Little Gerda Goes Forward with Courage and Safety

[Rita]

Kml, DnJ, May -- I have to put my foot down about the vinyl flooring.

Vinyl is bad bad bad for the earth! The production of it, the disposal of it, its whole life cycle, and it off gases into your own lungs.

I know it's cheaper and it's hard to find things that look nice and don't cost a fortune.

Ugh as I was writing this, I got a message from H. I had tried again to get him to go to mediation. He told me he would go only if I started paying him the full monthly ED payment we agreed on before Covid and which I was able to pay by renting out half my apartment. Obviously not an option during a pandemic. I have been sending him $500 a month instead of $2500. Last month sent $1000 because my forbearance got extended.

Keep in mind, I get no child support and filed a petition in family court a couple weeks ago but haven't heard from family court. (My D is in supreme court but the judge doesn't care about kids or child support.) So he said he is filing an emergency motion against me to get me to pay the $2500.

H also claimed our kids on his tax return and so my return got rejected and I have to battle to try to get my refund. I had to report H for tax fraud!!!

He is paying a lawyer $4000 to get me to pay an extra $1500 per month. (Not actually paying. His lawyer is doing all this on spec, will siphon so much of the equity.) And he thinks that the judge will listen to a grown man saying it's an emergency that he gets paid an advance on unsettled ED rather than finding a JOB so he can pay his own rent when he's not even paying child support.

I tried to keep things pretty upbeat, sent him a record of rents (showing a 67% drop compared to 2019) and explaining about forbearance and asking that he find a seasonal job (he is an adjunct prof) so he can cover his own rent and child support. He just wrote back in a fury while I was lecturing you about vinyl, saying "I will not speak even one word to a mediator without the resumption of the court-ordered $2500. I am going to file an emergency motion."

He has a lunchline mentality about court orders. Picks on the ones he likes and ignores the other, always with wrath and self righteous anger. It's so crazy.

But it means that next week I'll have to show up for an emergency hearing and wade through that. I am in court literally at least once a month. We've been referred to trial but never actually went to trial and now there is a huge backlog. I've offered to settle with a downpayment for now and the rest when rents resume and he won't do it, even though he will have to wait for trial. They just keep filing motions against me and the judge never reads them and everyone screams at each other and nothing happens. It's so insane. I try to remember that most of my days I do not have to deal with this, just some days. But ugh it has been ruining my sleep lately. It's like a tapeworm winding its way through my insides. Or a snake with its jaws stuck in my leg and I can't shake it off.