Divorce advice/Aimee-???

June 8, 2010

Hi Aimee:

I was married to an AS spouse that showed similar behavior. My advise would be to consult an attorney. What he is telling you today might be different after the proceedings begin and this is advise for any spouse married to anyone regardless of labels. Protect yourself. Divorce makes people do funny things when there is property, children and money on the table or even if there is not.

I ended up firing two attorneys so who ever you use I would check them out with the legal bar to see if any complaints have been filed towards them and why if possible.

We have a member that is a family attorney and maybe she will see this post and give you her advice? ?

June 8, 2010

To anyone who is getting, or contemplating, a divorce: This is no time to hire your cousin who just graduated from law school and passed the bar. When getting a divorce, hire an _experienced_ divorce lawyer; it might be a little more expensive, but it is well worth it to be sure that you and your assets are adequately protected. I am speaking with the voice of experience here! A newly minted lawyer, like your cousin who just passed the bar, is fine for routine matters such as power-of-attorney, simple wills, and the like, but when it comes to divorce, go for the lawyer with a proven track record in divorce court! You won't be sorry!~ "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."--Albert Camus Sent from my VZW BlackBerryDate: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:24:32 -0700To: <aspires-relationships >Subject: Divorce advice/Aimee-??? Hi Aimee: I was married to an AS spouse that showed similar behavior. My advise would be to consult an attorney. What he is telling you today might be different after the proceedings begin and this is advise for any spouse married to anyone regardless of labels. Protect yourself. Divorce makes people do funny things when there is property, children and money on the table or even if there is not. I ended up firing two attorneys so who ever you use I would check them out with the legal bar to see if any complaints have been filed towards them and why if possible. We have a member that is a family attorney and maybe she will see this post and give you her advice? ?

June 8, 2010

Hi Aimee,

I saw 's post and went back and read yours as I haven't been able to keep up with the list as much as I would like -- due to going through my own separation, and relocation (my daughter and I will move July 1) as well as work being extremely busy.

Yes, I would second 's suggestion to get a consultation with a good divorce attorney. It usually costs a couple of hundred dollars at most for the consultation and it would benefit you to know how the issues might turn out in terms of custody (it sounds like you would be the custodial parent), what child support you would be entitled to, whether you are likely to get spousal support if needed, and how your assets are likely to be divided. Barring any separate property claims (such as, one of you inherited the house, or owned it prior to marriage) you are likely to be entitled to half the equity in the house, so it is a question of whether you put it on the market now, or wait till your children are older, or whether your husband can buy out your interest now. A court is not likely to force him to buy you out, normally they would just order a sale and division of the equity, but they might let you stay in the house with your child/children until they are older, so it may turn out that he is willing to buy you out now, to avoid that.

My husband was very much in denial like yours -- and my husband is a successful attorney, whom I have always believed to be AS or high functioning Autistic, but he is undiagnosed. I may also be AS, I don't know, I haven't had many discernible "symptoms" since I was very young, but if I am it sure affects us in completely different ways as he and I are almost polar opposites in many things. What killed our relationship the most for me was not ultimately the behaviors, but that we have fundamentally different values. I value kindness, caring, compassion, and consider myself an optimistic realist, whereas he mostly lives in a depressed and untrusting state where the sky is always falling and emotions go from rage to "so what's for dinner?" in the space of a minute with no apology. I got tired of living the high maintenance roller coaster life. I feel sorry for my husband because there is a very good person inside him but it is trapped, and that is partly a result of a very negative childhood.

I stuck it out for years because we have a daughter (now 16) and I was not about to put my life in the hands of the Courts, even though there was never a question that I would get custody I didn't want a judge deciding when my daughter would have to visit her Dad and me worrying that she wouldn't eat or be cared for at his home. And my husband usually went to my daughter and put her in the middle and said things like, "Mommy wants to leave us", when she was 3 years old, things I have never been able to forgive him for because he KNOWs better. I couldn't get him to make sure she was fed nights that I had court or school board meetings, so I wasn't going there. If he cooked himself a steak (which he eats 4-5 nights per week) and she didn't want it, that was the end of the discussion -- I'd get home and ask if she ate, and he'd say, well, I cooked a steak, but she didn't want any. So I'd end up feeding her late. He has no ability or maybe it's willingness, to take care of someone else. Maybe if I left sooner he would have risen to the occasion, but I don't think so -- I think what would have happened is my daughter would have ended up waiting on him the way he used to expect me to.

But anyway forgive the rambling, what I am leading to is, I told him for years I was leaving when Ari was older because I thought I had to tell him to be fair, so he could move on with life, but he never did. Then a few years ago I told him I was definitely leaving when Ari left for college. He said okay, and I was hopeful that he would maybe meet someone, but he is very much a one-person man in that way and wasn't even willing to look and I guess that was unrealistic hope on my part. Then my Mom died last September and it put me to the point of feeling that life is way too short to be miserable, and Ari is now almost 16, and pretty much can't be forced to do anything, so I told him that as soon as I had the money from the sale of my Mom's house I was moving. He said, "I thought you were waiting till she turns 18?" and I said, "I've changed my mind." I knew that financially, getting out with the least burden on him was going to be the best way for me to do it. That is NOT something I recommend for you or for someone else, but it worked for me -- he couldn't have afforded to buy me out for 1/2 the equity in the home and he couldn't afford to pay me child support, but I am fortunate enough between my own income and what my Mom left me that I can do without both. So I got him to sign a separation agreement. But it took me from January until May 12, to get him to do that. He was in denial, then angry and mistrusting, and finally resigned. It is a process. I am fortunate that I could prepare my own separation agreement, but his first reaction was "I'll have my lawyer review it", even though he is also a matrimonial attorney! And I said fine, do what you like. Or he would say, "I want half the value of your law practice because yours is worth more than mine." Whatever. Anything to get at me. But that was just bluster. Then he said he wouldn't look at it for months because he didn't want to ruin his week or his weekend, or whatever, there was always something. Finally I told him that the agreement was lopsided in his favor and if we didn't do this deal (financially) NOW, I would not accept these same terms next year, and that got him moving and he refinanced the house. He knew I was serious about going once my Mom died but it took him a while to face and deal with it. But I'm sure your husband will reach that point too eventually, it's just that it will take at least several months, you really can't expect it overnight, and it will not be concrete to him until he sees something in writing. Then give him time to think, accept, grieve.

My suggestion is that you consult with an attorney, and then at the very least, give him an idea of process, time frames, what you might expect as a result of your separation, at least what issues/questions will need to be resolved, to get him thinking along those lines. Whether you should talk numbers early on is doubtful, you might want him to hear that from an advisor first. He will probably need to review with an attorney too. My best suggestion for the two of you, which is also often cheaper and a more dignified route, is to do mediation. A mediator can draw up the agreement that resolves all of your marriage issues, and then you can proceed to divorce after, on an uncontested basis. The mediator can tell him, "this is what you would be paying for child support under Tennessee's guidelines", etc. I do mediation also and it is a much nicer process. If you can get brochures, etc. for him to read it might help. I get the sense that he needs concrete, black and white and some time to process, but that ultimately once the writing is on the wall, he will, like my husband, end up wanting it to be done, fast and cheap.