Got to my attorney's yesterday and since there wasn't a whole lot to discuss, she took me to lunch before court. Over lunch she told me a nightmare story about another divorce she is handling. Made me happy for my situation.
Anyway, when we got to the courthouse W was sitting alone in the hallway. She looked over at me and atty and I sat down a ways down the hall. We were chatting and laughing. I was very relaxed and comfortable. W seemed stressed out and was a bit fidgety. When her atty finally arrived, we went into a back room of the courtroom to discuss changes to the mediation agreement that W and I had made.
There were a couple of mistakes that we corrected and they wanted to put in that W would care for the kids on mu days during the summer when I was not available. I didn't want that to be a reason that she couldn't go back to work, so I started questioning what that meant. Basically, it boiled down to right of first refusal going both ways. I am fine with that. Once we got this done, She will now have the kids on Mon & Tue nights, I will have them on Wed & Thur nights, we will alternate Fri and Sat nights and She will have them on Sunday nights. On my Sunday's I am to drop them off at her house at 6pm. We have agreed to be flexible with each other and that child supprt payments will be based on equal placement, even though she has them every Sunday night.
After this, they wanted to talk about what was left to be done. Split property? Already done. At this point W decided to gripe about some things that I took when I moved that were on her list. A small glass end table and all of the tools, which we said we would split. We had already agreed that I would keep the table and she could come over and we would split the tools at any time. I didn't have time to do it when I was moving and I had already brought her a nice toolbox and all the hand tools she is going to need, so I said "Maybe you should have stuck around and supervised then." My atty said to me "Enough." Her atty asked me to return these things and W said no, it was ok, we had agreed that I would keep the table. Cars, already taken care of as part of the other property.
All that leaves is the Alimony and the house to be decdided. They informed us that W wants to try to keep the house and we need to get official appraisals done to determine any buy-out payment. I'm actually good with that, but the only problem is that she isn't going to be able to swing the financing on the house on her own. She just won't be able to afford to live there. It should be on the market already, but this will just be another delay. Fine.
What about the fact that I am paying way more than I should have to under a normal agreement? My attorney contacted W's attorney about an adjustment, but she won't agree to anything. So, my atty is going to file a motion with the court to have an adjustment made. We shall see.
Our final court date is now Feb 15th. How nice, a Valentines Day divorce!!! My attorney says that she likes our judge, that he is not real big on large alimony payments in the first place and he won't appreciate that W is just sitting on her a$$ and isn't doing anything to find full-time employment, so that should work in our favor! Maybe it will be a happy Valentine's day after all!
Going out for dinner and drinks tonight with some friends, so the weekend is starting off well!
Good luck to all with your sitches and thanks to everyone for your support!
