Gerda's Prayer Takes the Form of Angels

[Rita]

Westco, Job, DnJ, Grace -- Thank you for all the love, support, understanding -- and validation.

I know he is crazy but in between knowing I forget and think that the real H is going to reappear. So I need my warrior angels to remind me.

But I do want to tell you that I wasn't trying to convince H of anything. I know I can't get through to that addled mind. I just wanted it in writing for our next conference that I had tried to explain to him that this interim set-up was too hard on the kids so that I would not have to keep doing it. And I figured that if he wrote back something crazy, that would only help prove my point that only one of us is trying to do what is best for the kids.

I don't think I ever explained the court part of things. There is no settlement. This is just a little interim measure I used to get H out. We worked out custody, not what I wanted but apparently better than I could hope for if the judge decided. And so far H didn't take almost any of the visitation he demanded. He also wrote me a crazy e-mail saying that the court did not expect him to follow "the letter" of the agreement until we were actually divorced, not realizing how bad he is going to look if I ever get a guardian for the kids. The judge doesn't seem to care about anything but even she might look askance at that. S13 refuses to see him or talk to him and H keeps writing him very crazy texts and once used D10's phone and pretended he was D10 inviting S13 to hanging out with her and H. But so far not a penny of child support. H makes hardly any money but I want that child support, even if it's a hundred bucks a month! I sometimes don't even eat a meal because I am so broke! I also think that being forced to give up some of his pay will make him more likely to make a settlement with me about the rest. My L was trying not to force that because he wanted to negotiate a global thing but I realized that my L also wants to look good in front of judge for his own sake, and that means doing a lot of settling without motions. So I started digging in until he understood that I was getting that child support no matter what. Now he is demanding it and we may have to file a motion.

Then at the last conference, I told my L that all I cared about was getting H out of the house before I or my kids had a nervous breakdown. I offered 2K a month off his eventual share of the asset/debt split because I knew I could make that much by renting out half my apartment 1/3 of the time. I figured my kids could take that. He demanded 4500 a month and I said no. And at court, in the hallway during "negotiations" his L was screaming that I was hiding money and make 30K a month on our rentals. All the other lawyers and clients in the hallway were staring at him, he was so enraged and nasty. I don't know if H told him that lie or he made it up, but I understood that if I didn't agree to something, I would have to keep living with H until the actual divorce, and that is going to take a while because there is so much debt, discovery, appraisals being demanded by his L. I would need to go to trial to prove all these things are lies. His L just keeps racking up the billable hours since H's friend (my kids' godfather) is funding the legal fees. So I agreed to give him 5K the day he moved out but said it had to be June 1, and 3K a month after that until September. They tried to call this money spousal support!!!! I dug in. They agreed to call the 5K an advance on assets but the rest they would only agree to call "unallocated." So in desperation to get him out, I agreed to this Rumplestiltskin nonsense. I spent all my savings getting the rental ready. And I had to pay $500 of his parking tickets, get a storage space and move all his crap, then my kids both had to go to docs out of pocket as I am still working out insurance through the state, etc, etc. So I put all those things in my note to H to make it clear that this is totally untenable and wrong for the kids, and that he would need to work to pay his own bills til we finalized our settlement. I knew it wouldn't work on him but I wanted to be able to show the court that I tried.

WHEW that was long.

I noticed today that I have more moments of joy. I am still really sad about the family part of things but it is so great not to have to encounter H. I walk around my city and remember how much I like it, am enjoying my work, especially at the prison, feeling a tiny bit attractive once in a while and just more confident, remembering that Gerda was always a tough cool girl.

XOXO to you ALL.