I think that you chose to marry this person. Marriage means a specific lists of responsibilities and benefits. You’ve decided that he shouldn’t get one of the benefits after 8 years. But it’s too late to decide now what you want marriage to mean. This is exactly the same conversation as that ridiculous alimony thread. You want to retroactively change what a marriage was and hate that others don’t agree with you.
Marriage is a legal status, not just whatever you want it to have meant in hindsight.
I’ve said what I’ve said in this thread based on your original statements – specifically that you knew he was entitled to half your equity. Now you’re saying you don’t actually know that for sure. Obviously you need to get the legalities of your situation resolved before you can decide what the details of your settlement will be.
I just wanted to say that it is comments like this:
that make feel overwhelmed by my level of disagreement with you. Do you really mean to say that your husband, in 8 years of marriage, never made any contributions to your family? No emotional support, no physical work around your home, no caring for your children? He sat on his ass and strummed his guitar while you attended to your career, took care of the house, and took care of the kids 100% solo? He never did anything but sit on his ass and strum his guitar?
Whatever.
It sounds to me as if you believe that the only worthwhile contribution a partner can make in a marriage is financial. And, frankly, that mindset is so foreign to my own that I’m forced to say that you and I will never come to an agreement on the subject.
Of course, I’m sure my opinion on this is rendered worthless by the fact that I have, for the last 20 years, allowed my husband to financially support me.
That’s exactly right. And for the most part, as I mentioned, the parties involved get to set the terms of the contract…that is, what each is supposed to do to contribute, and how each will benefit. Seems to me they both held up their end of whatever arrangement they had…at least, the OP has not argued any differently. So I agree that there is no justification for trying to pretend that standard marriage law does not apply here.
Resent is the wrong word. I believe people have the financial and ethical obligations they signed up for. If her pre-nup exempts her from something, bully for her. If it doesn’t, she’s obligated to do it.
And what side was that? You said you had no problem with him having no “ambition”. You knew what he was when you married him. Sounds to me like you want to punish him for not sharing your work ethic or your values. You share a child-and that child has the right to expect that the adults in her life will treat one another and herself with regard and respect. That includes doing ethical and legal things, even if they are inconvenient.
How are you giving up financial security? Via the equity in your home? Buy another home. You are obviously capable of creating your own security-why put this on him?
Um, no. First, he didn’t win the lottery with marrying you. He most likely has had to put up with your resentment of his inability to measure up in any number of ways. If it’s coming out on a message board, it’s there in real life. And what is with this “he got me to marry him” stuff? You go from independent, savvy female to it’s all the big bad man’s fault. No and no and no.
Re you remark about my posting that perhaps he would be well rid of you (sorry, that sounds harsher put that way), am I being whooshed? Or is that a form of self-deprecating humor?
I don’t feel your under any moral obligation to look after your ex. He’s not mentally deficient, he’s just as lazy mentally as he is physically. I’d worry about you and your daughter.
When I got divorced from my first husband, I’m sure I was entitled or could have gotten more financially than I did. Did he know it? I’m sure. I didn’t want to deal with it or him and just wanted to move on. It could have been a little bit of guilt on my part because it was my idea, and I really just didn’t want to be married to him anymore. Maybe he feels the same way.
Well, not quite. My marriage does not mean he gets “my” house. I say my because it has always been mine in our marriage. My house, our home. We both interpreted the prenup to mean that. He had never had the least bit of problem with it. It was only during the divorce that** I ** began questioning it. Not, he, I. So between us we decided what this marriage was to mean, it is the law that is claiming our agreement isn’t valid.
I also think calling my last thread ridiculous is well, ridiculous. Unless anyone with opinions that do not agree with yours are interpreted in that way. Please keep the attacks to yourself. I don’t want to read them.
Between you two you can decide that red is blue, but if red is defined and enforced legally, your decision doesn’t matter.
And if you really agreed that he doesn’t have a claim on the house, you wouldn’t have started this thread. If you think he would agree with you, tell him. If you’re afraid to tell him, what does that say for your understanding of what the marriage meant?
Foxy40, it seems to me that you’re dealing with this mostly as a money issue, as in, there’s a substantial difference between the sum that you are offering him in cash and the sum that could be realized if the prenup and the law did in fact allow him to claim half of the value of the house. Sort of like haggling over dollar amounts.
However, I see this as mostly an imbalance in the status of negotiations: you have a bit of information that, in the view of this disinterested observer, he really ought to know about. I see this in the same way that if he happens to be holding a winning lottery ticket and is just waiting for the divorce to be final before cashing it, you really ought to know about that lottery ticket whether or not you want any of the winnings.
I think the fairest thing here would be to lay out the options for him and let him decide. Something like, “According to the letter of the law, there may be the possibility that you’re entitled to half of the house. I don’t know if that’s true. According to the spirit of the prenup, and the fact that you contributed nothing to my purchasing the house, I don’t think you’re entitled to one bit of it. If you want to pursue any interest in the house, I will fight you in court about it. You’ll have to hire a lawyer and be prepared to battle this out. If you agree not to do it, my offer of $20,000 still stands. Make your decision.”
My sense is that if you laid it out like that, he’d take the cash. But I also think raising the matter in this way would address the ethical question here.
Actually, yeah, conflicts of interest are unethical in the legal profession. An ethical attorney will do a conflicts check before agreeing to take on a client. It is possible that if one party is fully informed of the potential conflict and signs a waiver then the same attorney can ethically serve both clients but the attorney needs to serve both clients. That means fully informing both clients of their legal rights and responsibilities. It doesn’t sound to me like your lawyer, who you’ve indictaed is at least in some capacity representing your husband, is informing your husband of all of his legal rights. I may be completely wrong here, but I can only go by what you’re telling me and what you’re telling me doesn’t pass the smell test.
Oh please. It is like agreeing to accept 100,000 on a book deal but getting offered 1,000,000 and saying no thanks. (Which he may). Agreeing to something doesn’t mean you want to continue to agree with it when things change.
Goddess, I want you to think about this scenario since you seem to think it is “ridiculous”. (It isn’t mine)
You marry the man of your dreams. Within three years he quits his job and decides he wants to be an artist. You say no hon, not a good idea. It doesn’t matter what you say.
Now you have two kids and no income so you get a job. A small job but it pays the rent. Soon you realize you are good, really good. You start your own company. Meanwhile, you have these two kids that you run back and forth to school babysitters, soccer practice and play dates. You dear husband can’t because he is busy painting. The house is a mess because he is too busy painting to pick up after himself let alone the kids so you handle that too. This goes on for several years until you realize you’re running yourself ragged trying to save a relationship that can’t be saved anymore. He loves you and loves the kids but he simply has to follow his dream and not contribute to family obligations. However, he had no problem with you buying the paint, canvases, taking him on vacations, buying him cars etc. You are tired and wonder why you are working so hard to take care of a grown adult as well as your babies.
You will get custody as you wouldn’t even consider giving those babies up nor can he afford to take care of them, even with your child support.
The judge orders that the family house will be sold and so will your business so you can pay Rambrant the half he is entitled too. You also have to pay him a substantial amount of money each month so you can prepare this 40 one year old man for life orders the judge. He must continue with the life he has had.
You still think the laws shouldn’t be looked at on a case by case basis?
I married a disabled man. Seriously, I don’t think you are going to get me on your side, no matter how many scenarios you spin. It’s only money. My self-respect and obligations and decency as a human being are more important than money. I could do many things to get more money if I didn’t care about the law or decency.
If he is violent toward you, he should go to jail and not pass go. But if he’s just a dude you married of your own free will and stayed married to then he gets the benefits of marriage. You made your choices, ostensibly without physical coercion. If the pre-nup exempts you, it exempts you. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There are no do-overs.
Because she says she’s worried about whether she’s doing the right thing. She says her husband doesn’t care, but that’s because he doesn’t know that there’s anything he should care about.
Just telling him that he might have some legal rights isn’t enough. That’s like giving a Miranda warning to a ten-year-old. If she’s so worried about whether she’s taking advantage of him, then she should make sure he’s fully informed.
If that means leading him by the hand, then she should do it. As it stands now, she’s stealing candy from a baby. The dumb guy is trusting her to treat him fairly, and maybe she is, but neither of them will know for sure because only one of them knows what’s going on.
I could win the lottery, put the money in a separate checking account and not tell my husband. If we divorced and I didn’t disclose that money, would that be fair? Should I say “Too bad, he should have checked to make sure I didn’t have any other accounts”? My husband’s smart enough to do that, but apparently Foxy’s isn’t.
She says she cares, and she needs to back that up.
Yes, although I do not know of a family judge that does not look at such cases, case by case.
Kudos to you for being a smart and successful businesswoman. You may not like this, but look at it a certain way: if your husband hadn’t decided to follow his dream of being an artist-you wouldn’t know that you had a talent for business.
You have said time and again in this thread that the smooth machinery of your life will not change with him gone. Why do you think you’ll lose it all, if you do the right thing?
Chances are he did help out in more ways than you are aware of. It’s definite that your children will know how he was treated and just how much money means to you vs people.
What if he had become disabled and you fell out of love etc? He’s a burden there as well. but chances are you would tell him what he was entitled to have, no?
Why is this different? Because he didn’t conform to some preconceived notion of Husband? Because he decided to follow a dream? If you felt this strongly re his artistry, why did you buy him supplies? You helped him along in this same dream that now you want no part of. So why does he get cut off? I still think you are punishing him for not being what you needed or wanted him to be. Fair enough impulse, but the end result reflects poorly on you.
Well, certainly a disabled man has nothing to do with any scenario I am presenting here. I am not trying to get you on my “side”. I am trying to make you see both sides as I am. However, some people simply make up there mind and that is that.
However, if he were violent towards me, it would not make any difference to the law regarding his money.
Foxy40, I understand your frustration. But there is rarely a balance of assets in a marriage. Some women contribute no money during the marriage, yet I believe they should be entitled to half the assets. The bottom line is that you voluntarily entered this marriage, knowing what the laws were, and now you are trying to re-write the rules.
Had you not been married to such a man, you might have never discovered how “great” you are in the workplace. You might have never been motivated to start your own business.
Now do what’s right and move on. He may surprise you.
Oh, and by the way, if tomorrow Rembrandt sells a painting for half a mil, I’d argue that you’d be entitled to half.
I am unhappily married, and we hope to end it soon. We are amicable enough, but both realize there’s no real future here. Fine. But he is sticking around to get me through grad school, and I am staying a job I hate to help pay for it. We try very hard to keep things civil for the kids.
There is no way I would do him down out of money, and I can trust him to say the same about him toward me.
There are some things that you just don’t do, if you want to claim decent moral character and all that.
If the prenup screws him, that’s one thing-a sad thing, but I am no fan of pre-nups. If it doesn’t and you don’t fully inform him, in a way that he will understand -that’s another.