Another exciting New Year's Eve. Sitting here with my cat watching bad tv, eating leftover pizza while drinking champagne and
still
fucking
married.
Oh well, I guess those papers will show up eventually. So much for the whole "fresh start to a new year" thing.
I have set a personal record for the completion of my Christmas preparations. Now that it's Dec 20 I would typically be just beginning the task of shopping for gifts, but I'm already done. They're all wrapped, tagged, bagged and either waiting for delivery or already shipped out. The wrapping stuff is all put away and all that mess cleaned up.
Cards were mailed a little later than usual but I think they'll still make it in time. Hey, I had to do something late or it just wouldn't seem like Christmas.
I even got adventurous and made some chocolate chip cookies. They were awesome, by the way. If I can find the chocolate I was looking for I may even make another batch just to see if they come out even better. Who'd have thought it would be so hard to find Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips?
So today we finally had the big settlement hearing that was scheduled by the attorney hired by my soon-to-be-ex (but nowhere near soon enough). We don't really have much in the way of possessions, we don't stand to make a lot on the house and we aren't sitting on hundred thousand dollar bank accounts so why they felt these expensive hearings were necessary is beyond me. As it turns out, I sure am glad they felt that way!
I went in with a proposed settlement, it cut her a few breaks but was still skewed in my favor. The judge was apparently completely unimpressed with the behavior of swcnbn, this is when all of her lies, pettiness, thievery and general asshole behavior came back to bite her in the ass. Not only did I end up with everything I asked for, I somehow got more! WTF? I think she has no idea how much she gave up because she never got to see my actual proposal. The judge kept tossing us out of the conference room so I think most of the details were worked out between the judge and the attorneys. I get back everything I wanted returned (she has 4 days to return it all) and she somehow ends up paying me more money than I asked for. The weirdest part? She voluntarily walked away from any and all profit on the house. Willingly. At the suggestion of her own attorney. That was reinforced by the judge when she made sure to word her report accordingly, forbidding swcnbn from receiving so much as a penny of the proceeds by order of the court.
When it was all said and done, the judge had left and my soon-to-be-ex and her attorney were gone leaving me sitting there with my attorney I had to turn and ask her, "What the Hell just happened?" She just smiled.
Step 1 of 3 is now complete, the next step should be done by the end of the year.
Kidney stones? Yes please, because once is never enough. I've been in some pain the past couple of days, and having had kidney stones once before I knew exactly what it was. I'd hoped the stone(s) would pass without incident but no such luck. Today the pain got bad enough that I had to drive to the ER and go through that whole mess again. This time I have three stones, all 3 millimeters in size with two still in my kidney.
I've been drugged (multiple times), CT Scanned, sonogrammed twice, jabbed with needles and catheterized all while sporting the latest in hospital gown fashion. The hospital staff unsuccessfully tried to figure out how I could suck down 2 large glasses of water and over a liter and a half of fluid from an IV yet still remain unable to pee more than a teaspoonful because my bladder was empty. Where'd it all go? Nobody knows, it's just one of those "things that make you go hmmmm" I guess. So after all of that I came home and took a quick nap to clear my head somewhat then painted a couple windows and a door. The show must go on.
Tomorrow was supposed to be the settlement hearing for the divorce but that's postponed now. I need to be able to think clearly and a mind exhausted by two nights without sleep and possibly still under the influence of percocet probably won't be very clear.
Blah!
As part of his never ending attempts to blow our divorce completely out of proportion my wife's jackass attorney has been demanding I come sit through a deposition. He's wasted hours of billable time communicating this desire to my lawyer, scheduling it, rescheduling it, screwing up and rescheduling again, preparing the questions then the actual deposition itself.
What was so important, you may ask? He spent all of 15 minutes asking questions regarding two main points; my employment history in high school and immediately thereafter as well as my current financial information. Seriously, it really matters where I worked in high school 2 years before my soon-to-be-ex-wife even set foot in this country, 9 years before I even met her and almost two decades before we married? Even the financial questions were a waste of time, he asked about current balances when all that matters were the balances at the time of the separation and he's had that info in great detail for 6 weeks now.
Personally I think the fucktardian douchebag is an unethical prick, nothing better than a thief. He exemplifies every negative stereotype of divorce attorneys. I really don't give a damn that my wife is stupid enough to allow herself to be robbed but I'm getting pretty tired of forking over money for unnecessary bullshit simply because she's too stupid to figure out that she's being played. Between us I'm guessing we had to fork out over a thousand dollars for this complete waste of time. Fortunately her cost will be twice whatever mine is, I hope she chokes on his next billing statement.
So my charming bitch of a soon-to-be-ex-wife shows up the day before her court ordered deadline to empty the room she's left filled with her possessions. She takes less than half of what's in there and tells me she doesn't want the rest, leaving me the task of getting rid of it all.
The next morning I send her an e-mail listing everything she claimed she did not want since I need it in writing before I dispose of anything. No reply... surprise! The next morning I send her another one, again no response..... surprise!!
Now e-mail number three is on its way, reminding her that she is under court order to remove her personal possessions and advising her that any farther lack of response would be interpreted as permission to discard everything she left behind. This whole "one-sided cooperation" thing is getting really, really old.... I knew she'd ignore the court order, her arrogance makes her actions easily predicted.
Today I was scheduled to give a deposition, I would have to sit and answer a whole lot of unnecessary questions while under oath. Of course my soon-to-be-ex's attorney scheduled it on a day I couldn't leave work because I was the only one here and he didn't have the common courtesy to consult with myself or my attorney before scheduling a day and time.
Fortunately I have an eye for detail and noticed that he screwed up the court papers ordering the deposition. Whomever typed up his standard "copy and paste to suit current needs" form accidentally left two little words remaining which should have been deleted. Those words were "by telephone" and as insignificant as they may seem they pissed him off when I brought it to his attention 2 days ago at the hearing he cancelled. He apparently doesn't like giving 2 hour long dispositions over the telephone and seemed pretty perturbed that the only way he'd get any answers out of me today would be over the phone. Wah.
So today the phone rings at the appointed time, I answer and it is his office, the conference call has begun. In theory anyway. I could hear my attorney just fine and she could hear me, the enemy could hear the both of us just fine but we could not hear him. Every time he spoke it sounded like his phone had a loose cord, just a bunch of clicking with his voice cutting in and out. They tried 3 times, none were successful. He really wanted to interrogate me, I could hear the frustration in his intermittent voice even through the clicking. It probably didn't help any when I just started ignoring him completely and talking to my own attorney, lol. Yes, that was the highlight of my day.
Now he has to reschedule and swcnbn has to fork out more money, for which she will get nothing of any use. The saga continues....
Today I won a small victory in the never ending saga of the joke known as my divorce. My soon-to-be-ex's attorney had filed a petition with the court with the intent of giving complete control of the house to my wife, leaving me completely out of any and all decisions regarding repairs to be done, contractors to be paid, the sale price, etc... As justifcation for this request they had listed a collection of lies ranging from little white ones to flat out blatant bullshit.
The hearing for that petition was today, and once her attorney realized I had paperwork with me which would unequivocally disprove his entire list of her lies he chickened out of his own hearing, volunteering instead to hold a conference between my wife and I plus both attorneys to see if an agreement could be reached.
We reached one, and she is now under court order to get her ass into this house and help get it ready for sale, something she has refused to do for four months now. She is also under court order to get the bulk of her remaining possessions out of the house so they are out of the way and will no longer impede any progress. I doubt she'll comply, court order or not, because I know that her twisted sense of entitlement will enable her to believe that she's so very special that a court order doesn't apply to her. The whole ridiculous petition backfired on her lying, thieving ass and she now (technically) has no choice but to participate, contribute and get out of my way.
The part which strikes me as the funniest about all of this is that not only did she come out the loser in more ways than one, it cost her over a thousand dollars to do so! That particular petition costs $510 just to file, plus 2 hours of attorney fees for the hearing and conference at $300/hour and that doesn't even include any prep time he may have billed to her. You have no idea how badly I wanted to flip her off with both hands with an "In your face, bitch!" thrown in for good measure.
Moments like that, as few and far between as they may be, almost make the whole ridiculous process bearable.
Finally! After almost 2 weeks the first batch of divorce paperwork is done and it's about damned time. My can't-be-ex-soon-enough's attorney apparently has a deep rooted hatred of trees, the stack is over 2 - 1/4 inches high. That's a lot of paper and a hell of a lot of writing and copying and sorting and researching and you've no friggin' idea how much cursing, lol. Now to finally get some dinner, better late than never.
It just keeps coming. There is no end in sight. It seems like I will spend the rest of my life trying to get divorced. Every single time there's any progress at all my wife and her attorney throw out another obstacle, usually an expensive one.
This time it is something called a Petition for Special Relief. In it, my charming wife petitions the court to give her full authority to sell our house and perform every aspect of every act needed to do so, giving her full and sole legal rights to the entire process. She also petitions that all proceeds from the sale go into an account controlled by her attorney, with no disbursements of said funds to be made without a Court order. Despite that, I will still be required to pay half of any expenses she decides to incur, even if I don't agree to the work, the contractor, or the price!
As justification for this she provides a list of lies.
I absolutely can't wait until the hearing for this petition. When she has to take the stand in Family Court she will have two choices, either admit she filed false papers with the Court or commit perjury by repeating the lies, all of which I can disprove. Her attorney is going to shit bricks when he finds out he's been lied to again. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go buy more rope.
Today I get a letter from my attorney. Enclosed is a copy of a letter sent to her by swcnbn's attorney demanding I pay the balance of a bill from the dentist within two weeks or he'd file petition to compel such payment since I was still on her insurance plan. WtF??
I had already paid over half of the original bill, a fact he'd have known if either he or my sad excuse of a wife had bothered to ask. The remaining balance was in dispute because the insurance company hadn't paid their portion correctly and the dentist's staff had originally billed me incorrectly, mistakenly adding a service I did not receive on that visit. Jackass and Queen Bitch would have known this had either one of them bothered to ask. I actually owed $220 less than what that jackass was demanding I pay, the matter had already been resolved between myself and the dentist's office staff and the final check had already been mailed. Those two deserve each other, lol. They're a match made in heaven.
So the stupid cow spent a minimum of $150 for her attorney to demand payment of a bill I had already paid. Funny, eh? It did give me a great idea though. I don't really need to do anything at all regarding the divorce, I just need to keep giving her more rope to better enable her to hang herself. All of her arrogance, spite and lies will come back to haunt her in the end, but thinking ahead has never been one of her strong points. She's always been all about immediate gratification, future be damned, which is one of the biggest reasons why we are where we are today.
Tonight I got really bored with sitting around all alone and decided I'd go out and have a little human contact away from work. So I snatch up the birthday cash I've been holding on to and head up to Chili's. Wouldn't you know it, the place is friggin' deserted.
So I enjoyed the company of a couple Sam Adams Summer Ales, a plate full of fried shoestring onions and jalapeño slices, a fajita trio with beef, chicken and shrimp then a warm brownie with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream all covered in chocolate syrup. I wouldn't have wanted to be all rude by talking with my mouth full so I guess it's really okay that none of my food had much to say.
I got another letter from my attorney today informing me that swcnbn's attorney has filed a "Motion to Appoint a Master". It cost her $510 just to file and it's an unnecessary waste of time and money to even go through the process.
First our attorneys meet with the Master to familiarize them with the issues of the case. Second, we have a settlement conference during which an attempt is made to place a value on all of our assets and determine their equitable distribution. If her past behavior is any indication of what I can expect then this conference will fail and we'll have to go to stage three which is a full blown court hearing that will be at least a thousand dollar day just from the legal fees involved.
All I want is her gone, out of my life completely and forever. Apparently that's too much to ask because she keeps coming up with trick after stupid trick to keep herself in my life as long as possible. I'm beginning to understand why so many divorced people loathe their ex so badly.
In their never ending quest to blow this divorce as far out of proportion as humanly possible swcnbn and her attorney have now demanded I sit for a scheduled 2 hour deposition. We have next to nothing in the way of assets, basically the house, furniture of no significant value, a couple of fairly expensive Persian rugs, our vehicles and our personal effects but now I have to deal with a deposition too. Several hundred more dollars down the drain, and there is absolutely nothing which will be gained by her from this. They seemed determined to escalate this into a sequel to War of the Roses, something worthy of the Trumps themselves. They act like I have beachfront condos, billion dollar bank accounts and a fleet of Learjets stashed somewhere.
I'm starting to think her attorney is just an immoral horse's ass, taking any action he can think of for the sole purpose of creating billable hours so he can milk his client for every last penny. He doesn't seem to have any interest at all in actually resolving anything, he simply continues to create additional obstacles. Sadly, swcnbn is dumb enough to let him.
Today I got something called a First Set of Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents. It looks like nothing but a waste of money and time. It's a bunch of questions demanding every last detail of every financial transaction, asset or liability active in any way whatsoever during the past 3 years, with supporting documentation required. So now I have a huge stack of papers to fill out, a bunch of forms I need to copy in triplicate then fill them out too, then copy the whole mess so I don't have to pay my attorney an exorbitant fee to do so herself.
Then I have to make copies of every page of 3 years' worth of statements, all for an account which is closed, was evenly split, has been mutually agreed upon by both swcnbn and myself to be evenly split, and swcnbn already has copies of most of them anyway! It's going to cost me over $100 just to get the statements from the bank, and it will take hours for me to copy them a page at a time on my little Lexmark inkjet multifunction printer. Than I must provide the same for the account which was created with the money we split from that closed account, even though it is now deemed no longer a marital asset!
That's just the beginning. It's going to take me weeks to get this done. I'll never get any work done to prep this house for sale at this rate. Shoot me now. Better yet, shoot her. maybe Dick Cheney could take her hunting?
I got another letter from swcnbn's attorney demanding that I pay the airfare and resort fees and stating that I must. The only thing I must do is tell her no, again.
Today I get a letter from swcnbn's attorney informing me that I owe her about $3,100 from her trip to the Philippines. You know, the one that I didn't take. I supposedly owe over $2,000 for resort costs and I also supposedly owe her sister almost $1,100 because swcnbn claims her sister paid for the airline tickets. She had 10 days notice that I wasn't going but her phone log showed no calls to the resort or to the airline, she didn't even try to cancel so she can kiss my ass. I'm not divorcing her sister so she can kiss my ass too. Swcnbn used the room herself, she's lost her mind if she thinks I'll be paying for it. I had previously offered to pay for the airfare but she refused. That was her decision, she can deal with it. I'll pay it if and when a judge orders me to, that's the only way she'll see a penny. It's another lie anyway, I found out swcnbn had taken $7,000 from her pension plan back in January, I'd bet good money part of that went to repay her sister so in actuality her sister didn't pay a thing.
How very fitting that her last 2 initials are BS, she is all BS all the time.
Today was the Spousal Support hearing. Quite the interesting experience. She who can not be named lied to the Domestic Relations Officer 4 times while trying to make it seem like she actually pays for her health insurance and claiming that most of the furniture she took wasn't ours but was borrowed from her sister, lol. She tried 3 different twisted responses in an attempt to make it sound like she paid for the insurance but our health insurance is 100% paid for by her employer, and the furniture was paid for by us. I called her on her lies which didn't do much to make her look good.
Then it got real funny, I could barely keep a straight face when the DRO started reading the court order. She who can not be named has to pay me $460.73 every two weeks and it will be taken directly from her paycheck. She is also under court order to continue my health insurance under her current plan, and once I have paid a total of $250 out of pocket medical expenses she is required to pay 72% of the rest. Her attorney already stated his intention to appeal but in the meantime she's stuck paying it. I feel a couple trips to the dentist coming on, lol. So far her bitch attitude isn't working out real well for her. Poor thing.
The funniest part of the entire day was her sister. For reasons unknown the sister thought she'd be allowed in to the hearing. She was all dressed up and ready to do her meddling as she followed swcnbn, myself and both of our attorneys into the conference room. She was stopped by an official hand in her face and asked who she was, then told she couldn't enter. The look on her face was priceless, I wish I could have a picture to forever memorialize her expression. You've heard the expression "Her face fell..?" Well, hers did. It was so cartoonish that in my head I could hear the cartoon soundtrack of a trombone making the waw, waw, waw, wawwww sound. It took great effort to keep from laughing at her. That was the highlight of my day.
This just gets more ridiculous by the day. I had already obtained an attorney before she who can not be named decided that being a thieving bitch was the best way to reach a quick and equitable settlement and facilitate as quick and painless a divorce as possible. This attorney had agreed to handle the case for an extremely low hourly rate and based on my description of our relatively low assets she figured it to cost no more than $1,000. She would file the divorce papers and take it from there.
Scratch that plan. Jeannette, in all of her infinite wisdom, has decided after stealing the bank account, our joint tax refund check and most of our joint possessions that she should also be the one to file. Accordingly, she hired an expensive attorney with a reputation for being very difficult to work with. That means I had to hire a different attorney, one who specializes in family law. So now, instead of one attorney working with us to quickly settle the case we will have two separate attorneys working against each other, each charging triple the rate of the one I'd originally hired. I think I can say goodbye to anything resembling a quick divorce.
Yesterday I had my consult with the new attorney. After hearing how Jeannette had proceeded up to that point she ordered me to go to the Domestic Relations Office and file a Spousal Support claim based on the large disparity in our respective incomes. WTF?? I had no idea I could even do that, and am not real comfortable with doing so but since I have to pay this woman $300/hour you can bet your ass I'm going to do as she tells me. It sure did hurt signing that $3,000 retainer check, it better be worth it.
On another note I think I've figured out why she who can not be named is acting like such a bitch. She's taking her divorce advice from two different people; a gay man who's never been married and her sister who went through a bitter divorce not long ago. These two live completely different lifestyles than we do (the sister has children), are in waaayyyyy different income brackets with assets far above ours and have completely different life philosophies than we do but she seems intent on following their every word. Neither one has bothered to ask me my side or bothered to make any effort to find the whole story before offering their advice. She's taking that advice, knowing that's is based on her rather twisted version of what's been going on. Karma will come back to bite her in the ass, I just know it and I can't wait to see it.
First it was "You never really know someone until you live with them." Sounds reasonable enough, but you can still get to know them better.
Later that changes to "You never really know someone until you are married to them." That's much closer to the truth, but still not quite all the way there yet.
In reality, you never truly know someone until you divorce them, only then do you see them for the arrogantly selfish, materialistic, spiteful thieving bitch they truly are.
Tonight I come home from work to find the house had been ransacked, all of our financial documentation was gone, and most of the furniture as well as a lot of personal items were all missing. My darling wife had waited until I left for work then showed up with friends, boxes and a moving truck and proceeded to take what she wanted.
She took her perceived half of what she wanted, but that was just the start. My clothes were thrown on the bed because Jeannette took the dresser I used, as well as the one she used. She also took both lamp tables from the living room, perfectly illustrating her concept of an even split.
Although she hasn't lifted a finger in over 8 years to care for any of the orchids she felt it necessary to take all 40 or so of those too. She didn't bother with the shelving or lights, just the plants. Again with the "even" split. Her sister had given me about a dozen or so Balinese wood carvings she'd had in storage from way back when I ran her now closed retail store, Jeannette has never expressed any interest in them or lifted a finger to clean or maintain them but suddenly she liked them well enough to take every single one. You get the picture. There's plenty more, and I'm sure that given the amount of items missing I'll soon discover even more twisted versions of an "equal split" because Jeannette has a bizarre sense of entitlement that I've never been able to figure out.
What's mine is mine, what's ours is mine and what's yours is mine. That seems to be her philosophy. Once again stupidity prevails, thereby guaranteeing that what should have been a quick and simple divorce will now be ugly, drawn out and very expensive.
I got a real nice surprise today after work. While trying to check out at the grocery store the credit card reader kept returning an error message, telling me "Invalid Account." In my heart and in my mind I knew exactly what that meant, but calmly called my wife to verify what I felt, which she promptly did. Yes, she had emptied the bank account and closed it, leaving me with no access to funds, no way to pay for the groceries I had and no way to get gas to get home.
Her reason? I had transferred some money to a savings account to be used by both of us for separation expenses. Before I'd had a chance to tell her about it, explain the plan and show her the spreadsheet I'd make to track the use of that money she had gone to the ATM for another of her three times a week cash withdrawals and noticed the change in our account balance, and since she's spent our entire marriage taking money, spending large sums of money with no discussion and lying about both on a regular basis she automatically just decided that I must now be doing the same. That is her mindset. For the first time ever I was actually angry enough to insult her directly, I almost feel bad for calling her a thieving cunt.... almost.
God forbid she exercise any common sense at all, maybe take the 10 seconds necessary to call me and ask for details. I think she has set in motion a series of events which will turn what should have been a simple and quick divorce into a seemingly never-ending hatefest which will end up costing us each thousands of dollars each with little or nothing to be gained by either.
I have never seen such an intelligent person so easily rendered completely and utterly stupid by money, or even the thought of money. It's downright sad. My only consolation is the fact that she will soon be out of my life forever. Not soon enough, but soon.
This morning I told my wife that I thought it was time we admit and accept the fact that our marriage has failed. She took it pretty hard.
Her response? "I guess this means I'm out the money for the trip to the Philippines."
How stupid was I to think she'd actually care.
