I had a short talk with W tonight. It started off confrontational, but I listened to and came to an understanding of where she is coming from. She has not said that she intends to battle it out for any future riches I get from my company that occur after the D. She said she just needs to understand her rights some more as she is making a big life decision in getting this D which could affect her financial future if she falters somewher down the road. I tried to let her know that I believe her lawyer will pressure her to fight for all she can as that is how I believe this lawyer operates. I expressed to her that it is probably best that we go to a mediator who could save us considerably in legal expenses and emotional distress. W says she is not saying no to the idea, but just wants some time to educate herself with a book on divorce.
We both had a misunderstanding today and our emotions got in the way. I take my ownership in my company, which I worked hard to achieve before the marriage, as something that is very important to me. She feels that I am too demanding when I say no spousal support and dont touch my company or any future riches that I achieve. I believe it is our poor communication as a large part of why she wants to get a D. I have told her before that we could and should learn to communicate better.
I told her truthfully why I am opposed to spousal support. Number one is that I dont think she needs it. Secondly, once you have spousal support in the final D papers, it can be changed in the future if she ever hits hard times. I told her that her having spousal support from me would also lower the child support. However, once the spousal support were to end, the child support would go up. I came up with an idea to write into our divorce agreement which is to allow each other to see the others W4 income each year. That way if my W's income goes up or mine down, I can choose to lower spousal or child support. Likewise, W could see that if my income goes up that she could try to get spousal or child support increase.
She says she trusts me and knows that I am too honest of a guy, but she does not trust the people I talk to. I told her that they think she is a selfish female dog. She gets real irrational knowing this, but I think that deep down she understands why they view her as such. We plan to attend our kids birthday parties and events together, which should be interesting as my parents and bothers family usually attend BD parties. I wonder how W will be able to handle it. Likewise, my brother (he reads my threads here) has expressed some things about my W that are best left unsaid, so he will probably just avoid W.
She just does not have the support team that I have and I think that makes her feel all alone and hurting. Even her long time local Thai friend is supportive of me and her best friend said she would set me up with her single sister if she were not W's best friend. I even think that OM probably relates to my position as he went through 2 D's himself. He told me that in his first one (a 25 year marriage), his W hired 3 different lawyers (ouch).
The last point I needed to make as W was leaving was that I think it is so important to our children that we both be friends with each other. A large part of maintaining our friendship is how well we do during this emotional D.
