Going straight forward...antlers 6th thread.

[antlers]

soliel, CityGirl, Coach...and others -

Mediation today lasted 6 hours. Cost me another $1500. Came up with a resolution though. Basically she gets 6 figures straight cash from me. She's presently buying a house with this money. The retirement portfolio that I singlehandedly built up over the years has been dealt a mortal blow. I have significantly less money now than she does. I'm gonna have to borrow to pay her! How is that right? Why does the one who left, and destroyed a family, get rewarded? And why does the one who tried to save the family, get punished?
I did get custody of my son...she was not able to take him from me, and she was counting on that in order to get even more child support money from me. She got custody of my daughter, and I have to pay her child support until my daughter is 18. It's crazy that I have to pay her child support when we each have legal and physical custody of one of our children.
She also demanded that I give her my wedding ring back (the one she gave me).
I'm numb.
But we avoided a trial, which would have cost me a bunch more money, and taken any decision making ability away from both of us. It would have also been much harder on the kids, and I did not want them to suffer any more than they have. My attorney believes that, under the circumstances, I came out of it as well as I possibly could..."it could have been worse". I do believe that...this is all just hard to stomach.
I even offered to pay her the entire 4 years worth of child support on this end, and add it into the total...no go. I might get a raise over the next 4 years and she wants to have access to it in case it happens.
I am physically and mentally exhausted...depleted. I am hurt, sad, pissed, poor, and in debt.
I'm upset that one person can unilaterally dismantle a family and be rewarded financially for doing so; I'm upset that a person can be punished financially in a situation like this because they make more money than the person who destroyed the family.
I told her that I would spend my last penny, and my last breath, to keep her from taking my kids away from me. She didn't seem bothered at all losing custody of our son. The GAL's report didn't do for her what she thought it would, especially when oldest daughter told the GAL "mom degrades my dad every time he is mentioned at our house", and "my mom is always making comments about when little brother is coming to live with us permanently, likes she's for sure getting full custody of both kids".
Son is happy that I get custody of him.
It's been awful. I feel like I got beat up severely, both emotionally and financially. It's going to take years to pay off this debt. Anyway, I did the best that I could possibly do. It is what it is. And I hate it.