have more kids at home and need it more. When the kids are gone, I can take care of myself. It's giving them a good life that is my major concern, which is why I agreed to things as they are. (I am trying to get him to give me more money for a longer period of time for our youngest son, as it runs out too soon to benefit him for his last years at home - part of why I have refused to sign it over to a divorce).

If I make it ugly with my WH, I will end up with less money overall, especially right now when I have 3 kids at home still and one who is barely in college and really still needs help. He will also sue for joint custody just to spite me. It's doubtful he will win that as I can argue abandonment, but he can certainly exercise his right to take the kids every other weekend and one night a week - something he has not done. That would be awful for them. In the year and a half since he's been gone my youngest son stayed over with him ONE night. And he came to our former home in the beginning one weekend and stayed with the boys while I took our daughter to an out of town dance competition. It would be a major upset and disruption in their lives at this point if he started to try to force them to go with him out of spite - and it would be an ugly court battle if I tried to fight it, very expensive and traumatic for the kids. (I've already discussed all this with my attorney with regard to state laws, etc).

So bottom line is: I can either enjoy the grim satisfaction of exposing WH and OW for what they are and making their lives a little less pleasant, possibly damaging the affair; or I can suck it up and leave them alone, which actually makes life more pleasant for my children. I would rather make my children's lives the best I can than make WH and OW's lives the worst I can. Make sense?

I am looking into the possibility of suing her for alienation of affection, once our D is settled, if it comes to that. But if I do that, I want it to blindside both of them, after he's already agreed to pay me as much as possible, and after her own D is final, with her getting as much as she can from her FH - the more she has, the more I can go after. So there's my dark side satisfaction, but all in good time, with my ducks in a row first.

It's not "satisfaction". You do what you have to--file on grounds of adultery. Your lawyer is supposed to work FOR YOU. YOU tell him what you want.

Make it ugly. Fight for everything you can get. You can bet HE will be fighting for all he's worth, so why should you back down?

Why should you make their lives easier?