Ooo, aren't you all so nice! Ok I will make the rounds and do some visiting . . .
Hey before I get to that, there's something happenin on my side:
Yesterday was our first formal divorce mediation meeting.
She filed for divorce in November of last year. I took a couple months of quiet to encourage her to rethink it. When that did not happen I suggested we begin mediation in January. 1 week after my written suggestion to find a mediator, she petitioned for protection from me. All communication stopped.
In June or July (I forget), I made a formal written proposal to her attorney on a starting point for negotiation. At that time the answer was "I will not negotiate." No substantive response.
Here it is mid-October, the divorce court date is in December. Time is running out, and she is now in mediation with me. Why we couldn't do this in January, 9 months and $35,000 in legal fees ago, I am not sure.
The mediation meeting was held at the offices of a professional family law mediator. I spoke with her - she is an attorney, used to practice family law (litigate divorces), and then for a while she was a family court judge. I guessed she was mid-to upper 50's. She appeared to be a serious person, a competent professional. In contrast to the many bureaucrats I met along the way in the family court system - conselors, DV evaluators, parenting evaluators.
But practicing family law, she told me, was unsatisfying because the model of the system is so adversarial. It's not like corporate law or bond law or something, where attorneys are there to make sure the cooperating parties are protected, looking for a win-win outcome. No, in family law it's a zero-sum game, or at least that is the way it is pursued. She said she watched as people just hammered each other in the courts, and to what end? The divorcing spouses just brutalized each other and the lawyers helped, and all the while the kids suffered. So she quit that, and instead she is a mediator.
I told her about my view - that divorce is a horrible game, the way it is played. That the only ones who "win" the way the game is played now are the attorneys. The parties can feel vindicated when they battle in court, airing grievances, publicizing marital sins, etc etc. But the parties don't really benefit, deep down, when they go to war, whether they "win" the case or not. When you go to war, you come home hurt. When you shoot at other humans, you are hurting yourself. And the same is true in the courtroom of family law. The only ones who "win" are the people getting paid for encouraging all this carnage: the divorce attorneys. She was very empathetic.
The way it worked was this: I was in one conference room - no attorney present - and wife and her attorney were in another room. The mediator shuttled between the rooms. I never saw the opposing attorney nor my wife.
Because I knew there would be dead time, and I knew I would need to be relaxed, I had brought a novel with me - To Kill a Mockingbird - I like to re-read the old standards from time to time. I read for 15-20 minutes at a time while the mediator was in the other room.
Anyway, the real point of the story is this: we sat down to talk about the customary issues: child custody and finances. And in both cases, the starting point for negotiation was better than what I have RIGHT NOW. The starting point for negotiation with child custody is more time than I have now. She is also offering to rescind all the restrictions on seeing the kids that were put in place by the bogus protection order. Right now under that order I cannot phone my kids, no email, no visiting the school, no soccer games, no choir, no school plays, no field trips. She is volunteering to remove ALL of these restrictions immediately.
And the starting point for finances is better than what I am giving right now. This is in mediation, mind you. This is not divorce court where the judge is forcing the issue. This is mediation where she herself is making the offer.
All this past 8 months my wife's attorney has painted me as a child-abuser, as a domestic violence offender. I did not play the divorce game very well. I refused to play. I did not go trotting into court every time something came up. I bided my time. I made the best of the little time I did have with my kids. I did not focus on the battle.
And now I am going to "get" essentially what all fathers should "get" - 50% time with the kids and an equitable split of the finances.
I left that mediation meeting feeling REALLY GOOD.
Based on how the dynamics of the meeting went, I will tell you this: She is starting to smell the coffee. As we were nearing final agreement on the kids' residential schedule - what days they sleep at my house, what days they sleep at hers - the wife suddenly shifted to talk about finances. She wanted to know - since I was getting near 50% of the child residential time, would I be asking for a concomitant reduction in child support. And I said, "of course." She is very worried about finances. As well she should be. Still no job. I'm sure the long-distance love from OM will keep her home warm, though. (Ok, that was mean...)
I made a comment that I'm sure my wife was worred about the money, and the mediator said to me - "Well, she's going to have to put on her big-girl panties now."
The mediator seemed to view my wife's position very cynically.
--- We did not reach final agreement. I think it's hard to do in a day, and anyway it is better to sleep on it a few days to make sure it feels right.
But what I take away from it is this:
I will come out ok. I never wanted to split up the family, and it's horrible to have to shuttle the kids back and forth between homes. Divorce stinks. But I will come out ok.
to the extent I have succeeded in getting a fair shake (and it never feels fair to anyone involved), I did not do it in court. I did it on the basketball court, on the four-square court, in the woods and on the trails, at the pool. I did it watching movies with my kids, making pancakes, going to work and keeping the money coming.
If I have to go to trial, I am confident that the judge will see through her charade, just as the mediator has done. I am tempted to do it.
