WAW w/Exit Affair or WW? - Divorced Anyway (5)

[Dawn70]

So, about the last name. I understand why you would want her to change it. When I divorced, I kept my XH's last name, mainly because it was the name I was known by professionally and I, at least that time, wasn't planning on changing professions at least for the foreseeable future. Of course, then I did change AND move back to my hometown 2 years after the divorce. In retrospect, if I had known all that would happen, I would have gone back to my maiden name when I went through the divorce, but how could I know? My XH had this weird thing about how mad he got about his XW changing back to her maiden name when they divorced and I honestly didn't give a rat's @$$ if was mad at me for keeping or changing it. He fired himself from any position of giving a crap about anything related to me when he divorced me and his last name was also my LEGAL last name at that point, so honestly, if he had asked me to change it, I would've kept his just to spite him. Now, I'm not saying your XW would do that, but it IS her LEGAL name and it is also your children's legal name so I can see her wanting to keep it, at least for now. Like LH said, asking her to change seems a bit passive aggressive.

As far as the child support, I would figure out a way to directly deposit it to whatever account she wants it in, even if that means her opening a separate account just for that or whatever. Passing it back and forth doesn't leave enough of a paper trail for you to be able to say you gave it to her. Again, not saying she would try to screw you over because I don't know either of you, but I would just think for both of your sake you would want some sort of actual proof (other than just the check itself) that the money is changing hands. I only say this because when my XH and I first got married, he was paying his XW like you do, just giving her a check directly. She would occasionally take the check and hold it until she got the 2nd one for the month (we paid twice a month since that is how he got paid at work) and say that she hadn't received the first one and because she hadn't cashed it, of course, we had no proof that she had received it. Then, she'd be nasty and threaten to report him to child support office for not paying and all sorts of other drama.

Food for thought, but that is just my 2 cents, based on my own experiences.