Well, she’s gone - sort of.
History:
A plea for hope
Lost Hope
False Hope
Saturday she rented a truck and me (her legal husband) and her boyfriend loaded it twice and hauled a bunch of stuff to her new apartment. There’s still lots of stuff left in the house with her name on it.
Boyfriend? Yup - my diametric opposite, little when I’m big, 8 yrs younger while I’m 7 years older, country when I’m urban. She’s been seeing him for three or four weeks, they use the word “love” with each other. He’s, basically, living with her now, sleeping over the two nights it took us to move and now the three nights she’s been living in the new place. I alternate between thinking he’s using her for free room and board and thinking he genuinely cares for her.
The kids went with her. There was two choices in the break-up as I saw it. 50/50 custody, with her receiving 50% child support or 100/0 custody with her getting 100% child-support. The idea of the kids living with me 100% was denounced thoroughly by her. Sometimes I think all the I’ll-never-give-up-my-kids attitude just face-saving, trying to avoid looking like a poor parent.
If we went 50/50 on custody, she’d have to require alimony ('scuse me, “spousal maintenance”) beyond the mandated child-support since her initial job’s pay isn’t sufficient. Giving her 100% “residency” allows her more child support to live on and lets me get a smaller place to afford that additional payment to her.
Confused? Sorry. Just trust that it’s pretty much necessary at first for her to have the kids 100% of the time from a dollar point of view (or give the kids up to me which she refuses to even consider).
In a couple months, her new boss has promised her another $4 per hour, allowing her to accept less help and allow me to get a larger place to have the kids 50% of the time. My goal for this is roughly six months to pull it together.
This is all supposed to be laid out in our divorce agreement, that custody is 100/0% at first with a goal to 50/50%.