Just a quick update: we had a meeting with the attys Friday and hammered out two significant issues: how she pays me for the house and splitting the assets. She will refi and pay me some of the $ now and the rest when she sells the house. That lets her keep the house with a smaller payment, allows the kids to stay in their rooms, and gets me enough to put a down payment on something else. Pretty much a win-win. I had some people telling me that I shouldn't let her keep any of my equity for now, but one of my issues has been trying to get everything I want in our M, so I guess compromising is a 180. I hope it works out.
The other significant issue is we agreed on a 50-50 split of the assets. This is pretty typical for D in our county, but she had gotten in her head that she would never do this. After she agreed to it, her atty looked dumbfounded and asked her if she was sure about this. I'm sure it's because she had been telling him all along that she wound never go for that. But it really is fair. By the end of the meeting she was saying she was "very comfortable" with that arrangement.
So, all that is left is to figure out the child support. We had some discussion a while ago that went nowhere, but once we get that decided we can tell them to write it up. It took 10 hours of meetings to figure out almost nothing, then 10 minutes to figure out the asset split, the biggest issue. I hate lawyers.
built4speed My Saga "How others deal with the gifts you've given is not your decision, but theirs." - Richard Bach
