Technical Difficulties... Love 'Em!

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....

A Small Victory

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.

Paperwork, Round 1

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.

More BS And More Lies, Oh My, What A Surprise!

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.

• She claims that she assumes "most all of the responsibility of the mortgage, taxes and utilities" which is several blatant lies wrapped up in one. Since our separation we have split the mortgage right down the middle every month, each bill is paid with two different checks, one from each of us for our respective half of the payment. The taxes are escrowed into the mortgage so they are covered too. It's a 50/50 split, so much for "most all of the responsibility". As for the utilities, they were all transferred into my name and my name only all the way back in April (it's now August) and I have been paying 100% of them since. Not only that, I also paid 100% of the final bills which bore her name, and all previous bills were split evenly between us. There is not one single shred of truth to her claims.
• She claims she must pay rent on her current residence. She lives with her mother who would never even consider charging her so much as a dime. Show me cancelled checks, bitch. Her bank statements will show no recurring payments of any kind, I guarantee it.
• She then repeats the previous lie, stating that she is financially burdened by having to pay half the mortgage for a house she co-owns but doesn't occupy plus her supposed rent. Like I said, show me the cancelled checks. Even if by some minuscule chance she is paying rent, tough shit. I didn't hint that she should leave, I didn't ask her to leave, I didn't tell her to leave and I didn't embark on a course of action which would require her to leave. She has nobody but herself to thank for that.
• She then claims she has completely covered or substantially contributed to the cost of the house. Yeah, that's a clear statement. She has paid all or some. Well duh, of course she has, what other choice is there, she has paid none?. All 7 years of payments have come from our joint account. She claims she has to pay me Alimony too, it's actually spousal support from a court order, she's close. Stupid lawyer. She fears she can not continue to pay for her house. Awwww, maybe she should have thought of that before she started acting the way she has been and precipitated all of this. She made her bed, now she can lie in it. Nice pun, eh?
• Then for the laugh of the day she claims I am not cooperating with her when it comes to fixing the house up to get it ready for sale. Reality to lying bitch, come in lying bitch. Return at once, fantasy aborted. I have ripped out carpeting and padding, I spent an entire weekend ripping up the carpet from the stairs, and the hundreds upon hundreds of staples which were used to hold it down. Staples you can't even see, and can't get to to pull without digging around through the carpet with a screwdriver. I have ripped out all the tack strips and the overkill quantity of nails used to fasten the whole mess to the floor. I have ripped up sheet after sheet of plywood underlayment, each sheet held down by approx 90 - 100 ring shank nails which don't come out, I literally had to tear the nails through the plywood then individually pull each nail from the floor in a time consuming multi-step process to avoid major damage to the century old original wood flooring I was uncovering. I have scrubbed walls and sanded walls then scrubbed them again I have scraped, spackled primed and painted. I have hauled truckloads of garden waste to the landfill, hauled unwanted broken down old furniture to the landfill, and hauled the flooring demolition waste to the landfill. I have done all of this while working more than full time plus an additional occasional part time job and doing everything which needs to be done in a house, cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, mowing the yard, maintenance of our rather extensive gardens, etc... Her contribution? Zero. Nada. Nothing. She refuses to show up and hasn't so much as lifted a finger. She won't even come get her stuff out of the way to help speed up the process. But I'm not cooperating so she should get full rights to the house. Fuck her.
• Then her last bs claim is that she's afraid I'll stop paying my share of the mortgage and utilities thereby damaging her credit. What a crock, when it comes to money she is the most irresponsible person I know, Her credit was trashed when we married, bad when we bought the house (her low credit score forced us into a HUD loan at a higher rate), remained bad as she continued to collect credit card after credit card, and is still crappy to this day due to her fiscal stupidity. Not to mention the fact that even if I did stop paying the utilities they are in my name and my name only and it would have no impact at all on her or her credit. There's also no way in Hell I'd trash my own credit just to ruin hers. She isn't worth it, as far as I'm concerned she's worth less than nothing.

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.

What A Dick

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.

Just My Luck

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.