I'm now healing and moving forward

[ericmsant2]

Thank you all for your responses, prayers and well wishes. I will try and make this post short.

So last Thursday W and I (and our two attnys) sat down to discuss the dissolution of our M. I was pretty calm as was W. It was a little surreal I must say. Here I was…after 11 months of hell, pain, laughter, tears, growth…you guys know all of the emotions that we grow through….

Here I was…

Nervous? Yeah a bit
Angry? Yeah a bit
Frustrated? Yeah a bit
Sad? Yeah a bit

BUT

I was also somewhat at peace. I was also okay with all of this. I did not like it – no – not one bit BUT I was okay with it.

So let me tell you what we tentatively agreed to (note: no docs were drafted and so this is a “verbal agreement”):

She will retain the martial home. Yep – it was not worth fighting over IMO. I don’t want it and really she can have it. Before I get a bunch of DB “your not suppose to” responses, let me say this…there is not much equity in the home, even under my L best case scenario I could not afford it after the support and “maintenance” payments that I would make, to refi it would not make sense and finally and more importantly – I really do not want to live in it! My life is different now. It is new. I am new. This is really a new beginning for me and so why do I want to live in a home that reminds me of what “once was”.

She will retain the Durango. She needs a car and this is the car that she drives so why be an as* and fight for it. And quite honestly she is entitled to it.

She will assume the household expenses – monthly oil bill, monthly furnace bill, cable, security system, etc. I still need to find out when I can begin handing these over to her.

We will remove each other as second card holders as soon as possible.

Her attny feels she is entitled to “alimony” ("this is definately an alimony case") given the difference in our income. How much has yet to be decided.

Once we addressed the house and car issue we tried to tackle the custody issue. Here is where It got interesting…

First, W said that she “spoke to my supervisor and he said that I can now start at 9:30 am so I can take our D to school in the morning” (note: I have done this for several years and loved this time with our D. side note: supervisor is OM)…

I am sorry to say but I responded in a non db way to this….sorry guys I couldn’t help it….I looked at her and said…..”you must have a very good relationship with your supervisor” – she smiled and I smiled. FTR, I did apologize the next day to her. The reason I apologized is that honestly…it was a rude and disrespectful response. The type of response that going forward I do not want in my life – I was wrong and so I apologized. A simple “sorry about the comment I made yesterday” was my apology.

Okay..back to the custody issue – So my L and I listen to her proposal….She is "okay with me" taking all three children on Friday night and returning them Saturday evening (note: she is off on Sunday and Wednesdays).

In addition, she would like me to come over to the martial home on Mon, Tues and Thursday to make dinner, do homework with the kids, clean up and then leave before she gets home. So in short, I get to be the baby sitter and maid for her. I responded with…”this is the first I am hearing this offer and I do not agree with this. I have another plan, which I would like to discuss”. That's when the conversation became a little “tense” and the two lawyers suggested that she and I attempt to discuss my option in a little more detail between ourselves and outside of the meeting. And if in our discussions we cannot agree they will arrange to have us meet with court appointed mediators. We both agreed to have a conversation about the kids and a few other things.

It was also agreed that the four of us would met in another month to see if the additional details can be flushed out. The lawyers suggested that we look to finalize the divorce in 2011 as we probably do not want to be divorced during the holidays.
All in all it was not too bad. I can go into more detail but really it does not make a difference.

That’s my update and once again thanks to everyone for the support.

Eric