Hi there FL, I hadn't been by to see you in a while and wanted to check up on you.

All we have is our own experience to share. I feel for you right now and am glad I'm not where you are right now. The way I see it, your predicament is different because she has legal counsel that most of us do not have. But in the end, she has to live by the rules too. So please remember that.

So here's my story...

...I looked at what I paid my L one day. It was a massive expense to me and if we fought, that would probably triple or more. She'd done nothing really except pad the books and I'd paid her by that time around $7,500. If you double that for the X, L's made $15,000 from our D without any trial. The way I was it, that was something I could have put away for the kids.

So I called my X and told him. Listen STBX, let's get this done. If we don't we will have nothing left from this marriage that we both worked our butts off for. Would it be fair to our kids to squander everything? I propose that we do XXXXX. He understood that half of nothing is nothing, so he told me he would think about it. He called me back, and made a counter offer. I called him back, and made a counter-counter offer. We settled. Of course our L's were mad because they expected to benefit more from our lives. That's what it boils down to. Do we cut our losses or give everything to the lawyers?

Now I don't know if your X would be reasonable. From what you've written, she may not be. But I will tell you this. I was willing to fight if he forced me to. I was at that moment unwilling to be screwed any longer and I would not give it to him. I was at a point where I was unwilling to lie down and allow him to do whatever he wished. He knew that. But I gave him one chance to be reasonable and he was. I know that he knew that FL. So we negotiated what was fair.

The legal bills made us both step back and look at what we were doing.

As far as all the crap of giving the court every inch of our lives goes, I did that and my X did not. It was time consuming for me, and it never really mattered for him because the courts don't really care. They are there to generate money for the lawyers. My take. You could put on those statements that you need $5,000 a month to feed your cat and they don't care, the more crap there is, the more money they made. So don't bite.

I am so happy to hear about gym woman's awesomeness!!! You go.