We are both in mediation, and on good terms. We joke at how we wouldn't trade our marriage for her brothers. :-)We can do whatever we want, but figuring that out is the hard part. In the end what is most important for both of us is the disaster management of each of us "maintaining our standard of living". CA law has never come up with a way 2 people that were living as a unit can live as 2 for the same money. Then there is the tax break for filing as married. For some reason tax law really favors marriage.

She is not likely to be vindictive. She wanted out of the marriage and feels badly how much I was hurt. It was a change she just couldn't stop.

The reason I am looking to what the law would likely decide is that as much as I would like for her to not be at a financial disadvantage to end the marriage, I do not want to be at a disadvantage either. At least I want it to be equal. There still is this resistance I have to her in effect saying "I want out of this marriage in every way except for continuing to share your earnings." She enabled me to build and run the business by taking care of the house and stuff and I shared my earnings. Now she does not want to enable but still wants the money. Since the courts figures that the enabling is worth something that warrents spousal support, I must need to pay someone to replace her if I am going to continue as I have. However the court does not assign money to the non tangible. At least she really did work hard and not just spend all day shopping! Since that's just life, and the law, I can live with it, but I would like to keep it at a minimum and balance what the law would see as reasonable with what our actual situation is. If the law would say split assets and liabilities and equalise income for 1/2 the duration of the marriage, that is pretty much what we are doing. I would be paying a little less than that but giving her the pension. At the end of 12 years it would pretty much have beem equal AND we both will have money in retirement. Its almost worth it just to out smart the laws regarding retirement savings. And no litigation is a nice savings too.

So anyway, after reading family law sections on all that the courts figure into coming up with a settlement, I am still looking for a real life guidline as to what they would be likely to do with our situation as it would help me to negotiate this myself. The mediator encourages us to just work it our ourselves rather than pay her $350/hr to referee a case where the 2 of us get along well and relate to finances easily.