Sorry you're having a rough time of it with the legalities Cadence. Looking back I realise I was pretty lucky with how our D unfolded. I think XH was so keen to dash out of the M and start a new life and family with OW, he was pretty reasonable.
However, things didn't start out that way. Initially he wanted us just to agree some kind of simple split and he suggested some figures which (for me) were ludicrously below what a normal settlement was likely to look like. He then got a L himself and became much more reasonable. What seemed to help us was 'normal formulae' in our kind of situation.
Our M was a little too long to be classed as short and in the UK, the norm for that situation is to take total assets, each carve off what you came into the R with, and divide the rest 50/50. We don't have kids together. During the M we did see a big rise in assets (and XH regarded these as 'his') but they got split 50/50 in the end. Ours was a collaborative divorce and reasonably pleasant - mostly through the L's, but with a little direct contact too.
It helped my situation that XH's L was a city L and really expensive. She told him that a contested D could cost up to 60k and he was running scared of high L bills. In the end, I think my L bills were around 5k.
What I would say is try and let go of the need for him to see 'your side' and focus on what would be acceptable to you and bring matters to a reasonable conclusion. Also, it can be good to 'sit' with things for a little while before responding - and posting here for sure is a good idea. At one point, I wanted to cite OW, and I wanted to get the considerable funds he spent on visiting her (long haul) factored in - but I let go of that and I don't regret it.
Good luck with things and you will get to the other side of this, I promise :-)
T 13 M 7 Me 48 H 46 SS 15 BD 7.14 PA D final 5.16 (H filed)
We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
