Divorce Support Forums: I live in Kuwait and my wife wants a divorce

Employer HR departments are used to dealing with nutty soon to be exes. Just tell yours that you're soon to be involved in a nasty divorce and not to talk to your wife if they don't have to. They'll understand. Accusations of being a deadbeat are common, so they'll get it.

Officially, you can't designate stuff to be advances. If you're still together & the paperwokr is not filed (you're officially still together if the paperwork is not filed), then anything that's yours is fair game for her, if she can get her mitts on it. That's not to say you won't talk about it in the final divorce trial, but the truth is that it's going to be the tiniest bit of an issue once this is all over. I mean, today it puts you $3000 behind, which is something most budgets can't stand at any given moment, but there will be things to talk about regarding the kids, who they live with, how much time you get with them, what ongoing child support will be, how much of your pension she gets, what kind of work she has, who gets the house, who gets the cars, whether or not she's allowed to moe the kids out of New Mexico, and ALL kinds of things that will be more important, so the end result of her taking $3,000 will probably be that she gets to keep it WHETHER OR NOT the courts eventually order that you have to start paying from today, for child support.

Here's how it works. You & she HOPEFULLY work out a reasonable custody arrangement without thinking about how it will affect child support. You need to find a way to spend as much time as possible with your kids so that you're not just a Disney Daddy, spending all your time with them vacationing... but if that's all you have for now, that's what you're stuck with, so maximize it if you can. This is in thier best interests. Studies have shown that adults who were raised by separated parents (never married, divorced, separated, whatever) are healthiest as adults if they had closer to equal time with their parents. The closer to equal time they had, the better. You will not be able to come near this, living out of the country. Your situatino may be an exception to the general rule, though. Teh studies I heard did not mention whether the NCP's role was the maximum role that the NCP could manage under thier work/living conditions, just that it was generally better for the kids if things were closer to equal.

I'd suspect that if they're as close to equal as parents who are separated by geography can get, it's better than... well, a weekend dad who lives in town is harder for the kid to understand (what's wrong that we don't get to see each other during the week?) than a vacation dad who only sees the kid during vacations because his work keeps him on the other side of the planet! If the first kid's parents are dealing with everyday frustrations of weekends being re-booked, a parent being late for pickup & etc., & therefore they stay angry with each other, it woudl seem to me to be a whole lot worse than parents who, with one generally unavailable, cooperate as much as possible to let that one parent get the maximum possible time with the kids during whatever tiem that parent is available.

OK... so now you've got the parenting plan figured out... next step is to SIMPLY plug the numbers for your income & her income (ASSIGN her an income if she remains unemployed, because it's unreasonable for someone to think they can voluntarily remain unemployed as a singe person)... into the formula for child support for your state (NM) and figure out what that formula says you owe. There is room for some argument & play with what the numbers say, but at the end there's generally a set figure for what support is. It might be $1,000, it might be more. It MIGHT be LESS. You wont' know till you plug the numbrs into the formula.

Generally, she does not have the right to get this amount until after either you or she files for divorce and gets the ball rolling. Before filing, it's kind of assumed that you're "together" and supporting her appropriately.

Truly, that $3,000 she took is NOT "support", but rather wiping out the family assets in that one account. You may be able to resolve this in the property division, by taking more of your retirement accounts, for example, than you would have, before this.

Once the child support formula is calculated & entered, how it gets paid depends upon the state, but you're safest if you pay it through some official state agency to prove that you paid. NEVER pay directly to her in cash, for certain. And it might not be good enough to send her a check with the notation "child support" even. Look for the most official way to get it to her. Remember that if she asks for more for this or that, she's not goign to count it as child support.

Find any of a number of lawyer search engines and find one in new Mexico... in the city where she's going to file for divorce... and send them your information, ask for what you might be able to expect. Be honest. You might find it's not as bad as you worry about. I find that most people are surprised by teh fact that men are not going to be expected to live in squalor after their divorce just to support thier families, but the days of "Odd Couple" are over (the premise of that movie & TV series being that these successful, professional men had to move into a small apartment post-divorce, to support thier former wives & children in high style for the rest of thier lives, while seeing the kids once in a blue moon)...

You might find it's not all as bad as you worry it might be. Get a lawyer to help you check the formulas & find out.