A year having passed, and no longer a "newcomer," I've moved to a different neighborhood.
It's all over but the shouting now. And there's going to be a lot of shouting. A year ago the idea was a "mediated divorce" -- after all, the only thing we "really" disagreed about was the duration and amount of alimony from WAW to SP. Now there's not an iota of agreement on anything.
Just before Thanksgiving '09, STBXMRSSP's lawyer sent a request to The Mouthpiece that "our side" make a settlement offer ASAP, because STBXW wanted to tie it all up by January 1. And so we did.
3 days ago we received a reply. "Rejected." Now that's expected -- it's a negotiating ploy, so presumably there's some middle ground to work towards.
Which would be the case with a normal human being. And which, therefore, is not the case with STBXMRSSP.
Along with the reply was a counter-proposal. I've had to educate The Mouthpiece a bit on STBXMRSSP and her wiley ways. In this "proposal," she proposes to cheat me out of my interest in the house by setting up the language in such a way that she has the right to refuse any offer while I have only the right to accept any offer, including any offer to buy out my interest in the house.
Wiley ways. STBX has alluded repeatedly over the year to the idea of her father buying out my interest in this house. It's always pitched in this sort-of off-handed way -- "Hey, here's a thought...."
So what she's trying to do is construct the settlement so that her father makes the first bid on the house -- at assessed (not market) value (which is very likely to be an inequality assessed < market) -- which I am obligated to take, whereas if another buyer made a bid she has the right to refuse it.
The "proposal" also includes a preposterous laundry list of debts I "owe" her, such as half of her student loans (even though at law there's no basis for claiming community obligations after the fact). This, too, is wiley, because she has long complained -- among the litany of complaints about SP Himself -- that she has to split her retirement fund with me (and she always deposited the maximum annual contribution to it).
Well what a coincidence! The "debts" I "owe" her miraculously sum up to the amount she'd have to pay me from her retirement plan, isn't that weird? So, hey, you know, golly-gosh gee-whillikers -- why don't we just call it even? She's "willing" to "overlook" my "debts" in exchange for having all of her money to herself.
But the best part is in the alimony computation. Somehow they've concocted a rationale whereby I actually earn 35% more money than I seem to collect in paychecks, based on some phantom payroll I "could" expect to receive in the future (strangely they left out the magickal pony) -- which means I really don't need any alimony at all and, since she's been paying me temporary alimony for the past year, I "owe" her that money back!
So there she's been, asking my help, begging me to intervene when she can't manage The Boy, expecting me to be "flexible" when she has to do this or that, soft-talking and nearly sweet-nothing-whispering from time-to-time -- and all the while (because there's no way they constructed this in an afternoon) she's working this ridiculous notion that she can have it all, screw SP, and devil take the hindmost.
As that eminent philosopher, Carl Spackler, put it: "Okay, I guess we're playing for keeps now. I guess the playing around is pretty much over, huh?"
