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Post by elynne on Feb 12, 2019 12:21:18 GMT -5
My thoughts are with you elynne. Since you have prepared yourself so well, I have no doubt mediation will go well. Keep taking care of yourself during this stressful time! Oh - I have no faith that mediation will go well. That takes two reasonable and calm adults. Stbx is none of those things. Legally I’m entitled to 12 years alimony. I thought I’d make a good faith offer of 8 years. He replied that he doesn’t want to pay more than 5 years. He wants to keep the house and not buy me out (granted there isn’t a lot of equity in the house- maybe 40 or 50k.) He wants to keep the entire contents of the house. Thursday is NOT going to be pretty. I’m going to be calm, well organized and logical. I don’t know how he’ll react in the office, under scrutiny. But I’m glad I have an appointment from 4pm until midnight so he has a chance to calm down.
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Post by northstarmom on Feb 12, 2019 14:29:02 GMT -5
Elynne said: “Legally I’m entitled to 12 years alimony. I thought I’d make a good faith offer of 8 years. “
You need to act in your own best interest. Your good faith offer won’t make him compromise. It will encourage him to try to give you zero. With a person like your stbx you have to ask for the maximum in order to get what you deserve.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2019 16:01:28 GMT -5
You can't negotiate with people like that. What do you get for your "good faith offer" if you are legally entitled to 12 years? If you get equity out of your home, savings accounts split 50/50 right now, etc. then that's a negotiation. If your hope is that 8 years will make him less horrible, I think you know better.
Also, do you have a safety plan for you and your children? When control freaks start to lose control, things can go sideways in a hurry.
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Post by northstarmom on Feb 12, 2019 16:34:55 GMT -5
Change your offer to requesting the fulll12 years. If you don’t, uou’ll Be lucky to get anything. Everything you’ve posted indicates 12 years is what you deserve. This is not the time to play nice. He has never played nice. Don’t expect him to do that now.
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Post by greatcoastal on Feb 12, 2019 16:56:45 GMT -5
You are dealing with a narcissist. Give them an inch and they will take your kidney.
I understand your giving nature. (years of abuse has you well trained)
Your attorney needs to show their teeth for you! Do it for the good of your daughters. The less manipulative control he has over them the better.
In my experience, mediation was nothing but proof that my ex was ( to put it politely) NOT someone to mediate with.
He knows very well how he is hiding money, and what a judge could do to him, and yet he will not care. Again get your attorney to show their teeth.
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Post by workingonit on Feb 12, 2019 18:19:33 GMT -5
Change your offer to requesting the fulll12 years. If you don’t, uou’ll Be lucky to get anything. Everything you’ve posted indicates 12 years is what you deserve. This is not the time to play nice. He has never played nice. Don’t expect him to do that now. I am just quoting this so it is on here again. Worth reading twice.
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Post by shamwow on Feb 12, 2019 23:03:14 GMT -5
Change your offer to requesting the fulll12 years. If you don’t, uou’ll Be lucky to get anything. Everything you’ve posted indicates 12 years is what you deserve. This is not the time to play nice. He has never played nice. Don’t expect him to do that now. I am just quoting this so it is on here again. Worth reading twice. Three times.
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Post by elynne on Feb 13, 2019 0:16:10 GMT -5
Change your offer to requesting the fulll12 years. If you don’t, uou’ll Be lucky to get anything. Everything you’ve posted indicates 12 years is what you deserve. This is not the time to play nice. He has never played nice. Don’t expect him to do that now. I am just quoting this so it is on here again. Worth reading twice. That’s already my plan. My opening salvo was a gesture of peace and goodwill. His reply was a clear message. The time for peace gestures is over. He’s taking a scorched earth strategy. My plan certainly isn’t to sit back and wait for him to screw me over! I’ve proposed an agenda for the meeting. I’ll bring detailed points to address. My first step is to make the mediator aware of stbx’s financial bullying, abuse and withholding of information. (Without drama, without emotion. Just the facts and my criteria for him to follow going forward). During our first mediation I disclosed my account of €600 in emergency funds. This is the account I use to by groceries when I’m left without cash, because I have no access to our joint funds. STBX is not to pressure me to use those funds or to empty that account again. My only obligation was to disclose the account. I don’t want to hear another word about it. He has 27,000 sitting in an account that I have no access to. He has 80,000 in cash reserves in his business. Regarding the €600 euros I’ve managed to scrape together- BACK OFF! In the past he claimed my tax refund of €900 as his and immediately transferred it into his account. When I had sold a number of paintings in a month he used almost €1000 out of my account to purchase train tickets for vacation. I earned €2000 that year. Stbx €320,000. His strategy appears to be leaving me with little to no access to money. My emergency fund is off limits. I have asked repeatedly for log in details to our financial reports. Niels reluctantly will give me a report if I press - but he won’t give me the log in. He attempted to give me our 2016 tax report when I asked for 2017. He first flatly refused. Then he told me he didn’t have it. Then he told me he wouldn’t give it to me unless I promised not to show it to anyone, not to ask for help or advice from anyone. In the meeting I’d like to go in the record stating I am not happy with his attempts to prevent me from informing myself. I’d like to state what I stated to him at the time: this is my financial information too. I have a right to the information. I will not be careless with it, but I will not make any promises not to get help in understanding it. It’s in my second language. These are my opening points. I want them to be aware that there is an imbalance around finances - and pretending that it’s a level playing field is going to do me a disservice.
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Post by northstarmom on Feb 13, 2019 0:45:01 GMT -5
Are you sure that mediation is the best way to deal with stbx instead of having a tough lawyer to protect your interests?
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Post by elynne on Feb 13, 2019 0:52:01 GMT -5
Are you sure that mediation is the best way to deal with stbx instead of having a tough lawyer to protect your interests? Nope. In fact, hell no. But he pressed really hard for mediation, probably because he believes he can manipulate and bully me. I’ll make my points on Thursday- which will simply be proposing an “equitable division of assets”. If negotiations break down (which I expect because he wants to keep everything except for our 11 year old car and a painting) I have a really smart lawyer. She’s tough, kind, and she’s got my back. She was a recommendation from a friend who is also a lawyer and worked with her.
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Post by baza on Feb 13, 2019 1:05:48 GMT -5
I started off writing a heap of 'helpful' hints for you Sister elynne , which would be great if you were in my jurisdiction, but - I realised - probably not worth a pinch of shit in your jurisdiction. Your mediator, for example, may have the power to compel full disclosure, but maybe not. There are two upsides I am seeing here. #1 - is that you have demonstrated smarts and courage up to this point and these two traits will go a long way toward getting you through this process with some sort of equitable settlement at the end of the process...be that by mediation if possible, or by more adversarial methods. #2 - is the confirmation he has demonstrated yet again what a great idea it is to divorce the money grubbing selfish prick.
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Post by elynne on Feb 13, 2019 1:17:53 GMT -5
I started off writing a heap of 'helpful' hints for you Sister elynne , which would be great if you were in my jurisdiction, but - I realised - probably not worth a pinch of shit in your jurisdiction. Your mediator, for example, may have the power to compel full disclosure, but maybe not. There are two upsides I am seeing here. #1 - is that you have demonstrated smarts and courage up to this point and these two traits will go a long way toward getting you through this process with some sort of equitable settlement at the end of the process. #2 - is the confirmation he has demonstrated yet again what a great idea it is to divorce the money grubbing selfish prick. Yes yes yes!!! Every single time he pulls a complete dick move - instead of getting unglued I think, he’s proving yet again that divorce is the best option. In fact, deciding to divorce him is probably the single best choice I have made in my lifetime. (For right now we’ll gloss over the fact that I choose to marry him which set this whole shit storm in motion). Though in my defense, he was all flowers and I love you’s until I was pregnant, married, living in a foreign country with no friends or family. And then the manipulative control freak showed up - and I kept believing that the sweet guy I married would come back. Ha! He never existed. Time to cut my losses, do damage control and rebuild my life.
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Post by shamwow on Feb 13, 2019 6:35:18 GMT -5
Are you sure that mediation is the best way to deal with stbx instead of having a tough lawyer to protect your interests? Nope. In fact, hell no. But he pressed really hard for mediation, probably because he believes he can manipulate and bully me. I’ll make my points on Thursday- which will simply be proposing an “equitable division of assets”. If negotiations break down (which I expect because he wants to keep everything except for our 11 year old car and a painting) I have a really smart lawyer. She’s tough, kind, and she’s got my back. She was a recommendation from a friend who is also a lawyer and worked with her. In ballofconfusion's case, they started in mediation. You know, to be reasonable. That was 2 years ago and thousands in attorney fees later. And no closer to being done than the beginning. He refuses to produce any statements. I've got an MBA and have done a thorough look through what we do have and firmly believe he is hiding at least 200k while they have a total debt of 300k. In order not to have to "start over" we have stuck with the same attorneys as the beginning. The ones used for mediation. They are still looking to be fair and compromise. And want tens of thousands of dollars. They have the power to compel discovery but just want to get along. We have finally gotten to the point where we are ready to ditch these two nice ladies and find an attorney with a penis just so we can end this in a way that she can dig out in time. Your husband has demonstrated he is a dick. Scorched earth. Mediation is a waste of time. Get an attorney with a penis and an aggressive streak. Anything else will likely drag this out and leave you battered and bruised wondering what the hell happened. At least his current behavior reinforces your decision to leave. Good luck!
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Post by greatcoastal on Feb 13, 2019 10:19:54 GMT -5
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Post by northstarmom on Feb 13, 2019 10:28:52 GMT -5
This part of the article GC posted a link to especially was interesting: “My ex-boyfriend told everyone who gave him an audience that we “didn’t have chemistry,” and that I was “the most jealous girlfriend he’d ever had.” In fact, we had amazing chemistry. I just didn’t want to play ‘pin the girl down and choke her’ to get him excited. He also had erectile dysfunction, which I’ve since learned is psychologically common among narcissists. Jealousy is also something that narcissists often accuse their partner of to sabotage or blow the relationship up.”
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