Behavior After You Decide To Divorce

[george roy]

The person who cares the least has the most power and control.

 

Your exercise, should you choose to accept it, is to care less but still respect the place your daughter has in your heart and life. I don't envy you in that task. Other than death, this is likely the most traumatic thing you'll go through in life. Nobody wins. There's only levels of losing. IMO, if you can mitigate those for your daughter and yourself, I'd consider that a win, if a hollow one.

 

STBXW wants to hang with Mr. Wonderful, fine by me. The sooner we can get this divorce hashed out and done with, the better.

STBXW seems to be dilly-dallying on the paperwork, but I'll try and press that tomorrow.

 

I'm working through things. Every day seems to get a little bit better.

 

What riles me is when STBXW lies to the daughter that she's going to pottery class, and that's why she can't make the recital.

Yeah. Ok. Pottery class. Like 'pottery class' makes the fact that you're missing something that's important to your daughter 'ok'.

 

STBXW might as well have said she had empty bottles to return.

 

Regardless of the lie, how does she think that make our daughter feel when 'pottery class' is more important than the dance recital ?

 

I'm an adult. I can fade that.

 

It's when the daughter sees that Mommy has 'more important' (read: insignificant) things to attend to

 

When I saw the look on my daughter's face when Mommy told her why she wouldn't be at recital, I wanted to cry.

 

But it just gives me more opportunity to be Superdad.

[Yasuandio]

Perhaps she is ashamed to see you and/or the faculty (underr the current curcumstances) at such an event.

 

Man, it could be so totally worse. She could show up escorted by Mr. Wonderful (effectively confuse your daughter, and anger you at the same time). Count your blessings.

 

Explain away the pottery class to daughter as a form of "Zen Therapy" for Mom in her time of need. Take DD to Barnes and Noble or library, and look it up, good educational field trip. It ain't so easy to "center" a hunk of clay on a spinning wheel. Yas

Edited January 17, 2014 by Yasuandio

[winston36]

Yeah, that's how it worked for us. I used an attorney for probably a couple hours over the whole divorce. I did a lot of research, and did all the paperwork myself, filed documents myself down at the county municipal courthouse, tracked the schedule and deadlines, etc. Each time, just before I did anything official (like filing a document) I had the attorney look over my almost-final draft to screen it for possible errors or omissions and spent a few minutes discussing what would come next.

 

The attorney time cost a few hundred bucks, but when I got in front of the pro se judge (the one who hears stuff that people handle themselves without attorneys representing them) at the end for final approval, he found only one tiny loose-end issue in the whole package, which he filled in for me in the margin of the document, then approved it with a "Thunk" and we were done. I felt like it was worth the attorney time I used.

 

It helped that my ex "joined" the original petition (i.e. signed it as "respondent" before it was filed, essentially agreeing to start the proceedings in advance) so we didn't have to go through any process service, etc.

 

Trimmer, the bottom of this post has me a little freaked out. Rather than telling my wife to have me served or waiting for traditional service, etc, she and her attorney both told me I could go up to his office to sign the entry of admissal. This is when I would receive a copy of the petition for dissolution. I did so, knowing I wouldn't have to really sign anything other than the proof of service, etc, which is all I did. There was no agreement attached, and really, nothing of note in the petition to even be concerned about. Very vanilla stuff.

What you said about joining as a respondent is something I've understood to be different. For the two weeks since I've done this, I've been puzzled as to why she hasn't filed this suit yet. Simply put, I can't answer what hasn't been filed, and it should have been filed at our county clerk's office the next day after I signed the admissal. But it still hasn't been, and there is really no explanation other than her reconsidering, not being able to afford it, or him being forgetful enough to not file. That is, until you mentioned what you wrote about joining it. Can you expound on your experience? Did you not file a traditional answer to the suit on your own? I've been waiting to do that but I don't even have a case number b/c it technically doesn't exist!

[carhill]

Must be your jurisdiction or something is amiss. Here, one can only be served by a professional process server (neutral third party professional) or the sheriff. When served, one receives a copy of the lawsuit. That's what your signing for, providing the court proof of service and constructive notice. Then, here, you have 30 days to answer, starting from date of service. After that point, your answer is disallowed and the petitioner may file a motion with the court for default judgment on the original complaint.

 

Something sounds wrong to me. The only time I could imagine going to an opposing party's lawyer's office would be to sign settlement documents which had already been approved by my lawyer. Even then, it probably wouldn't work that way. The lawyers would handle it.

[winston36]

Must be your jurisdiction or something is amiss. Here, one can only be served by a professional process server (neutral third party professional) or the sheriff. When served, one receives a copy of the lawsuit. That's what your signing for, providing the court proof of service and constructive notice. Then, here, you have 30 days to answer, starting from date of service. After that point, your answer is disallowed and the petitioner may file a motion with the court for default judgment on the original complaint.

 

Something sounds wrong to me. The only time I could imagine going to an opposing party's lawyer's office would be to sign settlement documents which had already been approved by my lawyer. Even then, it probably wouldn't work that way. The lawyers would handle it.

 

Thanks, carhill. It is an odd situation, I knew the attorney well enough from my former job to talk to him several times on the phone and we agreed I'd sign the entry of appearance at his office rather than traditional service. I had no problem with that. It was really bare bones, nothing to the petition at all really. That is all I signed, no waiver or anything else, and I did get a copy of the petition which was absent any agreement or anything. But he simply has still not filed it. I've read further into this and my 20 days to answer does start once service is completed regardless of whether or not the complaint had been filed, as rare as that is for those two to be out of order in the first place. However, I think that it is implied that the petition is obviously supposed to be or has to be filed in that interim period. If I took an answer to the petition to the clerk's office for filing this week, they would laugh at me and not accept it--yet, my 20 days are almost up. So confused. I also don't want to call her and ask what's going on in case she is asking him to hold off. I don't want to call him either to remind him to do his job. It's an awkward situation.

[Trimmer]

Trimmer, the bottom of this post has me a little freaked out. Rather than telling my wife to have me served or waiting for traditional service, etc, she and her attorney both told me I could go up to his office to sign the entry of admissal. This is when I would receive a copy of the petition for dissolution. I did so, knowing I wouldn't have to really sign anything other than the proof of service, etc, which is all I did. There was no agreement attached, and really, nothing of note in the petition to even be concerned about. Very vanilla stuff.

What you said about joining as a respondent is something I've understood to be different. For the two weeks since I've done this, I've been puzzled as to why she hasn't filed this suit yet. Simply put, I can't answer what hasn't been filed, and it should have been filed at our county clerk's office the next day after I signed the admissal. But it still hasn't been, and there is really no explanation other than her reconsidering, not being able to afford it, or him being forgetful enough to not file. That is, until you mentioned what you wrote about joining it. Can you expound on your experience? Did you not file a traditional answer to the suit on your own? I've been waiting to do that but I don't even have a case number b/c it technically doesn't exist!

 

OK, first, let me be very clear: my most important advice is not to take legal advice from the internet! Even if it's from me, and you think I sound like I know what I'm talking about! If something is going on about which you are confused and uncertain, guessing based on Internet advice is a really bad idea. This is where a couple hours of a real lawyer, in your jurisdiction, could be an insurance policy that saves you time, money, and heartache later on.

 

When I went in to my lawyer, I flat out told him that I wanted to do the case myself, that I wanted to use him as a tool to educate me and double-check my work. Luckily, I found one that was quite happy to assist me on that basis, and even though my wife and I were agreeing on terms, etc, I assertively encouraged her to do the same thing, with a different attorney, so that she could be fully educated, and completely understand anything that she was unsure of. I didn't have any desire to deceive or confuse - I wanted to come out the end of the divorce with everybody feeling like they understood what happened, and it all happened as expected. This is worth the money, in my book.

 

So now, I'll explain my case: I produced the petition (mostly from boilerplate, with various blanks filled in), then I signed it as "Petitioner". At this point, one would normally file it, then serve the Respondent (i.e. my STBXW) so that she would be legally aware that the Petition exists, and that she has to respond within certain time limits, etc.

 

As an alternative to that process, before I filed it, my STBXW chose/agreed to also sign the petition directly, under the role of "Respondent". I don't know if the terminology is the same everywhere, but where I live, this is called "joining" the petition. Since she signed it, then by definition she is aware of it and its legal ramifications, and I did not need to serve her with the Petition.

 

Now, having said that, I was required to serve her with certain subsequent documents, notably the case schedule - which in our relatively amicable case, consisted of me handing her a copy, and her voluntarily signing an "Acceptance of Service" document, which I then filed with the Court to fulfill that requirement.

 

So note first of all that in our case, I was the Petitioner, and my wife was the Respondent. To answer one of your questions, by "joining" the petition, she implicitly agreed with all statements, conditions, and pleadings in the petition, and therefore there was no reason for her to file a response. When the Respondent joins a Petition, it essentially means "we agree that we are both asking the Court for the same thing", so a response isn't expected - or really even meaningful - in that case.

 

I think it's important for you to figure out what exactly you signed, and what its implications are. Did you essentially sign the Petition, effectively telling the Court: "I agree with everything in the Petition and the Petitioner and I are asking the Court for the same thing."

 

Or did you sign something that acknowledges that you have officially received some document - i.e. a substitute for being served. If so, you need to understand the implications of that.

 

In either case (or if it's something yet different from either of my possibilities above, or if it gets weird that you have accepted service before the petition has been filed, or whatever the weirdness) - especially if you believe a clock has started ticking - you need to fully understand what is going on, and not by guessing at it from advice on the internet.