I can't imagine have to ride home with W after mediation. That had to be awful.
Well, I'll offer that piece of advice to anyone that wants it... drive separately to your mediation session. Yeah.
Afterward, she cried much of the way, when we were getting close to dropping her off she said "I want to get away from you as soon as possible." Here, I guess I kind of thought that we were working together to get through all this crap, it was going to be a relief, but that was pretty naive of me.
I talked to her this morning, and we exchanged a couple of emails today about compromises. I pointed out that I thought the mediator did the math wrong at one point in my favor, and that it should be corrected.
Clinging, damn straight, don't budge on joint physical custody. My understanding was that in my state, joint legal and physical custody is the norm, with the variable being the % of time spent with each parent - which affects the support calculations.
That's a hard one with taking D7 or not - at some level, you're still a team of co-parents - but it's tough to know. I find that the old familiarity with each other in parenting is gone. I suppose that at some point, some goodwill gestures will be a good thing.
I have a hard time with the "feel the consequences" thing, because I suspect for me it becomes "justify the anger"... I don't know man - not sure it's worth it.
The money thing - yeah that's tough too. With the bonus thing, mediator suggested that W should receive a quarter of it, and I demonstrated in the checking statement that I'd already pumped much more money into the joint checking for her to use, paid off her credit card, paid the mortgage, etc. None of this really seemed to make an impact. And on the other hand, we haven't had support set up, a lot of stuff on the credit card was mundane living expenses (including food for the kids). It's really hard to know where the line is to make an argument, as to what's fair, the data isn't clear. It's kind of hard for me I guess - I'm an engineer, and I want to apply rules to the numbers - where W is coming from a much more emotional point as to what she deserves.
Anyway, seems your point is valid - since there's no legal separation, you both own the debt. But I'm no expert.
It's hard to know what's "right". I don't feel particularly self justified, I'm just trying navigate this. And when the emotions come in, it screws everything up. The whole "you decided to leave, face the consequences" thing doesn't help. And I don't think her "I gave up everything to have your babies" thing helps either. Funny, she said that she never thought of putting her name on the title of the first house because she didn't think of preparing for divorce. Who would have?? And then she says, "I'm such an idiot."
Didn't occur to me to intentionally keep her off of it either.
None of this you expect, plan for. Sheesh, should I feel like an idiot to marry her given the current situation?
So what's right? None of this is right. It's not fair that our marriage ended - not to us, not to the boys. It's not fair that we have to split everything up. It's not fair that the choices she made to have a family ultimately left her feeling unfulfilled. It seems that any choice now, any agreement, is making the best of a crappy situation. So where's the line between looking out for your interests, and being a bastard? I don't want to be a bastard. I don't want to be a fool either. I don't know.
What I do know is that going through this process just seems to make things worse and worse. I can just hope there is healing afterward.
I'm rambling.
I have no idea what to do with myself this weekend. It's really strange not going home to a family.
I need more friends that are available to do things. Seemed like I never had to think about this when I was in my 20s and single. When I'm done with this post and I walk out of the door from work, I have no idea what to do.
