Plodding towards my Path With Heart

[SuperDad]

Well, a new thread seems appropriate and my old thread locked anyway!

Met with the L today and retained her. Basically, nothing was said I didn't expect. Seems that there are some new laws and guidelines which will be slightly more in my favor, but not much. Seems that some sort of alimony is likely, given our no fault laws.

L will draft up 2 possible docs. (1) a notice to W, outlining a potential settlement and asking her to respond and (2) actual filing paperwork. I then have to decide which way I want to go. It turns out in FL when kids are involved, you have to go to mediation eventually. Either voluntarily before the filing or to forced mediation after a summary judgement if the other party does not respond to the filing.

That said, option (1) could be good if this is made clear to her. In any case, we will not be able to get anything to W before she takes kids to TX and I take my usual trip to Europe. Looks like mid-August will be the best, after we are all back in town. Not really happy about this, but L recommended and I agree that it would be bad to start this process right before I am away from the kids for an extended period of time.

It does not really feel like much of a Path with Heart, but I know that it is. When I think of the lessons about relationships that the kids are implicitly learning by observing our completely disfunctional life, I know that it has to be this way.

Otherwise, we have entered our tropical wet season in FL which is severely limiting my swimming schedule and I have my next triathlon in 3 weeks. I may have to breakdown and do some indoor pool swims soon.

Well, that's the long and short of it.

SD