Totally understand this and am not saying you’re wrong to feel that way, but remember the kids could find out about it in a decade or two and not understand the situation fully.
That’s about all the advice I can helpfully offer…
Are you guys going to be legally separated while the terms of the divorce and custody are being hashed out over the next several months. If so you will need a temporary custody order as well as a separation agreement. This should legally force him to financially support you and the kids and also lay out who can stay in the house while you are working on the details of the actual divorce.
Oh I totally get that. I didn’t mean I would ever splash everything across Facebook, I just meant that if we get to the point where we’re standing in front of a judge, I will make sure the judge knows what a lying, sneaking, cheating scumbag he is.
(Oops…got a little carried away there for a moment. I’m finding the rage comes and goes in waves…)
Omar Little, yes we will have a formal separation with all the legal bells and whistles. According to the lawyer I saw yesterday, as soon as one of us files, it places an injunction on all our financial matters, and he is legally obligated to keep paying until a formal agreement can be made. Obviously, this makes me want to file ASAP, but there’s a few things I have to get in order first.
As a divorced kid myself, I don’t think 50/50 custody is the best scenario for the kids. This is especially true for you, given that most of your ex’s 50% will be spent with grandma instead of dad. Does grandma even have room for the kids to live with her essentially 35-40% of the time? Not that she isn’t a great person who deserves to see her grandkids, but she’s not their parent and you don’t owe her that. Generally speaking, a 50/50 arrangement ends up with both you *and *your ex having to maintain bedrooms for the kids, which means you’re both paying for “too much house.” And the kids will have to schlep a whole bunch of crap around when they “move” between houses every week/month/6 months (whatever you decide). You will always have to live in the same school district as your ex.
Therefore, I think establishing yourself as the primary custodial parent would be better for your children. *You’re *the SAHM and *he *was the unfaithful one, so I really doubt he would fight you on this. You can set it up so the kids visit dad for one full weekend every 2 weeks or 1 day every week (Sunday, for me and my sister). You can also put in provisions for occasional ad-hoc after-school visits, if that doesn’t feel like “enough” time. And if grandma is willing to continue babysitting for free and all of you live near one another, then you can discuss that as well.
And what good will that do for you? Talking with my mediator she told me about so many couples in which it was so important to one party to get the other to admit or be found guilty of wrongdoing. But it meant absolutely nothing to the settlement. Things were split exactly the way they would have regardless of who was at fault. The only difference was heartache, time and lots of money to the lawyers. The corporation that is your marriage is being dissolved. It makes no difference if you get the judge to dislike your husband. The judge sees hundreds of these cases a year. If you don’t have the settlement totally worked out before you go in front of the judge you are foolish. The court appearance should be a formality.