I want to divorce my wife!

[ryanj28]

I think some of the replies here are a bit harsh.

 

It's perfectly acceptable to acknowledge you've fallen out of love with someone in this day and age, sounds like you may have been blinded with rose tinted glasses in the beginning.

 

I really hate women who threaten men who use their children as a weapon if their partner leaves them, it's so selfish and shouldn't be allowed.

 

You sound stuck in a rut and would be doing everyone a favour if you divorced her.

 

There is nothing more annoying than the mother of a child using her child as a pawn against said child's father. Either way it goes father or mother, a child should not be used as leverage. I've seen sloppy divorces through my friends where that was the case and I'm all about my kids so this is where I see myself get pulled back and forth with this situation.

[Misadventure]

Ryan, take a step back for a moment and look at the situation.. and I know its hard to be objective..but try.

 

- If this were your sister..she married someone..had children...didn't work and had been a stay at home wife and homemaker.. and husband was on the edge of leaving..and didn't want to pay a cent..

 

- A man who married someone, pretty much knew he was not in love but wanted companionship, sex, a mother figure and did have some feelings b ut now just miserable..wants out..cheated before..was accepted back in.. feels like he should not have to pay a damn cent if he leaves, this is his money and she is smart, he feels he should not have to pay anything except for his kids..

_______________

 

My opinion, and take it for what it's worth: Even if you put a bandage on the marriage temporarily, you both are not in love and you do not want to stick around for the long haul. She will resent you and you will her, as you already do, as your typing drips of red blood contempt seething from the fingertips.

 

Regardless what you feel you are owed: Bottom line, this woman became a mother to YOUR child and then you had one together. Just because you want out does not mean you are not responsible for her and the kids during this time.

 

Sure, she is smart and educated..but look at the unemployment rate. If she has not been active in the workforce she will not land anything that she can live on soon unless she really gets in there. She has been a caretaker to your kids and your home.

 

Yes, you can see goodbye to half the pension and half the 401k that is a given. But if you are looking at this like that already and seething and ready to shyt bullets, then your heart does not even remotely care what becomes of her either than you just want her out of your life.

 

Hmmm.. see a pattern here.. you you and you. Yes, you are unhappy. She probably really is too. Instead of trying to Hitlerize your life...write down what it is you want and expect in your life. How can you get there without sending her down the rabbit hole too? At some point, you cared enough to marry her so respect that. You don't have to love her, you don't have to stay with her.. but you do need to be a man through this, a man with honor and integrity who his kids can look up to.. and one day say that their Dad divorced them Mom in a civil and less messy way instead of taking all his toys, holding them close and saying "No, you can't have it- mine!"

 

I know you are angry...who knows how many times you did cheat or THOUGHT about cheating...point is..regardless how unhappy she makes you... you aren't exactly a shining white knight.

 

Does that mean you deserve to remain unhappy? No.

 

It means that you need to decide if you will take the path with some honor or if you will do the cheap shenanigans selfish way which your kids will look back on.

 

Divorce sucks and it is brutal. But you can get through it with your head held up high or wagging your finger in pure contempt.

[ryanj28]

I'm not trying to be selfish, I want her out. I will have to look for an attorney to protect my rights as a father because my wife made it completely obvious that she would not allow me to see the child we have together if I left our marriage completely. I've sat and thought about ways to provide for everyone and have thought of ways to maintain our lifestyles separately.

 

I've proposed $1000 a month for half the duration of our marriage with $700 child support with keeping my wife on my health insurance for the duration of half our half our marriage (2.5-3 years) and then continue to keep my kid on my health insurance seeing as how she is my child too. I've proposed 25% of my retirement with $1500 a month, health insurance, and child support. I've thrown out 50% of my retirement, health insurance, and child support. I've thrown out ideas, I've asked these things, and have tried my hardest to communicate with her. With all the money I am WILLING to give her for 3 years, I'm also allowing her to get up and try to find a job.

 

So, and this maybe selfish, but I've wanted to find a mutual agreement that we can both maintain and she straight up will not listen to me! I have a hard time wanting to allow a judge to make these decisions for me when we can easily work them put ourselves but she proceeds to make this harder than it needs to be. "No Ryan, I don't want to talk about this!" "You're an a*****e!" "If you love this family, you won't leave me!" "Why are you suck a prick?" Then she'll go upstairs lay in bed and cry and proceed to text me while I'm in the living room pictures of our child and say things like, "Don't break baby's heart." "Love me for her." "We need to be together for this." It's manipulative! So then I'll go upstairs to try and talk and she'll start making massive amounts of noise. Since I don't want to wake baby, I go back downstairs angry.

 

She knows this marriage can no longer go on, but she is refusing to comply with me even knowing I'm trying to help her out too! I'm not doing the kid thing "that's my toy- don't touch it." I'm trying to find some sort of way to keep this clean, but she highly seems like she won't allow it. I almost want to believe that IF I cheated again, once, twice, three times, she would still want to make this work out! She's threatening to keep baby away from me when I would like to think that I am a great dad despite wanting to leave mom. I obvious will care for my wife, but there comes a point where I'm not okay with this fake smile crap people see.

 

So if my sister were the girl in the example, yeah, I'd feel awful! If my sister were pulling this stuff, I'd find myself wanting to support her since she's my sister, but I would understand my brother in law's stance. Let's be honest, you would too.

 

Since online comments and text messages and all can come off as defensive understand this in no way was supposed to come off as defensive or angry.

Edited April 14, 2014 by ryanj28

[lmyya]

It sounds like you're not trying to withhold all money from your wife out of spite, but you don't want to be taken advantage of, either. You want to be fair, but you think your wife might not want to be fair. And you're trying to reach out to make sure that, in the process of protecting yourself and your kids from her unfair tactics, you don't end up "looking into the abyss" and becoming unfair yourself.

 

That's a hard one to gauge, when all the money and custody used to be in one pile. But I think the answer is: Lawyer up and lawyer up "right." That means telling your attorney the weaknesses in your case-- that is, tell the attorney everything you think your wife might be able to convince her atty/ a judge, in her favor. Then, your lawyer will be able to give you the same advice that your wife's lawyer will give her. In other words, your lawyer will say, "Best case scenario for her, she can get a $--- award, so she should want to settle for $-- and not go to court over it." If she gets a lawyer who advises the same, then you have a good chance of getting a reasonable settlement without skyrocketing attorney fees.

 

In other words, the lawyer isn't there to help you just steamroller over her. The lawyer is there to give you information and advice about what you're both likely to get from a judge, so you two can settle with each other and try to save both of you from costly court fees. That much-- a willingness to settle-- could be viewed as a helpful gesture from both directions, and things might calm down.

 

As an example of costs, I visited a lawyer for free for a half hour, but I didn't get more than a small amount of general information. I've scheduled with another atty who bills $250/hr. His first, one-hour appointment will be $100-- and that is partly so that he can decide whether he can even do anything for me, whether I want to hire him given the specifics of my case. If I want to hire him, he asks for a $2500 retainer, and bills at an hourly rate of $250. If my husband is not too contentious, it's very possible I'll pay $100 for some advice that I relate to my husband and then he might just agree to a divorce settlement based on that advice. But that's us-- we have no assets together except a car that I'm happy to give him, and we have been married 14 months so far, and are both good parents (though with some minor power struggles over parenting that I hope will not spill over into custody battles).

 

You on the other hand, might want to squirrel away a couple thousand dollars to pay an attorney.--- and hope you don't need to use the entire retainer. (Retainer = money paid in advance, lawyer has to give scrupulous accounting for what s/he did hourly, and lawyer returns any unused part of it at end of representation.) I think it will save you money, to have a lawyer on the front end, IF you tell you lawyer the weaknesses in your case. I have totally seen people go to a lawyer over a civil matter, tell only the facts in their favor, get some bogus advice that the lawyer doesn't even know is bogus, and tell the other party "My attorney says you lose, and you owe me $1,000, so pay up." Then the other party refuses, goes to court, and has to pay nothing. When the two could have settled for somewhere in the middle if the person's lawyer had only been able to realize what was at stake.

 

You're looking to split up, you're looking to keep both parties fair financially and to come out of the fog of uncertainty. You and she both need to start planning your futures apart, and you can't do that before knowing how much you'll owe. I'd take your settlement offer as a starting place.

 

For some perspective, I'm told that my unemployed husband won't be awarded any spousal support from me. He's not greedy, but he is very frightened over how he'll be able to live-- and I don't blame him. I on the other hand have no extra money at the end of the month. My husband has stayed home to care for our baby-- he'd say he did it 5 days/week, I say he did it 3 days plus some help on the other two days when I telecommute but really he takes off a lot. He would say he gave up a job and a future career to stay home, I say that he had very spotty part-time work for a year before baby was born and that there was no secured job he turned down, also that I've encouraged him to work rather than stay home. I say that his staying home has hurt my career, because I have to take over the household responsibilities and administrative stuff and all chores et c in addition to all the income. He would likely say that he stayed home to work in order to support my career. So we have some disagreements over what's going on.

 

I've proposed, to one family atty friend, that I waive child support, give him the second car to drive and I keep paying the $2,000 loan on it, and pay his auto insurance or some portion of it. That all amounts to about a $600/mo savings for him. My atty friend says that that is way more than he'd be awarded by any judge-- but he and I have a very short term marriage. And I'll add that I wish I could give him more. He needs a transition period so he can get a job and put down a deposit on an apartment. I'd gladly let him live with me while he does that, but it would be so uncomfortable for both of us without some ground rules! Maybe your wife could use the same thing-- a finite number of months that are designed to let her job search before finalizing the divorce. But something like that would have to be structured by attorneys in my opinion.

 

You are fortunate that you can afford something. I would far rather pay my husband some money he's not entitled to, for a while, just to make sure that he can leave, get a productive life going, and stay in my baby's life without a lot of chaos. As it is, I feel I can't divorce him now because I don't know that he'd be able to support himself. I guess the grass is always greener, but I see a pretty good future for you. If you have to spend some chunks of money to secure that future, well, think of it as a big sport car that you bought with a loan when you were 20, you totaled it, and how you have to pay for it. Emotionally it's not the same thing of course, but that's the point of my metaphor, because the finances don't necessarily have to be as emotional as the rest. Sometimes it seems exorbitantly expensive, unfair even, to secure a good future. But you do it anyway because you are responsible and you have some clarity. And the lawyer can go a long way toward keeping the settlement reasonable.

[ryanj28]

Do you think that mediation with attorneys present or not present something I can try talking to my wife about as opposed to getting a judge involved? Or should I just jump in with an attorney to then serve my wife with papers and go from there? I want this to be clean and handled as maturely as possible from both ends.

[lmyya]

Do you think that mediation with attorneys present or not present something I can try talking to my wife about as opposed to getting a judge involved? Or should I just jump in with an attorney to then serve my wife with papers and go from there? I want this to be clean and handled as maturely as possible from both ends.

 

I would do mediation with attorneys, not without. IMHO, mediation without attorneys is kind of a waste of money, because the mediator isn't looking out for either party's interests. Though even a mediator is better than two people who are too emotional to discuss something like custody and property division.

 

I don't know about just serving her with papers. It seems like that would foster some very panicky defensiveness in many people. Suddenly one's private life and family preferences becomes an enforceable legal matter that they have been "served" with. You are going to want your wife to be as strong and reasonable as possible through this. You don't want to be dealing with a person who feels cornered and might throw tantrums.

 

But I also see the value in handling everything swiftly. I think that you ought to have all your ducks in a row so that you can, if necessary, serve her with the divorce petition.

 

Probably your lawyer will be able to set up some kind of mediation with you, your wife, your attorney and a mediator-- whether your wife has an attorney or not. I'd ask about separation too. In my state, a legal separation can be automatically turned into a divorce whenever the parties want. But in some states, the agreement has to be done all over again. The thing about separation is it MIGHT help keep someone on health insurance (I am not sure about that), and it gives the other party room to breathe while also hammering out a custody schedule that is enforceable. Then if you want to stay married after the separation is over, that is also an option.

 

It doesn't seem like it now, but your wife might very well be happier after some period of separation, and she might want a divorce too. She sounds scared to me. Once she understands that her baby will still very much have a mommy and a daddy, and that she (your wife) will have her own life with her own freedoms and the ability to stand on her own two feet and even find love if she wants to some day, I think she will prefer going through with the divorce.

 

No woman wants to feel powerless over what happens with their baby. Reassure her that whatever happens, her baby will still have two very loving, involved parents. Don't give her any cause to panic that she might get less time with her little one. And her insensible threats to take the baby away from you-- I think that that is really rooted in a fear that YOU will not be around to father the baby. It's like she's making you prove that you want to be the baby's involved father, by threatening to take baby away. She possibly sees divorce as a thing where you become some kind of half-father. I cannot emphasize enough: Let her know how much you want BOTH of you to be there for the baby after the divorce. That will help your case as well as help your wife to be reasonable.

 

And I have heard of child custody arrangements that specify that a baby or toddler not go 24 hours without seeing each parent-- or 48 hours or whatever. You can construct whatever custody arrangement works. But I wouldn't serve her with papers that have some kind of custody arrangement without 1)being represented and 2) asking for her position on custody/visitation, as long as your lawyer thinks that you should.

 

Good luck! Keep us posted.