Didn’t say I necessarily wanted one to happen, just if one happened, which I’m putting the likelihood of at around 0.01%
Yeah I know, just need to work on my exit strategy & start writing out what I want in the divorce settlement.
Not a bad idea - don’t think I can pull that off this year, but I’ll add it to the list of ways to passive-aggressively piss her off in the future.
You need to stop leaving that .01% in your head. You may not realize it, but it’s dragging you down. You need to accept that it’s 100% over and start working on yourself.
I think you should stop beating around the bush here, as you seem to be holding steady in hopes things will somehow go back to the way they were. It's ok to feel that way, but she's clearly moved on and you should move onto a woman that will respect you. The longer you drag out the semi-together phase, the more difficult it'll be to do the actual separation. If anything, do the move earlier to help the chances you and the ex can do co-exist events with your son with more civility.
Pretty much this. Mom is going back to school and is a full time student August-May. She was prepared for court and (I think) had purposely been working very few shifts at her part time job so that when we showed the judge a couple of our pay stubs, she had hardly any income to report. Also since I'm at 120 days, it's not technically "joint" and if it was joint I would pay less. I think 160 days might be the cutoff for that but am not sure.
No clue where you're at, but in SC courts generally rubber stamp an agreement of the parties unless there's some reason to deny it. We've negotiated numerous agreements where a party didn't pay child support at all, put in some cursory justification for it, and got it approved. If it is an agreement, the guidelines don't have to come into play. The $1k power month seems really high to me as well, but guidelines are modified to include child care costs and health insurance. I'd look at those two numbers immediately. First with child care costs is to verify those. A lot of people will amplify them for no reason. Second, assuming she pays for the children's health insurance, make sure only the children's portion of the bill is included and not the total bill. If you pay for it, make sure it is included in the calculation. Other potential options could be modifying the head of household and tax credits from her to you, structuring the settlement as limited term, defined amount alimony instead of child support until the kids start regular school to take advantage of taxability/deductibility of the payments (need to be careful doing it this way though because child support can always be modified and you run into losing the tax deductibility through alimony recapture rule - would really only do if your attorney can give it a good review and not just the general terms), or creating a credit for travel (like you get sick with transportation but get X amount reduced per month in support as compensation for that. Regarding the boyfriends income, that doesn't matter. She could marry a billionaire and the only thing the court (at least in SC) will consider is your income vs hers. The income of the boyfriend, new husband, rich parent, etc doesn't enter the equation generally. I would strongly recommend against letting her set your days. That's a weapon she can use at any time against you. Never turn over control of/access to your kid solely to your ex unless you want to pay more money to go back to court. What you're suggesting on holidays is standard when parents don't live close. Can't screw up the kids schedule, so give the non-custodial parent extended time on holidays. The Xmas and Thanksgiving ones are normally a pretty big concession as well, so I'd extract a big price for them if you can. The other holidays, most places have a standard schedule you can just adopt. Your mediator should know this. Don't open offers with what youre just good with. Open with what you want and then negotiate. What do you know about your mediator? Attorney, retired judge, random volunteer who took a class, etc.? Last, don't be hesitant to call your attorney if you're confused, uncertain, or think something didn't sound right. She's not looking out for your best interests. Neither is the mediator (though in my experiences they're fair and won't try to railroad you or anything). Trust your attorney and assess the risk accordingly.
Thanks for this. The court order has me paying for her health insurance through my work if my employer offers it, that was $330 for my daughter so mom was getting $690. The bad part was that Mom was still getting to claim her as a dependent and for tax credit reasons. When I switched jobs, her health insurance was no longer offered. Because I couldnt claim her as a dependent, health insurance for her was not even close to something I could afford because I couldn't get whatever subsidy that's offered for dependents. Mom easily can get her on medicaid, so thats what she's on now for healthcare. I would be more than happy to pay for her health insurance if I could claim her as a dependent. The boyfriend thing was just a comment saying that my kid and her mom aren't living on the streets. They're not struggling whether I'm paying her $100 or $1000.
Question for the lawyers ITT - if we go the mediation route, I’m assuming I still need an attorney, correct?
Not necessarily. Plenty of people go through mediation without an attorney. I highly reccomend against it though.
The dependency election for the child can be transferred to you, but that's something she'd have to agree to since default goes to the primary custodian. Just another point to negotiate, but if she is in school and has no income, not sure what real benefit she would receive from the exemption. Seems like it would be much more beneficial to you, but hard to say without all the information. I would recommend retaining one. At the very least schedule a consult or two so you get an idea of what your rights are.
Used your advice and feel like I did really well today. Big elephant in the room was the child support cost and I essentially said from the start, "If you don't like the court ordered schedule, the only thing you have to offer to get me to change it is a lowered child support cost." As far as child support- It went from $1020 to $512 monthly, they used my after-tax income in the equation and it fell to that. As far as parenting time goes- It went from 5 days in a row every 2 weeks to 2 days in a row every week. I get Wednesday/Thursday night every week now. Mom is in charge of transportation since she will be coming and going from my location where she takes her classes. Mom would not budge on claiming her as a dependent, so I suggested whoever claims her as a dependent can take care of health insurance. That also got the green light. Pretty happy with how it turned out and I think Mom and I will be a lot more civil and cooperative going forward. We're going to revisit in a year when Mom graduates and starts her job.
No way! That's is unreal. Congrats. 50% cost reduction + $100/month reduction in health insurance. But, wait, there's more! You get to see your kid every week for two consecutive days. Crack open a cold craft six pack of beer tonight. Happy for you
Congrats on a good day and, objectively, seems like you got a good result. Interested in the process. Using after tax income is a huge win for you because that is not how it is supposed to work in my experiences. Same is true if she's paying health insurance and that wasn't included in the calculation. It should be, but once you get an order, she has to prove a change in circumstances. I don't know what her profession is, but I'd keep tabs on that. Generally, the "we will recalculate next year after I graduate" leads to conflict. Having pre settlement and post settlement job listings would help your argument that nothing has changed, if it comes to it. If the job market is the same today as in 1, 2, 3 years from now, then she has a tougher time showing a change of circumstances to warrant a change in support because the job market was known and expected at the time of the agreement. Nah. He screwed her imo. Child support guidelines, at least in SC and I'm p sure the majority of states if not all of them, use gross income for support calculations. It helps prevent abuse of the tax system to exploit child support payments. A ton of ways to lower agi or "net" income if you have things set up correctly on the front end.
Interesting. I'm working a case now where a guy earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but his taxes only show minimal "net" income. Obviously taxable income isn't the same as net income, but I'm interested to hear ways that distinction can be utilized in litigation. Is the focus on spending to prove income, gross income, discrediting the above the line deductions, etc.?
I honestly don’t know. My family law experience is from clerking during my Law school days. I just know I always put in net income on the child support guideline program we had and that we had a client who was paying almost double what he should have been in child support because the shady opposing counsel used gross income instead of net when child support was initially ordered. He represented himself in that one. That attorney also filed for a protective order with the judge against my boss and I because and I quote “we treated her like a slave on a plantation”
pretty sure it is a gross income calculation for child support. Maybe your boss was the one being sneaky. https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2012/61.30
Go back and read the chart. Net income is what is used to figure out how much should be paid. We definitely weren’t being sneaky because they the the entriety of our argument in front of the judge and we won that hearing easily.
Interesting. I've never actually seen that before or ever heard it raised in SC, so I'm assuming we don't have the same provisions. Will need to take a look at the south Carolina guidelines to double check though as you're right that can be a massive difference. My guess is judges here wouldn't agree unless it is 100% clear as they have always used gross income, but doesn't hurt to try if I can.
We turned over every single email communication that we’d had with her because we knew it was all bull shit. It worked in our favor because it showed how obvious her fraud was with the original ruling. None of those emails are normally admissible. Judge should have sanctioned her, but he didn’t. She has a reputation of crying wolf and causing all sorts of problems so nobody calls her out on her shit. I pushed for the attorney I was working for to call her out on the fraud in court so the judge would have no choice but to sanction her, but he didn’t. Allowed it to be called a mistake. Got her back in the end. She owed another attorney 20k from another case against her so he put a lien on the settlement. (Part of the case is that our client owed her like 10k in attorney’s feels that he never paid.) The friend got all of it. She was furious.
Disclaimer: not me, never been married Buddy got married at the beginning of May. They've been living in DC and got married up there. But they are moving to Alabama this week. He found out over the weekend she's been cheating to some extent since before they got married. He's already pretty set on divorce. Says she doesn't want it. She's a doctor and has a well off family. He does finance work and took a pay cut to leave DC and move back to Birmingham with her. They don't have much co-mingled past wedding presents. They didn't have a car in DC. Didn't get a chance to go house shopping. His name isn't even on the apartment lease. No kids. More or less just wanted to see if anyone had advice, specifically with the change of domicile for both of them, but any other things I should tell him to be wary of?
They have been married a month. It's going to be pretty painless even if she contests it. No real assets to split up or anything. The moving thing is interesting. Theoretically he could file before they leave but it seems like he already took a new job so just file first thing after moving to Bama.
Gotcha. I'd ask her to pay for taking a paycut, moving, etc. And then add for the emotional distress and having to live in freaking Birmingham. In exchange for not letting the entire world know she's a cheater. *there was someone on another board that had a similar deal.. He stayed with the wife for a little over a year just for appearances and then split. Told everyone that they'd still be friends but that the marriage unfortunately just didn't work out.
She doesn’t want a divorce because of? She had to expect it when he found out she was cheating on him. Wtf
I didn't push him on the question of whether they had actually slept together. Frankly its not my business, but I assume they did. And I dont know if its been one affair or what. They were coworkers so the opportunity was there. My friend had suspicion of it during their engagement but she basically told him he was crazy. I guess them moving forced their hand, because she came drunk and texting her side guy and she started crying and just spilled the beans to my friend. Man, it makes no sense. I guess she thought moving away would change things with this coworker. The guy just moved in with his girlfriend too. Dude was at the wedding as her guest. They're both scumbags.
So, there's really no chance of her ever seeing the other scumbag ever again? If so....id be tempted to give it another year.....
Oh yeah who’s is that “My friend” They guy I’ve been messing around with for a while. Some people have no shame
Yeah its definitely shameless. But they moved to DC together for her placement and most of their local friends were her coworkers, so it wasn't like it was obvious to anyone but her that this dude being at their wedding was fucked up.
I mean, id want to know the 'why' behind it, but it could just be her getting herself in too deep with being friendly with a coworker....then flirting....then before you know it, hooking up. If she's out looking for something she's not getting from the husband, than an entire different story. Husband gets a couple free hall passes. If it doesn't work, he gets some cash.
I think it's a combination of that and the fact that my friend had serious concerns about this and doubts and she made him think that he was just being a crazy jealous asshole. She really fucked with his head past just the fact that she was unfaithful.