Sarah1014
Platinum
Reged: 04/12/07
Posts: 2268
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Bullet--Which county do you live in?
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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I'm not near you in Chicago, if that's why you're asking and you know something about the courts around there. I'm kinda trying not to narrow myself down too much because I'm not sure I've entirely kept my visits to this site secret, and the wife and/or MIL may be reading through here. I'll PM you the county.
jbar, while I appreciate all insights anyone may want to give, I would appreciate it if this thread would stay on track and not disintegrate into another podium for hashing out the problems of the system. I'm just trying to, in what little time I have anymore, narrow down some possible choices in my area of legal representation. If and when all of this is over, then perhaps I'll join in my thoughts on where things stand in that regard.
Further questions on this topic:
If one wishes to consider the idea of mediation, does one seek that route through the lawyer or outside of the lawyer?
In regards to choosing a lawyer for a husband in this situation, does the gender of the lawyer matter? Would a female lawyer have less regard for a husband's feelings in a divorce and child custody case, or would she perhaps have more disdain for a wife who is not coming anywhere near fulfilling her role as a wife and mother, and therefore fight even harder for the husband? Basically, male or female lawyer, does it matter?
as always..thanks
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5049
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Gender of the lawyer does not matter, BUT if you find a woman lawyer who cares about men's issues, she may be able to better represent you than a male lawyer who is going to get on a soapbox & impress his client but bore the judge (think JBar as a lawyer... might make some of the guys pump thier fists in solidarity, but won't be effective because the law won't change for all the posturing). If you've got a woman on your side who can EFFECTIVELY and PASSIONATELY explain your issues, it will be maybe better. (not the same in the reverse... a male lawyer doing the same thing with a female client just looks patronizing & it's not necessarily effective.)
On the mediation thing. There are several ways of doing it BUT if you don't get a lawyer, then even if you come to an agreement through mediation, you THEN have to find someone to write up the agreement & get it signed, sealed & delivered. Many people find the mediation useless (my husband, included), because in the time of getting someone to sign on the bottom line of the agreement, they change thier mind. Some people do mediation better if they've been with a lawyer & gotten a whole lot of the information and "discovery" done already, so they are making INFORMED decisions about how to divvy up the house & business & cars & IRAs & such.
BUT if you don't have all that stuff & the issue is the cheapest way to get the best interests of the kids protected, maybe the courthouse has a service for handling that, cheaper or maybe free in some states. When you are consulting lawyers, they shoudl hbe an understanding of what is available & how much it costs... if you don't have a lot of property to divide, it might not be worth the price of the meditor (and even if you do, like my husband, the price of the mediator is not worth it if you end up with an agreement that your ex later refuses to sign...) so it's going to be a strategy call, what KIND of mediation you use, how much you pay, where you find the mediator & what kind of mediator you use.
If I understand, there aren't real issues of property in your divorce, and if you chose an expensive method of handling it, your savings could all be eaten up in fees, but your real issue is the best interest of your child? In that case, the options of free parenting mediation through the courts (if it's available) or maybe some sort of custody evaluation by a therapist who could EITHER get you & her o make agreements about it OR could make recommendations to the judge form a professional position... EITHER option might be more effective than mediation with a person whose mediation practice is more focused on proeprty settlements than children.
Sorry fi my posts are so long, but some topics certianly justify it.
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jbar
Platinum
Reged: 12/16/06
Posts: 1007
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===========================================================
...I'm just trying to, in what little time I have anymore, narrow down some possible choices in my area of legal representation. If and when all of this is over, then perhaps I'll join in my thoughts on where things stand in that regard. (in regard to the unecessary nature of most corrupt, confused divorce law)
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Fair enough. I would like that. Obviously, none of the women on these boards is ever going to be willing to honestly discuss the issues I have raised, and for obvious reasons.
If you are not already confused and bewildered enough by all the points to consider when selecting a lawyer, consider this: some attorneys "can't lose a case" in certain courts and others "can't win one". It is almost impossible to figure out in which courtrooms a given attorney seems to be extremely successful, or the opposite, and even if you could you have no control over which judge will get your case. One approach to a solution to this dilemma is to find the "best" (most expensive) attorney in town and put him on retainer immediately. This will prevent your wife from using his services, and when her lawyer sees who your lawyer is, it might make him back off and, if he is honest, inform your wife that she should settle on the best terms she can get from you.
The reasons for the above are almost too disgusting to relate, but have something to do with an attorney having previously angered or embarrassed a judge or, alternatively, in the case of the "best" law firm in the area, always contributing generously to the election campaigns of ALL local judges, even if they are running unopposed! These monies effectively go right into the pockets of these judges, and it is all perfectly legal!
Disclaimer: Not legal advice
Edited by jbar (10/20/07 05:34 PM)
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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On the mediation thing, yes, I have my concerns about that because my DW has borderline personality as one of her diagnoses, along with bipolar and some bits and pieces of other psych disorders (ADHD, anxiety, etc), and I've read on several sites where mediation with borderlines does not go well because they want to switch up things every time you get together. The thing I worry about with regards to letting some person from the court do evaluations is that she can make herself look pretty normal in the short term with somebody. I refer to this site and can say that she is very much like how they describe here:
http://www.bpd411.org/persuasiveblamers.html
She takes virtually all bad situations she finds herself in and puts them on me or somebody else. When cornered, she turns the dial and redirects the focus onto some other thing to try and keep you on the defensive and forget what you were just cornering her with. I have learned to quickly recognize and adjust to this after 3 years now of dealing with this behavior and learning from it (it's only in the past 6 months or so that I've gotten to that point - it's hard to logically evaluate and apply a response to something that is completely illogical being thrown at you). If the person lived here, they would see. She sleeps all day long, no matter what meds they try her on. She's on the verge of being admitted again right now, but they want to try and change up her meds and have her go to more outpatient therapy first. This is the third or fourth major destabilization in the past less than 2 years. Apparently, she has been having more nightmares and disturbing thoughts again lately. I guess she didn't threaten suicide again or her doc would have had her in again by now.
Yes, by far my concern is for the safety and well-being of my son. I do not wish to completely remove him from getting to see his mother, however, I am convinced that time alone with her would be very, very bad. Right now, all she has alone with him during the day is one hour of time in which she is supposed to get him ready for school and on the bus. He has already missed one day of school, and been significantly tardy another day, because of her not getting up and getting him out there. Every day I have to call multiple times to badger her into getting up and getting him ready. If I don't call...he doesn't go. I was told by her doc before school started that she was doing much better, so I went with her trying this again this year with her getting him off to school, but it's not doing well already. She leaves knives and scissors laying around, food and glasses lying about, empty food packages, sometimes her pills are out and accessible. I just think that the ideal thing here would be for her to have some sort of supervised visitation, no overnights because that's when she's at her worst, but perhaps something where she could see him when she's doing well. Would probably give her the option of calling off if she's having a particularly bad day. I just don't trust her with him anymore. I've been keeping a journal, so maybe that would help. I don't mind her seeing him at all, I just want him to be safe while doing it.
Close behind, though, property-wise is the house. I got this house for a pretty good price, so I would really like to hold on to it. I owned the house for 2 years before we got married, so from what I understand, she would only be due half the appreciation from when we got married until whenever a divorce became final. I would just like it if she would simply sign off to no claim on the house at all. Part of my interest regarding mediation is the fact that I was going to present that there is also a good sized equity loan on the house, as well as my credit card with over $10k in marital debt on it, that I would offer to not try to split with her if she would follow the route of not trying to lay claim to anything on the house. I might possibly get her to agree to something like that. I think the real sticking point is going to be the child custody and visitation arrangement, because she doesn't think that she is as bad off as she is. Another concern is the previously mentioned concept that I would have to pay her something because she is unemployed and on disability - and I would expect to get part of the disability payment that is supposed to be directed to him anyway. Seems like having to pay her would be taking away from him. As said before, this is a confusing area for me and one of the reasons I want to talk to somebody. Anyway, we just went out for a couple hours to do something and on coming back, of course she had to head straight for bed. Right now, I am estimating that she is spending approximately 18 hours a day in bed on average. Which reminds me, we have not had really any kind of "marital relations" since late June, we're basically roommates and parents right now. Does that count anything towards separation time?
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5049
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The thing I worry about with regards to letting some person from the court do evaluations is that she can make herself look pretty normal in the short term with somebody.
I'll respond to this part & go look at the rest of your answer. Your best bet with this type fo personality disorder is to find a court appointed person who is familiar with it. It's nearly impossible to do... so the next best bet is to get a court appointed evaluator & do TWO things ... first, very gently suggest that you've noticed these things in your wife & are concerned, and could they please look at these issues... and SECOND... point out the things she does that are contradictory.
My husband, with his mediator (an ongoing appointment because the ex refuses/is inable to comply with the court's orders so we need regular appointments to force her to do so, and though once in a while, just to maintain the appearance of being un-biased, I think, the guy will say that my husband has over-reacted to a particualr issue & needs to back off on it... the usual response is "yep, that needs to be fixed", and we end up with much better results than if we were trying to deal with her, ourselves.) OK, to be fair, my husband had to become really schooled in the Narcissistic personality disorder that we're dealing with and he had to learn how to untangle her half truths from the absolute lies she was trying to get people to hear (tell a half truth & point it in a certain direction, you end up with a HUGE lie). After my husband figured this out, it got a whole lot easier for him to point out her foolishness to people AS THE FOOLISHNESS WAS HAPPENING, and sessions with the mediator have been quite successful.
I say you have a better chance in front of an evaluator or child custody mediator than a judge because the TIME spent with the mediator or evaluatro is much longer than the time the judge will give to the case or to any individual issue, plus the mediator or evaluator is trained to deal with these interpersonal things, while the judges usually have only a LITTLE training in the interpersonal issues, if any training at all. They're former lawyers & they're better able to add up & divide the numbers, to figure out whether or not someone has done something heinously wrong, is refusing to follow the proper court procedure regarding giving the other party access to the financial records & such, but they're just not so good at the interpersonal stuff. They have OPINIONS on teh personal stuff, derived from various things they'e seen, but they're often no more schooled on good cooperative co-parenting issues than anyone who reads teh newspaper or goes to a parenting class or two.
If you can find someone else to handle the parenting issues, and if you can learn how to point out the strange things to this person in a way they'll SEE it, it will be very helpful to your issues.
Now I'll read the rest of your response & see if I have comments.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5049
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I dont' know about the "separation time" requirements in your jurisdiction. When I got divorced it was 21 days from filing to end, so long as we were separated & had no kids. We filed and then he moved out that weekend, but WE called it separated becasue we slept in different rooms after filing & the judge was OK with that... but we had no kids & the property settlement was agreed upon & we both went in front of the jduge to finalize it... it was an agreed thing & not a problem
In the state where my current husband divorced his first wife, it was 60 days from filing to end of the divorce, and no separation requirement whatsoever. I've heard of people filing & getting the divorce final without any separation whatsoever, then selling the house or finalizing the property thing or whatever was forcing them to live together, and not PHYSICALLY separating till AFTER the divorce was over. A strange situation, but more frequent, it seems.
I'm clueless about whether you need a separation.
If you do, you probably want to find a way to kick her out asap. If you're the correct guy, (I coudl be remembering someone else) I remember messaging with you during her last hospitalization & I recommended finding a way to talk to the hospital social workers to make her find a new place to stay once she got out of the hospital, which would have been the easiest way to get this moving... it's tough to force someone out (and you do not want to be the one to have to get out since it's your house)... and you need to brign this up to a lawyer & ask what htey think are your chances of getting temporary orders to force her out. You may have to time filing of divorce with her next hospitalization so that the move "out" is really more like a "release to a different home".
Oh, and on the property settlement, it really depends upon how much equity you have gotten in the house during the marriage & whether her share of the equity would be equalized by her share of the debt your'e taking on. You may very well be able to keep the house in exchange for the debt, but be careful not so shortchange yourself. most people would rather take on a second mortgage to pay off the ex's equity, and then arrange for that to pay off the debt first, just to get it all zeroed out before the divorce is final.
But you'll have to run hte numbers or have your laweyr do that to see if it's really a good deal for you or if you're shortchanging yourself on this.
If there's a lot of equity in the house, or a chance that you will end up with a huge debt that she cant' pay or an alimony payment that you can't pay... it's worth paying a lawyer to work on that.
Think of it this way... if she wants $2000 a month alimony for life, and won't settle... and the judge is likely to order $2000 a month for 10 years... and you get a lawyer who is able to convince everyone that your real obligation to her should be more like $1000 per month for 5 years... then you are saving $180,000 over all, so a $20K lawyer bill would be well worth it, wouldn't it.
Oh, and JBar, my friend did NOT pay a $50K retainer... it was $50K total lawyer bill after 2 years of litigation and she was glad to pay it because when she started, she tried to do it on her own & ended up signing stuff over to her ex that was worth about $100,000 that she should have had half of... it was LOST. And her ex was looking to get half of what was left, saying it was worth a whole lot more than it really was worth... (he was a deadbeat who didn't work & lived off of her incoem for several years, while NOT being the primary parent... just sat home browsing [censored] sites on the internet all day)... Her lawyer saved her about $150K on one of the OTHER houses, and so it was well worth it... PLUS her lawyer forced his lawyer to make him mgo back to work, so she didn't end up paying him a dime in alimony & didn't end up having to pay HIS lawyer's fees (he was making a claim of being "poorer party" and therefore should get the fees). It was an amazing case, was a difficult thing to have to watch, helplessly as she made huge mistakes in the early part of it, and it was WONDERFUL when she finally realized that even though seh was a competent businesswoman, she needed help in the area of law.
Sometimes, the legal fees are well worth it. But you've got to know what's at risk before you know whether the money is worth it.
Bullet... Good luck.
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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"If you're the correct guy, (I coudl be remembering someone else) I remember messaging with you during her last hospitalization & I recommended finding a way to talk to the hospital social workers to make her find a new place to stay once she got out of the hospital, which would have been the easiest way to get this moving... it's tough to force someone out (and you do not want to be the one to have to get out since it's your house)... and you need to brign this up to a lawyer & ask what htey think are your chances of getting temporary orders to force her out. You may have to time filing of divorce with her next hospitalization so that the move "out" is really more like a "release to a different home". "
Yeah, that was me. And while that was something I thought about, at the time I was very concerned with starting something so abruptly (not letting her come back home and beginning divorce processes) without having spoken to a lawyer at all about my chances for custody, retaining my home, or the prospects of having to pay alimony. I would have been tipping my hand as to what my motives were before I even had all my cards together. She was due to come home quickly after that, and with her doc proclaiming her to be in such good shape coming out, I was afraid my position would not look too good at that particular time. I have been very busy and had not been able to get a lawyer appt arranged since the beginning of school, but this recent destabilization of hers has lit a fire under me that I need to try and do something so that I'm ready should another hospitalization occur. I did not expect her to start falling apart again so soon after an inpatient stay. It took her awhile after the last one.
With regards to her talks to her psych doctor, and her claims to me that she was having nightmares and disturbing thoughts, if in the past or in the future she were to not only say she was having thoughts of suicide, but also of killing me or the children, does the doc have to let me know that kind of topic came out? I would think that would weigh heavily with a lot of things along the lines of divorce reasons and child custody. She has not disclosed to me what her "disturbing thoughts" were. I know in the past she told me she would have dreams of killing her mother.
thanks for the replies - I really hate trying to sort all this stuff out.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5049
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You'd be surprised how many ways there are for a therapist to get out of disclosing "homocidal ideation" to the potential victim. I dont' remember the standard off the top of my head, but if she told the therapist about disturbing thoughts, and after a discussion with the therapist, say, agreed that she didn't think she'd follow through with planning such an event, then the therapist could probably decide not to disclose it... because they are not required to disclose ALL thoughts & fantasies. If you think about it, it wouldn't be good to require them to disclose it all... or else people wouldn't talk to them about the stranger thoughts they had.
I know what you mean about not getting around to making an appointment. I've got to see a dentist, and it seems there's always something more important to do than make the darned appointment. I swear, this filling will ahve to fall out of my tooth entirely before I decide it's time to do it. I DID call for an appointment recently, though... I asked a simple question about pricing & the receptionist said she'd call me right back because she ahd to ask, since it had been 2 years since my last appointment (a shocker to me... how could two years pass so quickly?)... and the fact that seh enver got back to me ... I've got to change dentists I suppose, which is yet another excuse for not making an appointment.
And my husband's response... this is all excuses for not doing a siple little thing... I have to do it & stop thinking up excuses... stop using everyday life as a way to avoid this...
May I now say the same thing to you? It sounds like it's time... and I would hope you dont get to the divoce equivelent of having your filings falling out, before you make the appointment for this "extraction".
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