Hi Wonka, You're right, lots of white noise. Ok, I'll respond to each thing. 1. Responded to the L. Told his asst. that the house was the big sticking point. It's not worth much as homes go. The amounts that I cashed in from my retirement from a job I had BEFORE I was M was more than 1/2 the value of the house.
2. That's something that will be hard to pin down as she is in public school now and W wants to keep it that way. Maybe after seeing how much D14 wants to go back to private she will change her mind but I definitely can't count on that. I will put together an estimate though, which is a good idea.
3.The house is PAID off, no mortgage. It was paid off before my W went back to work from money I earned (but I live in community property state).
4. I would like to show that if my W keeps her retirements, etc. and I get no credit for cashing in mine so soon before W bombed me (less than 3 months) that I get the house. It is need of repairs before it could be sold and much of anything we got for it would be eaten up in those costs. If I live there for the next 4 years, it will need some major repair which, in her decree, I would be libel to pay for because I am living there until D14 is "18 years old + one day".
5. The debt that I paid was from a law suit brought against my W for not paying a student loan. I wasn't M to her when it occurred and there was no way for me to lose any of my assets. My W had just gone back to work and they were threatening all kinds of bad things that would happen and she couldn't even talk to the lawyer about it she was so "freaked out" by it. I handled it and paid it off with money that I had made and banked over the years.
If you added just 1/2 of my retirement and 1/2 the cost of paying off that lawsuit it adds up to much more than 1/2 the value of the house. I should get some credit for cashing my only retirement since I only did so thinking we were going to stay married and it was so soon before bomb day.
The job I had before is gone. The company closed with zero notice. One of the reasons I wanted to be part of managing a company in the same field so that wouldn't ever happen again. This place has great potential and given another year or so I probably could be making more than I had before. It just takes time and a few projects under our belts. I probably could find another job but I would be working for others once again and in sales (at least in the field I'm in, oil and gas, it will take some time to get up to speed).
I know I'm spinning a bit. It just seems like when it rains, it pours, if you know what I mean. My W wanted to be the one to get all D14's school stuff done and never bothered to even tell me about registration, parent meetings, etc. until AFTER they happened or at best the day before. When I would ask her she always had answers but those are turning out to just be "made up" (like she was going to take a bus, that she had all her records from other school approved, etc.). Then there was the fact that she knew a month ago that D would need another eye test and didn't tell me until 2 days before school was starting and expected me to take care of it. Not to mention her changing custody arrangements and not even telling me until D14 showed up at my door (even then she never said a word, her mother told me that I was going to have her another week and then she would spend the next 2 with her mom). It just seems like my W is just willy nilly making decisions about our D and acts like she can just do whatever. The fact that my D14's 19 year old sister can see that my D isn't handling all the change very well while W thinks all is just fine doesn't help me feel good about the future.
Also the fact that until I got the last paperwork from her lawyer, I thought we had made agreements and acted accordingly is also upsetting me as I should have known better. I blame myself for that.
I guess the thing that bothers me most is how out of control I feel. With D14 going to school near my W I'm out of the loop, I don't trust W to do the right things (for good reason) and I'm not there for my D. Something I always swore I would be! And there's nothing I can do about it as I'm at the whim of a person who is acting like a teenager and trying to relive her childhood with her father there this time! There are steps I can take, like going to the school and letting them know I need to be kept informed of things with my D. The stuff relating to the D is also so up in the air as I was so trusting and did so much that I would have never done if I thought D was at all a possibility. Lack of control, feeling betrayed, worrying about my D's because I can no longer count on my W to do anything, these are the things that are wearing on me right now.
Thanks Wonka. I know I wasn't clear and am rambling a bit (a lot!)sorry.
