The middle path is the wisest. Moderation in all things (except, perhaps, verbiage- the following is pretty long- thanks in advance to all those who wade through it).

I wrote out what I wanted to say, and practiced saying it calmly (I'm an actor by education, if not by trade, so it was perfectly natural to me). I even tried to anticipate her objections, and practiced some responses. I felt calm and ready, if not completely detached.<p>But, I knew I didn't want to issue ultimatums if I didn't have to. I didn't (and don't) want to draft the papers with her, but for reasons I'll go into below, I also didn't want to just wash my hands of it and leave it all to her. So, this was obviously going to be a "think on your feet" experience- like just about everything in this MLC experience, she's leading the dance, and it's up to me to follow as adeptly as I can.<p>She called me when she and the kids got back from some shopping and said "come on over." I drove over, we all watched the Muppets Christmas Carol for a bit, then we put the kids to bed. She and I sat down with our checkbooks and figured out who pays daycare and who pays ballet lessons this month, then got our datebooks and started planning where the kids will be on what days over the holidays and the next few months. We had no problems agreeing on any of this.<p>Then, it was obvious that the next item on the agenda was the "Marital Termination Agreement" example she had given me before. But, she didn't dive right into it- she and I chatted about work, the curriculum committee she runs, the budget freeze I'm under, etc. etc. etc. She got up and made herself some tea, and asked if I wanted any, which I didn't. I know I shouldn't psychoanalyze, but she didn't seem like a woman hell-bent on getting D papers filed. <p>And, once she sat down again and started talking, it was clear she wasn't expecting me to write the things with her, at least not tonight. She just wanted to know if I'd read it (I had in July, when she first got it), and if I agreed with her pencil check-marks about which paragraphs apply to us and which don't. <p>I breathed a slight sigh of relief. She's not pushing the pen into my hand (or the laptop under my fingers, more literally), so there's no need (yet) to make a show of pushing it away. I can do what a number of people have suggested to me- let her do the leg work, but negotiate on the salient points of dividing assets, etc. Don't let her dictate terms, but don't be so helpful that you do the work for her. Moderation. The Middle Path.<p>Our financial entanglements are few. We own two homes, and we agree that she'll get one and I'll get the other; I own my car, and she hers; we have no joint assets save $13.26 in a joint checking account; because she has been out of the house for a while, we've already split furnishings and dishes and junk of that sort. Our incomes are relatively equal, and child support and alimony are out of the question. Sure, it would be a hassle, but compared to some D's, it's simple. <p>And my wife may be unreasonable about our relationship right now, but she isn't generally unreasonable. We only hit two sticking points, and one is on the way to resolution. First, attorney's fees. I reiterated that any papers that she files I will have to have my own attorney review. We won't "just use hers." In the sample docs, there was a paragraph about each party having his/her own representation and each party being responsible for that lawyer's costs. She's trying to argue that I will benefit from her lawyer's time; her reasoning goes "I could just write the petition myself, put in it everything I want, and then you'd have to respond. But, instead, I'm cooperating with you and we're writing it together, which is to your benefit, avoiding court and lawyer fees. So, you should pay some part of my lawyer's fees because she's helping you as well." I didn't convince her otherwise, but I did impress upon her that I know what I'll be paying my own lawyer for, but I don't know yet what exactly hers will be doing, what the process is, so I can't agree to that. If I had a better idea of what she would be billing us for, then we'd have better info to make a decision about this. So, that topic was tabled- she said she'd contact her lawyer to discuss that, and get back to me.<p>Delay, delay, delay.<p>Second topic- the one area which is not equal between us is assets. I have them, and she doesn't. I have an IRA and some savings, and no debts; she has lots of credit card and student loan debts, and a very small IRA. Our finances when married were very separate- we had a joint checking account for house and kid expenses, we both put about the first 40% of our pay in to it, and then whatever we had left was separate. When she spent $2500 on a new PowerBook, it was none of my business. The fact that I put $2000 yearly into an IRA is none of hers, or shouldn't be. But, she sometimes looks at the differences in our net worths and tries to make a case that some of my IRA should be hers (and, to be fair, the state of Minnesota says it most likely is). So, this might be a sticking point, but as we talked, she began to see my point- I had chosen to put my money in an IRA and not buy a new car, for example. She had made her financial choices as well. I could tell she didn't like that realization, but it was dawning on her. <p>So, that was all for the papers last night. Did I then get up and go home? No, we sat and talked more, about Minnesota's idiot governor, and her problems with her dean and her curriculum committee at school, and how our 3-year-old son has inherited the "argumentation gene" that his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father all exhibited. About splitting the Christmas decorations so we'd both have enough.<p>And then here's a good one. I mentioned that I wasn't looking forward to painting some house trim this spring, but I couldn't find a painter for such a small job, so I'd have to get on an extension ladder 30' in the air and do it. She said "I could do that for you." I jokingly asked her what her hourly rate is, and she suggested we trade labor, since she has some electrical work (moving switches, adding outlets) she'd like done and which I know how to do. thump thump thump-that's the sound of me hitting my head against the wall. If things proceed according to her fantasy, we'll be divorced by then, but she'll paint my trim and I'll ground the outlets in her bathrooms. thump thump thump I guess it's no different from the time she said she'd like to ask my mom for tips on french-braiding our daughter's hair- huh? My mom can barely stand to hear her name right now, and she thinks she'll sit down and have coffee with her sometime?<p>At one point, my stomach rumbled quite audibly. She asked "what that you? Are you hungry?" I said I guessed I was. "Why didn't you say something? I could make you a sandwich or something?" thump thump thump<p>Anyway, we suddenly realized it was 11:30- much later than either of us wanted to stay up. Time had flown. We once again had had a nicer time together than many married couples I've seen. Lisa W says "why do they think we'll cooperate on D, if we had trouble cooperating on marriage?" For me, it's a little different- it's "how can she want a D when we have so little trouble cooperating on marriage?" But, patience, patience, patience. A potential storm passed with little or no damage.

There are two ways to proceed,
have your own attorney review it, and not tell her, and then you negotiate with her with that knoweldge.<p>Then when you file, and see the judge, you can produce your own lawyer, who IS REQUIRED for you by law. (I believe)<p>Secondly, some states require the NCS to provide some CS, regardless that the CS makes more that the NCS. Kind of backward, but as long as you two agree and split the child time equally, then the CS should not be a big sticking point.<p>Finally, you should always receive a copy of the latest agreement for review, and then get sample agreements from your lawyer, so that you understand the framework and the typical requirements. If you don't you won't be familiar with the typical statements that CAN be used.<p>However, don't you think for a minute that if her lawyer reviews it, and sees that she doesn't get the state statute portion of your retirement, he will push her into changing her point of view. He will say that he is advising her in her best interests, and that if she does not accept it, he won't be her lawyer in court because it is not fair, and he does not agree with it. So that puts pressure on her to change it to the state statutes, and that's how X's lawyer changed her mind, and got her all excited.<p>And when i read her lawyer's wording, the "threats" that the lawyer put in the agreement weren't really an issue, as if she did the math closely, she got 1/2 the money, and after the adjustment for the stock market, she got more than 50% in total. So the lawyer was really posturing for position, and although i knew i could get the money back, she obviously did not understand the math and finances involved. So don't expect her position to stay cooperative, and get your own lawyer.<p>I did what you said you would do, a little more formally, and then told her that this is her solution to her problem. . . . and since i took the lead for the agreement, she expected me to take the lead on the legal work. nope, didn't do it.<p>In fact, she opened the mediation with she didn't want any child support. she didn't want any of my money, it was tainted with hard work. so after the agreement, i also didn't pay her the CS in the agreeement, and didn't pay her her portion as my attorney told me that the money does not shift until after the agreement is approved by the courts. Well, i misinterpreted that statement by lawyer to mean that CS is not paid until agreement is approved, but i was not in any hurry to do that either. If she didn't want me, i wasn't about to pay her to not want me.<p>After the mediation comment of not wanting any of my money, all of a sudden, she said, "I am sick and tired of living this way!" I guess she realized that i provided more than she thought, which pissed her off even more, since she then wanted more CS.<p>so take it to your lawyer, and have him tell you where the courts will object and start planning your rebuttal.<p>good luck,<p>WIFTTy<p>BTW, my X is from that same career and thought process, and one of the pressures she succumbed to is that all but one of her peers in her department were divorced, and some remarried, some not. And so she felt some pressure, and her equal in school divorced her H, and adopted a baby, and that put such pressure on her to be a better super parent educator image. (however, it is backfiring on the kids, as she looks great, the kids are getting even less parenting attention from us, and they are slowly adopting crappy values.) And she defends her position by saying she is a teacher and knows kids (BS!) and her parents' (also teachers), brother and SIL (SIL also a teacher) and grandparents' parented this way virtually, so since she sees all of her FOO as successful, then what she is doing is no problem.<p>What she can't do is stand back, take off the rose colored glasses and understand the implications of her actions on the future. (She has said that the future is irrelevant, she only lives in the present!)<p>
good luck again.<p>WIFTTy

dabigtrain,<p>You must be one confused dude! It IS the strangest separation I have heard of, but at least you CAN talk without screaming at each other (for now). DO get your own lawyer's advice; it is silly of W to expect you to do otherwise.<p>Wiftty, <p>I am a teacher. You know this. And I find it a bit insulting for you to talk about teachers in the way that you do. Hey, call me sensitive, but I really do!<p>I was good at my job, I have an excellent teaching record, and I loved kids and I knew kids, just as she says.....trouble is, teaching techniques don't work on our own kids. Your X has yet to figure this out, but I learned it very early on.<p>Your wife is a teacher and you and her are divorced, and that is sad, and you are angry.<p>But PLEASE, for the sake of the many teachers here on the board, leave her profession out of it, ok?<p>I hope you will take this as a friend should. You are hurting some of your friends by putting down teachers. Please don't.<p>Love and light,<p>Jacky

Nina,<p>I am sorry if i offended any teachers, my anger came from a disagreement/argument with the math teacher to whom i used to be married last night. Again, the topic was reality, if you follow my recent Math post, you will see the problem into which i ran.<p>although not all teachers are created equal, i have on good, third party, independent doctorate level sources, both at graduate school, and at her school, that an oocupational hazard to the high level teaching career is:<p>1) that after moving kids from the same point A to the same Point B every year, year after year, that one believes that the historical method is the only way that the world works, and needs not to be improved/changed, etc.<p>2) that the total control over the classroom environment is so seductive that it is an occupational hazard that leads to believing that one can control much larger aspects of the world outside the classroom in the same manner.<p>3) the rest of the world progresses by continuing to move to the next point continually, or the job/competition will take it over. The real world does not stop at Point B.<p>4) there is a very thick grey line over the responsibility for the grades. Is the teacher or the student responsible for the grade? if the teacher assumes the kid, there is little incentive to improve the teaching methods.<p>5) the people that talked to me said that the concept that "We teach the best way to our students." is so ingrained that there is resentment against outsiders who bring in valid alternative methods and ways. (I have witnessed this first hand.) <p>6) Yet, good managers in industry who supervise and groom their subordinates for advancement are as effective teachers as those in institutional settings.<p>So I apologize for criticizing teachers, however, why is it that most of the schools that are similar to the X have a statistically high percentage of teachers married to other teachers?
There has to be something cliquish about the teaching profession that does not get along with the rest of the world.<p>BTW, there is the reality that three out of 4 marriages, (75%) at these institutions where one spouse was not married to a teacher, but worked in the outside, real world, ended in divorce.<p>there has to be something there. . . . . it can't be coincident. . . .<p>again, sorry for the anger, but i interact with this mentality all the time. . . and it irks me. . . and that is my opinion. . . <p>WIFTTy<p>[ December 07, 2001: Message edited by: WhenIfindthetime ]</p>

Well, I didn't expect I was going to start such a controversy...<p>WIFTTy, thanks for your reply regarding lawyers, etc. I am sorry that your X got sucked into the adversarial system; both my W and I profess to want to avoid that, and your example is almost an object lesson in why we should. I'm also paying special attention to your story, because of the line in your sig: "X had a massive MLC, blamed me for losing herself..." I could have written that, too. <p>And now, I'll wade into the crocodile-infested waters of the "teachers debate..."<p>My take is maybe more charitable- at least on the college-level, I don't see teachers arrogantly thinking the rest of their lives can be run like their classrooms. I see a career path that ruins their personal lives more so than any other, save perhaps law and police work. <p>My W is an excellent teacher- so excellent that she puts far more time into her classes than she's paid for. She works constantly from mid-August to mid-May, and then spends most of the summer preparing for the fall.<p>(in fact, one way our problems mushroomed was that I saw her doing this, and I tried to pick up the slack with the house and kids and do just about everything at home, and she mis-interpreted that as I only cared only about the house and kids, and not her. If she could just see our story as simply "getting wrapped up in career and kid pressures and taking each other for granted," instead of "huge mistake getting married in the first place," our troubles would be well on the way to over... but I digress...)<p>She spent 13 years working on her PhD. Once she got it, her first job was at a small liberal arts college, where she made less money than I was making as a glorified secretary, and where they worked her into the ground for a year and didn't renew her contract (mainly because, in my opinion, she wasn't a nice, subservient woman, but rather she occassionally spoke her mind). In her present position, she's better respected, but still over-worked.<p>Unlike most of her contemporaries, she has not moved from city to city chasing jobs- a year here, a year there, until you finally get on a tenure track and then hang on for dear life. That's the debilitating career path I'm talking about- the expectation of a kind of monkish devotion to one's job, along with a nomadic lifestyle. What could be worse for a marriage? In fact, academia is full of some of the worst people I've ever met. Yes, most of them care deeply about their students- but a lot of them have been trained to care about little else, and have strained their personal lives to the breaking point.<p>My wife thought we would be a sort of two-academic career couple, but I looked at what happened to her, and some of my own teaching experiences, and decided I wanted no part of it. I'd support her, but I didn't want that lifestyle for myself. I don't think she respects that decision- she's too caught up in her own career goals to accept it.<p>But I think about her PhD advisor, who had a brilliant academic and professional career in theater and opera, but who's personal life is a horrible shambles of manipulative ex-wives and financial ruin, and who is now slowly dying alone, nearly unable to care for himself because of Parkinson's, and I think of that all-too-true cliche- "no one, on his deathbed, wished he spent more time at the office." I don't think college teachers understand that- once they do, they have to step off the career trail, or at least slow down on the path.<p>And the ones who don't slow down are the ones who get ahead, run things, and make it miserable for everyone else. <p>So, I don't "hate" teachers either- I have a lot of pity for them.

DBT,<p>1) if any lawyer in their right mind won't stand up to the judge and say this is fair, then what are you going to do. See GDP's post to you, which is the direct point, but mine was more what happened in reality, and the point, counterpoint.<p>2) Yes, the teachers are paided peanuts for the hours worked, but then, how much of the output is their responsibility?<p>I firmly believe that people are paid well for their output and responsibility. This is a case where there is a disconnect between output and responsibility.<p>Finally, i know offspring of the teachers at my X's school, where i went, and one of kids of the most popular teacher, long since retired, constantly criticizes his dad for spending more time with students than at home.<p>I used to refuse to go watch her kids on weekends, and chose to stay home. This is what her parents did with her, and did most of the teacher couples at the school. If someone needs to work 6 days a week to be happy, and then criticize me for being home late during the week?<p>I told X i would refuse to work that many hours for that little pay, like a serf, where they get a house given to them, but the house is not always a well kept house, and you can't do a damn improvement to it. We were sickened with carbon monoxide posioning from the furnace due to the maintenance staff's decision for a problem, and X loves those maintenance men, because they do the maintenance when she asks. I refused to do it, and then have to move to a new house and lose all my effort.<p>In comes the radical liberal left in her, and she all of a sudden started telling me that money is not important, wiftty works too hard for money, she doesn't care about retirement, after 20 years of doing the same topics, she has very little new work to do, and refuses to go to seminars because she will be too far away from the kids.<p>So what did she buy with her half of our money? a top of the line Ford Expedition, 30% of her money gone into a car, which she will let the 12 yo son learn to drive in three years? [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] and she had the audacity to tell me that I wanted a surburban for the same cost as the mini van we had, and I was the one that wanted to keep up with the rich people?<p>and she leaves sick kids at home alone while she is at work>? and criticized me for being home 15 minutes late for dinner as not caring about the family?<p>i think there should be a screening test for MLC, and those that pass should not be allowed to have kids. . . .<p>I'm right there with you, but don't think you will get away with anything like what you think. . . .<p>wiftty

As I said to GDP, thanks for the warning, but I've always been aware of these possibilities. It's one reason why I haven't pushed her on any of this, the way a lot of people have advised me (i.e., "cut her off! throw her out! let her stew! do nothing for her! break off all contact!" and once, amazingly, "file and ask for full custody!").<p>I'm sorry your divorce was a train wreck. I'm doing my best to ensure that if she goes through with her divorce plans, mine won't have to be. That doesn't mean I'm trusting her in everything- it was never the case that we would use the same lawyer, for instance, that was only her fantasy.

as long as you don't believe that <p>No good deed goes unpunished<p>hopefully, you will get a very good
working relationship. . . .<p>After doing some reading, and listening
to a hormonal therapist who is one of the
best in the business, i wouldn't be surprised
that hormonal changes that occur suddenly,
and are difficult to see, so to speak, are what
push some women into depression and irritability and since they view the relationship as the primary source of energy, seeing the relationship as the answer.<p>have you ever discussed just having her hormone levels checked? I suspect this could possibly be the initial push for my X, because of the mental confusion and the massive value changes that occurred.<p>She was the only one that couldn't fill out certain forms correctly, and she routinely sends
me emails which are wrong or don't make sense.
and this is very unusual for her. And this would make sense in my case (of course she poo pooed the idea.)<p>Would she consider one last request, and get a hormone measurement from her physician??<p>wiftty

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by WhenIfindthetime:
...have you ever discussed just having her hormone levels checked?...
Would she consider one last request, and get a hormone measurement from her physician??
<hr></blockquote><p>Anytime clinical depression and anti-d's have been mentioned to her, she's gone highly defensive. She's at a potentially pre-menopausal age, so you may be right that's part of what's going on here- but she is not open to suggestion on the topic.<p>Hell, she keeps trying to be 28 again- she sure doesn't want to hear that not only is she 42, but she may be facing "the change!"

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> Anytime clinical depression and anti-d's have been mentioned to her, she's gone highly defensive.
<hr></blockquote><p>I know, that's why i asked about physical and hormone levels. My former boss's wife left, went crazy, and turns out is was all hormones. Once she started the progesterone or estrogen, not sure which, she returned to normal (also a teacher!)<p>If you ever discuss it with her, then you always mention it is in the best interest of the kids because they need you around at your best. . . . .<p>good luck. . .
WIFTTy