I blew up at my attorney two weeks ago.
She’s nice, she’s patient and she listened to me intently on the first consultation, but she missed something huge and her 4 word emails were just fucking irritating.
We’ve been working on the separation agreement. Once that’s signed one of the marital teams files for divorce. It’s such a load of horseshit.
This entire process has been SO FUCKING STRESSFUL. And I don’t even have kids!
Here are my top stressors in this right of passage highway to hell:
- When we got started my ex said he wasn’t going to use an attorney but then he retained one and she has my same first name, which isn’t uncommon, but it’s not that common. I believe he did that to fuck with me. How? I dunno. But he sees all women as incompetent and stupid and I’m sure he controlled every word and every action she did so why would it matter who he picked?
- I had consulted with an attorney I absolutely clicked with, but when it was time for me to actually retain him, he was no longer taking new clients. So, I had to scramble to find someone else. I interviewed 4, had to pay the $300+ consultation fee for each. They either had shitty reading comprehension, wanted to file a lawsuit immediately, wouldn’t listen to me when I said he was abusive or I just didn’t feel comfortable in general. I finally settled on the MOST EXPENSIVE attorney because she actually listened to me and felt safe to me. $8700 retainer.
- The way my ex talked to me when we started this process was Jeffrey Dahmer-esque. I would have preferred communication with magazine letter cutouts and blood spots, frankly. His guarded condescending tone and rehearsed posture was so unsettling.
- Every time I’d refresh my email, I’d have a panic attack. I would recommend you open an email account JUST for this process. So you can check it only when you feel like it and prepare yourself.
- My attorney was notorious for sending very short emails with little to no information. I felt like she didn’t even know who I was. My ex took 5 months to respond at one point and this was a critical strategy on his part. It was to frustrate me, make us think he was having a hard time securing financing on buying me out of the house and it was to basically let my case evaporate from the mind of my attorney.
- This is a biggie, so I hope this information reaches the right people. Loan assumptions went away during the economic collapse in 2007. I thought they were dead and buried. But they are slowly returning with a small group of mortgage companies. Apparently, our mortgage lender offered this, and I didn’t know it. My attorney failed to know this. Long story short, in 2017, I fought to lower our rate to 3%. My ex didn’t care. I did the work and saved us a lot of money in interest and by removing PMI. Fast forward to the time we separated, he immediately announced he wanted to keep the house and changed the locks after he kicked me out. I think he knew about the loan assumption. The loan assumption had TREMENDOUS value and I was unaware that it was on the table. If I had have been aware, I would have asked for more money out of the house or tried to get the house myself. I assumed he had to refinance, which meant that he was going to be paying $200,000 more over the life of the loan, or $7000ish a year or $500 MORE a month for the same mortgage at 6.67%, today’s going rate. Point is, the mortgage he is keeping is $500 less than my current rent and I would have FOUGHT to keep the house and found a way to pay him out if I could have kept that 3% loan. I couldn’t afford a 6.67% loan on the balance, but I could have afforded the 3%. And I feel SO STUPID for not knowing this. His attorney brought up the assumption after we had already agreed on a separation agreement draft and it took us almost a year to get there. My attorney said the only way I could have tried to get the house at this point was to file a lawsuit. At this point, I was so pissed that I consulted yet another attorney to see what I should do. He told me that a judge would not take the assumption into consideration as an asset or see it as anything important. One of us keeps the house or we sell it, HOW It happens, doesn’t matter. I could file a lawsuit and then it would drag out, cost me at least $20K or but likely $60K and whose to say I would actually get the house. So, I let go.
- My ex spent every nickle of our savings, our money market and his grandmother’s inheritance on collectibles and his hobbies. He also spent 85% of his paycheck on those hobbies, so our savings stayed at zero. But since the debt was paid off, there was nothing I could do. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over 5 years. My only recourse was to try to get the items and I was told I would have to hire an expert in the field of each genre of shit he bought. Neat.
- My grandmother’s inheritance, close to 200k, went to paying our debt, moving us again and a down on that house. Almost 100% of my money went to the house, the combined life. 17% of his money went to our life, our house and he spent the rest solely on himself. I asked for my down payment back in the settlement, it was denied. And there was no guarantee a judge would side with me on that one, so it was a gamble filing a lawsuit on that as well.
- My ex had big brother conspiracy theories on the brain for some reason. So, he refused to get a credit card. He used mine for the entirety of our relationship. He requested that he continue using my credit cards until we were finally divorced. He put $10-12K a month on my card. He stopped using it at one point but $20k of debt plus interest is still sitting on that account. I’m only getting one month of interest paid since this has been dragging on so long. He makes eight times more than I do and he refuses to pay this until the separation agreement is signed, which makes so sense to me.
- In the end, I’m not getting what is fair and I’m sure that’s because my ex studied this so well that he’ll be able to pass the bar. When he is vindictive, when he gets into any situation, he obsessively studies it. He’s brilliant. But I was emotional, shut down and didn’t think clearly. That’s on me, that’s my weakness, I get it, it just really sucks.
And that’s what this post is about. I wish I would have had a Divorce Doula to help me through this. My attorney wasn’t going to hold my hand, reassure me or talk to me when I was upset. My therapist didn’t know the ins and outs of divorce law or the emotions that would spring up.
A divorce doula would have been the perfect thing. You know, not a doctor, but someone who has seen a lot of babies being born and gives a fuck about your emotional state and will actually listen to you. And sometimes, their intuition is better than the doctor. I wish I had someone like that to guide you through what essentially is a death. That would have been tremendously helpful.
And let’s say we normalize a divorce doula as your starting point. You talk to this person at the first sign of trouble. Not a marriage counselor, not your pastor… someone who knows the law and can tell you what you’d be up against should you go down this path. Calling an attorney felt like I was consulting the devil. But a doula would be different. A doula would just be a conversation with an intuitive paralegal.
Or maybe I needed an exorcist or a team of specialists… I don’t know. I just know that I felt totally stupid, alone and I was SO DUMB to feel sorry for my ex having to secure some huge loan. And frankly, he probably didn’t have to get any loans. He just had to refrain from buying so much shit for a few months, keep the loan I secured in 2017 and he’s set. You know, the shit I had been asking him to do for years, softly and nicely, and he’ll do it now that he has a vindictive reason to. I set up the life and now he’s going to live in it.
ETA: I googled divorce doula and apparently it’s already a thing. A divorce coach of sorts. I thought I had made it up!
I knew you could hire a divorce coach, but I thought my case was easy and I was strong enough to handle it. I also had a cash flow issue, so I didn’t think I could afford it. But at this point, I *WISH* I would have hired one. It would have saved my sanity, I would have known I had someone on my side and someone I could have gone to. Obviously, I don’t have experience with one, but from this vantage point, I really wish I would have done it.
