DaddysGirl
New
Reged: 02/18/08
Posts: 2
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OK, so come Feb. 23rd it will be 2 years since my mother left my dad. Out of the blue she blindsided him and left him a dear john note and took off to Kentucky. I won't get into how evil and cruel she is but here are the facts.
-They were married for 34 years before she left.
-All of us kids are grown up. (2 still live at home with my dad.)
-He had no idea there was any problems.
-She took half of the contents of their bank account.
-She has lied to get even more money from him under the guise of coming home.
-She sent him a letter stating he had two options. Give her 5,000 cash/$75.00 a week for 3 years/pay her car insurance for 3 years or Option B take him for everything.
I feel like a broken record trying to get him to go to a lawyer but part of him is holding onto the hope that she'll return and he is living under the idea that she'll get half no matter what. So my questions are...
-Will she get half?
-Will she still be entitled to his pension?
-Can he get her on abandonment even though he has sent her money? (Again because she "needed it to fix the car to come home" which turned out to be, of course, a lie.)
-Basically, is the horrible person who birthed me gonna walk away with what my dad worked so hard all his life for?
His biggest misconception is his pension. He seems to think regardless of what happens she gets half. But I was under the impression that it depends on the divorce agreement/reasons for divorce. I asked him that if I found information that was different from the misconception he is running on, would he go to a lawyer. He said yes so here I am. Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance. I just want my dad to move on with his life and enjoy his retirement.
-Michelle
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5050
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Buy your dad an hour with a LOCAL lawyer in his state. Different states have different rules. His time with a lawyer will help him know whether or not he's being taken to the cleaners, and from there he can decide how to proceed. It might be that he is not.
If she was a stay-at-home mom with zero income in a no-fault state, it's quite possible that he's right, she's entitled to half the pension, half the assets, and maybe even half his income for life. I'm not saying that's going to happen, just that it MIGHT.
He needs to bring his own income and asset & debt information (including houses, loans, pensions, IRAs, etc., to the meeting with the lawyer, and be prepared to talk money, not emotions. He needs to explain anything he may know about the emotions of it, whether she was having an affair or he was, but only IF the lawyer says that fault issues will be considered in making a determination of money.
And regarding your own feelings about it, please understand that you don't have to take sides. If your dad has done anything to make you think you have to, then he is wrong... he's busy grieving for the loss of the relationship. Whatever she did that made her leave your father, or whatever HE did that made her leave, it really should be between her & him.
What's interesting is that if you were with her all the time, listening to her side of things, you might hear things like that she had tried to talk to him about the problems but he refused to listen, she tried to get him to go to counselors but he refused (or wouldn't take any of the counselors' suggestions), that she felt he neglected or abused her or that she was trying to tell him for years that she was going to leave him and he never listened ... or that he was having affairs & she never mentioned it but knew all about it or ... well ... SOMETHING. THere are always two sides to every story. The fact that you don't know her side is actually a good sign about her... it means that she is NOT trying to make you love her more or gossip to you about him or cry to you about him, which is a wrong thing for a parent to do to a kid (no matter HOW old the kid is). It's quite likely that if she were the type of person to come to you & plop on your guest bed and vent about all her issues with him, that you'd be siding with HER right now, but it's not right for her to do that... any more than it's right for your father to be allowing you to be his support system in this.
But sadly, for older adults, often the only support system they have is their kids, and they don't know anything else... it's possible he is also doing his best... but allowing you to know even this much about the divorce is not a good thing for him to have done. He has not characterized her as evil, so you should trust him enough to know that maybe there's some part of the story that you don't entirely know... something that makes her more sympathetic than you feel towards her right now.
Or maybe she's pure evil. Evil exists.
But that's just so rare I don't believe it's the case. TRULY. It FEELS better if you feel like you have to take sides, to consider one side as good & the other side evil, but it's generally a whole lot more complicated than that.
So give your mother a break. Contact her, talk about mom-kid things, about her new house or whether she'll be able to visit you for Thanksgiving next year or wahtever... but don't do stuff that you know will just encourage either of them to use YOU as a sounding board. Understand that you do not have to and should not take sides. She is teh same woman who raised you and he is the same man, and they have their strengths and weaknesses and those things have not changed.
And find the best lawyer in town, an honest one, not a shark... not one who won't spend the hour you pay for, trying to convince your Dad to hire him on. Find the one who will give a full picture of what is REALLY likely, not some pie in the sky hope that he'll be able to crusade for righteousness and save your Dad's entire income and pension for him in the name of man-kind. And once you find that good, unbiased lawyer, buy your Dad an hour for some honest evaluation of his case and maybe a little peace of mind that he's doing the right thing in his settlement.
And once you've done that. Let it go. Let them settle this between themselves and don't let them talk to you about it any more.
Good luck.
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DaddysGirl
New
Reged: 02/18/08
Posts: 2
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When she left I spent the first year reaching out to her trying to understand "her side". Every attempt to be there for her was shot down very cruelly. When she first left she wouldn't give anyone, including him a straight answer as to why and when she realized she wasn't going to garner any support with her methods she began to pull out one lame excuse after the other as to why she couldn't come home. Including taking care of the ailing brother of an internet friend she moved in with. She told us that she promised this dying man to be there with him until the end and that she would come home when he died. He passed away six months ago and yet she is still not home. Sad that the promises she made my father were so easily thrown aside. For years he supported her and saw to her every whim. He went to work everyday and when his check came he gave it to her and she gave him an "allowance".
Through her cruel words and actions towards me, my husband, my father, and the rest of the family she has alienated herself. She is all he has ever known, the love of his life, his only friend and he is having a hard time admitting that she isn't the person he thought she was. (As much as he says it to himself, the head and heart don't often see eye-to-eye) It's really too much to get into on the forum and has nothing to do with the advice I am seeking. I do appreciate what you're saying but she is a manipulative liar. My sister raised me and was the mom that my birth mother couldn't and wouldn't be.
I love my mother and always will even when she stomps all over me. I just want my dad to be able to enjoy the remainder of his life after spending so much of it loving and taking care of a woman who in the end just doesn't care about him or her family. Everything he did, he did for her and in return she broke his heart. The only thing he is guilty of is loving a woman who only loves herself.
She thrives on being the victim and being in control. She lied to my 10 year old nephew to get money out of my father. It is very telling when a person lies to a child to get what they want or uses the child for their own selfish needs. My father lived his life for her and all it's gotten him is a whole lot of heartache. But I digress, I could go on and on listing the messed up things she has done.
In closing, it's not about taking sides for the sake of taking sides or taking his side because he didn't walk out. It's about supporting the parent who gives a shit about his family, the siblings who still live at home can attest to that.
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KGrow
Platinum
Reged: 01/27/06
Posts: 3153
Loc: Colorado
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After a 34 year marriage, you're well entangled and there is legal support for her yanking his chain financially for a long time to come.
If all she gets is half his pension, half the bank account and what amounts to a $10,000 payoff, that'd probably be a very good deal for him.
We live in a no-fault divorce nation now so the circumstances of the divorce don't generally affect the financial settlement. One exception that I'm aware of is states where committing adultery can negatively affect one's chances of receiving alimony.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5050
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Someone doesn't change that extremely without some cause. It might be a chemical imbalance, it might be ... oh, all kinds fo physiological things. But it also might be a stupid whim that turned out to be a mistake and not knowing how to fix it.
I understadn your taking sides, but you REALLY need to figure out how to get your Dad to some OTHER support system. Maybe there's a support group at his church for widowed and/or divorced people. Maybe there's ... well, he needs his KIDS to be his KIDS, and to replace the support system that he had for so long (sounds like his SOLE emotional support was the stbx). Please don't get me wrong, kids are a good support, but it's not a good thing to allow the roles to be reversed over this type of thing. When he's so old that he's physically disabled and unable to feed himself, the roles will be reversed, but he needs to feel like a strong man who handles things for the family & kids, so you need to point him in the right direction and then back off.
Your mother has made some serious mistakes and I'm not diminishing that, just that because of the special relationship you have with your parents, you should NOT be the one trying to fix this. As I said, point him in the right direction to get help and advice, and then let him make his own decisions.
KGrow is right, if his marriage is like most, he'll be lucky to get out with the settlement you've described, but he won't know that till he talks to a lawyer in HIS jurisdiction (or your mother's, maybe, if she files there), to find out what the numbers look like.
Again, good luck.
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wireman
Silver
Reged: 08/28/07
Posts: 87
Loc: Colorado
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KGrow is right, if his marriage is like most, he'll be lucky to get out with the settlement you've described, but he won't know that till he talks to a lawyer in HIS jurisdiction (or your mother's, maybe, if she files there), to find out what the numbers look like.
Again, good luck. [/quote]
>>>>In regards to "jurisdiction", she could file where she is at, but she probably won't get anything. When my stbx took off to the other state, she filed for a TPO and a divorce. During our hearing (which was dismissed with prejudice), it was bought to the courts attention that even if the divorce were to occur in her new state, they could NOT enforce any of the division of property because it is in another state. So even if she files elsewhere, she would have no way of acquiring any of the assets held in your dads original state. That should also apply to all holdings in his name including his pension. So he could just sit and do nothing and let her make the next move. If she files in the new state, she could get a ruling in her favor, but she would have no way to enforce the ruling in regards to assets as long as your father stays in the original jurisdiction. I had to file a "special appearance" in my stbx's new state to get it returned here, but my motivation was for issues relating to our son, not the property issues.<<<<
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A 100 years from now, the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child
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