I agree w/you both and I appreciate your input on my reply. I'm not in a rush as she's w/out a computer until Tuesday as we're both off of work.
Ali, I do like your opening line about being saddened by her thinking I'd do anything to hurt our D. I'm also going to post her e-mail below so you all can read it. I've told you how I'm choosing to respond (with some potential editing help from my DB friends), so now I'll let you read what she wrote and I'm sure you'll see why I was so fired up at first. Here it is:
Quote:
"...so unfortunately it is the way we need to go." We don't need to or have to do anything. I don't understand why you don't get that.
You are choosing to do this. What you are really saying is that you believe my retirement is worth more than yours, and you are willing to waste both of our money just to get a little more money from me. You are choosing to force us to "bite the bullet."
In the past, and even now, your choices aren't always in D's best interest. You chose to spend more time at school than at home with us. You chose to control and abuse me. You chose to rage at me in front of D. You chose to run us 70K+ in debt. Those choices, among others, led me to leave you. Then, you chose to fight me for custody and you chose to spend 45K in lawyer fees. I begged you to not bankrupt us both for D's sake. You said you were willing to do it. I offered you more time originally with D than you were eventually awarded by the court, but you chose not to take what was offered. You chose to make the divorce ugly. I offered to have an apartment nearby, so whoever had D stayed with her in the house, and whoever didn't was at the apartment. That way D was ALWAYS in the house. You chose not to take that offer. You chose to stay in the house -- even though you couldn't afford it -- and you chose to have your daughter immediately displaced. You chose not to give me bare essentials -- that I needed to care for our child -- for months. You chose to leave the dogs in the car when you KNEW it was dangerous and illegal.
You have choices. You have had choices all along, and you continually choose to make things difficult for me and your daughter.
You always have felt and still continue to feel that some how you were wronged -- that you are a victim, and that you are entitled to certain things. And in a very narrow legal sense you are entitled to assets, etc., however, there was never anything stopping you from putting D first and coming to a reasonable agreement all on our own. I asked you to do that -- to make that choice -- repeatedly. I know people who did that and spent a total of $3,000 ($1,500 each) on their divorce. Even now, there is nothing stopping you from simply agreeing that we each keep our own retirement accounts and that is that. Instead you are going to make us both pay more money to hire someone to give you what you are "entitled" to. That is money we could both be putting towards D, but as usual you cannot put her -- or what is best for her -- first. You won't even consider it.
Comments anyone? I still think the simple - keep it business approach is the best b/c responding and refuting her claims will do nothing of consequence and will gain me ZERO ground.
