I may be getting divorced. Things are looking grim right now. And I could use any advice anyone has. We live in California.
We have:
One child, four years, boy.
A house, probably about $250k equity in it.
Various other investments adding up to around ~$350k
I know divorce is expensive, I’ve heard up to $30k for the typical catfight with lawyers. I’m hoping we can do a do-it-yourself for far less, but I don’t know if she’s willing. We haven’t gotten further than uttering the “D” word, but, like I said, it’s looking grim.
She’ll want full custody of our son. I can live with that, with adequate visitation, mostly because I know how attached she is to being Mom and I don’t want to do a custody battle because I’ve heard how ugly these get and I don’t want that for our son’s sake. Perhaps this could be revisited depending on what’s best for our son.
Incomes: She works about 6 days/month, probably making about $20k-30k/year. I work full time and make about ~$170k right now (I used to do contracting, so this can vary – I made about $300-$500k/yr over the last 5 years, but now the economy sucks so I have a regular job).
My naive plan is that:
I move out, get an apartment/condo/whatever.
At some point, we make a plan to divide assets.
We sell the house, furniture, everything, split the proceeds, split everything else 50/50.
She needs to decide where to live. With her share of the proceeds, she can get a modest house anywhere in town, although she’ll probably have a mortgage. I’m not sure how she’ll cover this on her income, but that won’t be my problem other than making sure our son has a good place to live. (jeez, I feel really uncomfortable saying that.)
Oh, yeah: she does ALL the finances for our house & my business. I pretty much trust her, but I guess I should probably go make a snapshot of the books on her PC just in case. God, this is an ugly business.
Please, please, please make sure you both have lawyers look at everything, and separate lawyers for each of you. Your situation is complex, with kids involved and unequal and highly variable finances.
Please, please, please make sure everything is spelled out with a reasonable level of detail, especially regarding custody issues and future financial support of your son, especially things you aren’t even probably thinking about right now (like college finances). I was so screwed out of going to some really good schools (Georgetown and U. of C.) because my parents’ divorce decree simply stated that “each parent shall contribute to the children’s college education according to ability.” Well, let’s just say that Dad’s income was pretty much always at least 4X Mom’s, but he had a rather different idea of “ability to pay” than the rest of us did. Who lost out? My sister and I. And that was after multiple rounds of post-divorce litigation, which cost in total far more than the combined amount that they both contributed to my education. Plus it’s always fun to have your dad subpoena you. A little cash spent upfront on a competent divorce attorney and/or mediator can save a LOT of heartache down the road.
Please, please, please never put the kid in the middle; this will become even messier later on, particularly if one or both of you remarries. Never say anything bad about each other when your kid is around.
Eva Luna, child of divorced parents (not that I’m still bitter or anything)
Heck, I’m a child of divorced parents. I know where you’re coming from.
I agree, I do NOT NOT NOT want to put my son in the middle of anything.
I’m not sure I agree that a lawyers stamp would help make that happen. If a father or mother is going to be a scamp, it’s just going to happen one way or another. I certainly don’t intend to short change my son, regardless of what a piece of paper says.
All that having been said: point taken. I will try to think about my son’s future needs in any settlement, with lawyers or without. Any specific suggestions?
squeegee, I’m not saying a lawyer’s stamp will make any two people do the right thing, but sometimes a good lawyer will see specific issues that you might not anticipate on your own. If my mom had spent a few bucks on a decent lawyer when my parents got divorced, her life (and mine and my sister’s) would have been very different. But then she’s not very financially sophisticated, and was even less so at the time.
However, I’m sure my dad thinks he always did “the right thing;” we just disagree on what that consists of. He always complied with his legal obligations; he’ll do anything a court orders him to do, but no more than that. So if the court had ordered him to pay, say, a percentage of income, or ordered both my parents to pay a given proportion of their disposable income, or some other meaningful and enforceable definition, I’m sure he would have done so, and I might have graduated from U. of C.
Anyone know of any hotel chains that have DSL/cable in the CA bay area? I may need to move into one and must be able to connect via broadband so’s I can still work – my project is on a deadline right now.
This is a really bad situation right now, my thought is that I should just get away for a few days. I realize this may be a permanent severance, but it’s really that bad.
I have no idea how to explain it to my son. Give him a hug, tell him Mommy and Daddy aren’t happy right now but it’s (emphatically) not his fault.
I’ve just seen some friends burn up dollars needlessly on lawyers when they could have worked it out themselves, and had that money to spend on themselves and thier kids. I’m thinking of people that make $40-$50k/year blowing $30k on a divorce that they’ll be paying off for years.
I’ll do the lawyer thing, it all depends on how MrsSqueegee wants to do things. Maybe we’ll do a do-it-yourself no-fault but have a lawyer inspect the financial and custody docs. Or maybe we’ll hire lawyers and have a big legal skimish, needlessly wasting our son’s college money and our own retirement funds. It depends on how reasonable either of us is willing to be (which seems to be “not very” right now).
I guess it’s just an ugly business all the way around.
Everyone should be a veteran of at least one divorce. It builds character
Cannot stress enough to do the right thing by your kid(s). If you’re a stand-up guy, and work your ass off, your will be able to stay in your kids life. It is absolutely neccessary to keep him and his mother out of poverty, find them a good neighborhood, decent school.
This is going to be costly and depressing, but “This too will pass.”
I got divorced when my kids were in 7th and 6th grades respectively. I managed to keep them in the old neighborhood and school, I worked my ass off, kept my nose clean and visited them every day I was allowed. They both came to live with me when they started high school, (9th grade), as I offered a better environment then their mother, and I was never out of their life.
Be patient, pay for both lawyers, and don’t argue about the kid.
You are making a huge, huge mistake that you will regret to the very end of your days re the custody issue. I went through a nasty divorce and was disgusted and depressed by the abberant nonsense that my soon-to-be-ex was throwing at me. I was so pissed at the situation my only thought was to make it go away ASAP and I made only the most minimal request for custody.
My lawyer told me to think it over as my opinion about access to me son and daughter might change later down the line. He was tight. Instead of one every six week (my first thought) we negotiated 30% of the time and now I wish I had them at least 50% of the time. Kids need a father and by giving up custody to your wife you are effectively abandoning your son. Do not do this, he needs you now more than ever. I know you just want to make it go away and get on with your life, but effectively detaching your child and eliminating your abilty to see him on your terms is not the way to go about it.
With a kid and the disparity of income you definitely need lawyers to help you handle this. If you forge an agreement yourselves without lawyers, you may find yourself in trouble when you get in front of a judge. This is just my experience, but I believe that family court judges err on the side of protecting the woman and children. If you show up without lawyers, the judge will be less likely to find that your agreement is fair.
When my ex and I went to court, the couple before us had hired just one lawyer. They had what seemed like a very fair settlement agreement, considering the brevity of their marriage (they each were walking away with what they had brought to the marriage, no alimony). The judge sent them back to the drawing board saying that the woman should get more because she has a lower income.
When my ex and I went before the judge with essentially the same settlement agreement as the previous couple (each taking what we brought to the marriage, no alimony, and I had a substantially higher income) he said “Divorce granted. Next.”
The difference was that we had each hired our own lawyer. It doesn’t have to be very expensive if you can work out the issues yourselves. Divorces get expensive when you can’t agree and have to go to trial. We spent about $6000 between us for lawyers fees. It could have been less, but there were a couple of issues which took some wrangling to sort out. This was in Boston, so the lawyers weren’t cheap - mine was $165 an hour, hers $225. It is worth the expense to make sure that everyone involved is treated fairly. Also, some of the laws just don’t make sense so you need an experienced lawyer to make sure your agreement is valid. You don’t want to be back in court in a few years and have a judge throw out your agreement and double your support payments.
As for the broadband, check cell phone dealers, Verizon wireless offers ISDN speed (144 kb/s), cellular wireless unlimited internet for about $100/month. Not DSL or cable but much faster then dialup and might just fit the bill for the deadline.
No, I’ve never been divorced but I did grow up without a dad and it’s bad, man. In my case it was a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but now that I’m older I see how important fathers are.
IANAT(herapist) but it doesn’t take one to know how much your son needs BOTH parents. But OTOH his daily routine needs to remain as intact as possible. Having a permanent “home base” might be the way to go, but only if you have pretty much free access to him at all times. Do you think your wife could agree to that?
Here in WV divorcing couples are made to go to counseling with a family mediator to work out a custody plan (if they are unable to come up with a deal on their own). The mediators are trained and know how to get things hammered out and do what’s best for the kid. If this is available to you in California, you might want to give it a shot. Sometimes an impartial party (they get paid whether you strike a deal or not) can offer suggestions nobody else has thought of.
IF you are still on speaking terms and on the same wavelength re: dividing assets, visitation, etc., then you may want to consider mediation instead of having two separate attorneys. When I divorced, we had an attorney who met with both of us together and acted as “mediator.” He drew up all the paperwork, etc. Fortunately, it went very smoothly for us. We live in Massachusetts, I don’t know what differences may be in California.
Yes, of course we’ll do this. MrsSqueegee has a referral from a friend and has promised to set up an appointment. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll try to find someone else.
I’d really like to get a counselor via referral. We’ve had a bad experience with this in the past.
About 10 years ago we went to a counselor who just awful. In retrospect, I think the counselor had issues. She saw everything – everything – as abusive behavior on my part and every issue as hopeless. Every session made our relationship worse, our hurt more pronounced, our anger greater. It was horrible.
We came within inches of separating, but tried another counselor, thank God, who helped us a lot.
There’s some really shitty counselors out there. I don’t want to see someone who would make the situation immediately worse.
If the first referral isn’t working, I want to try another (and another and another) and make sure we’re getting the help we need.
Astro, I guess you may be right. I feel like a) I don’t want to put my son in the middle, and b) I am so so so sick of fighting with her all the time so I’m looking for the easy way out.
And maybe this is a stupid approach. Maybe I am being am bit if an ostrich – sticking my head in the sand and wishing the hurt away. I really don’t know, it’s very difficult to have any perspective right now.
I want to be fair to my kid. It seems like him having a stable home, with me or without, is important. I’d really hate like hell to make him a little beanbag that me and my future-ex bounce around like extra baggage.
OTOH, I do know a couple that have split custody. Thier son is with Dad 2 1/2 days a week (on his days off), Mom the other 4 days. It seems to work for them, but I don’t really know if it works for the kid.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking of. Some friends got divorced last year, and I did some research and forwarded all the mediation stuff to them. Unfortunately, one of them decided to be a shit and would only talk about issues via a lawyer @ $200/hour. They blew about $40k that could have sent thier son to college. What a waste.
Yes, I do understand that lawyers are necessary. Hell, I’m the son of two lawyers – one of them a divorce attorney – and they’re the ones who have told me why its best to try to do things without lawyers where possible.
But I will keep an open mind as/if this proceeds to that stage.
