True Love or True Fog? Changing Forums

[Silver Fox]

Well, the most stressful (and most rewarding) part of my job is over for the semester - an hour long evening dance concert involving 100 middle school students

Now this beautiful, sunny weekend as everyone else is out GALing I'm sleeping, resting, eating, recovering AND refocusing on my personal life to figure out what the F to do with my crazy MLC H and his D quest.

Here is his "offer", typos and all, sent via email over a week ago:

I want to again thank you for being willing to consider a mutually agreeable resolution of our issues. As you asked, I am going to start by propsing a broad framework for you and your attorney to consider and then we can get into further detail as our negotiations unfold.

First, I think my attorney and I have already offered to take all of the joint debt acquired during our marriage. By doing so, I will likely be unable to avoid bankruptcy. If I do find a way to manage the debt load it is going every bit of whatever income I am able to earn. In either case, I can't imagine I will have the resources for long term alimony-especially at the levels you asked for in the mediation hearing. However, if you do choose to stay in the house for a year before selling, I might be able to help with a lower amount of temporary alimony to compensate you for the extra cost of the commute, pet care, et c. But given my enormous debt, I don't know how much I could afford.

In terms of the house, as you asked, I would propose two options.

Option One: I take the house. I either let it roll it into a bankruptcy/foreclosure or somehow find a way to make the payments, fix it, and sell it myself. Since the house is basically under water at this point, I think taking on this additional debt would make further alimony unwarranted.

Option Two. You take the house-with conditions. You prepare a list of all repairs you wish made before taking possession and I use my own sweat equity to "pay" for those repairs. Given my debt load, I don't think I could help with those repairs that need to be professionally done, but that should be able to be included in a refinancing of the house. Under this scenario, as I said, I would hopefully have enough=2 0income to offer temporary alimony to compensate you for the extra costs of having to stay in the house. I would propose one year at affordable level.

That should be enough to get the conversation moving again. As far as I'm concerned, everything is on the table. All I want is to do is what's right by you while still having a chance to slowly rebuilding my financial life.
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Now that my head is clear of 100 dancing 13 year olds I've got plenty of room to come up with my own "options". And did I mention that he wants everything to be resolved by August so he can move to Catbitch's (sorry Ali!) city? This includes D first, declaring bankruptcy second. Yes, he has it all figured out.

Last week I had to email him because the aquarium lights went completely out - first time I've initated contact since September. He wrote back that he would come over, let the dogs out, fix the lights and cook dinner so I would have something when I got home (this was the day of my concert and he knows I get home late). And he also wrote "good luck with the show, I know it will be awesome". Well ok, thanks buddy. Now is this guilt or just trying to stay on my good side?