tdub
New
Reged: 04/27/08
Posts: 3
|
|
Hello. My parents have been married for over 2 decades. We live in California. My mom is a sociopath (meets the clinical definition to a "T") and my dad has had enough of her controlling his life and money, as well as getting him into debt. My dad and I are trying to get his things in order for a divorce. About 10 years ago, my dad's parents passed and mineral rights to land were given to him, which now means a $1500 check every month due to the rising oil prices (the amount/month gets steadily higher). Anyways, she more or less forced my dad to withdraw all his retirement from his former employer to help purchase their house, which is now about to be foreclosed on, due to her controlling mindset and careless attitude. He is 57 and in danger of losing his job to to an injury. This oil check means everything in terms of my dad being able to live by himself. Even my mom's family knows she's crazy, as well as certainly my dad, sister, and I. His wife has brought nothing to the table in terms of retirement, or anything else, for that matter. She can be physically violent and we are always worried that she'll snap and kill/hurt us. She sucks people dry. She is a rotten person and does not deserve my dad's money, when he's worked hard all of his life and she has not. For over 10 years of marriage, she didn't even have a job. The oil check and my dad's retirement need to stay his. It means the world. He may not be able to work again, depending on some circumstances.
What are the options? If she's found to be physically and mentally abusive, and/or mentally unstable, does she still have rights to half of my dad's property? Could my dad simply transfer the oil check into my sister or I's names?
I'm rambling, I know, but my dad and I are always worried about when she'll find out that my dad's going to divorce her, because we know she'll go on a rampage to hurt and destroy all that she can.
Thanks.
|
Jada
Platinum
Reged: 06/02/07
Posts: 3314
|
|
First, I am sorry that your father is involving you in his divorce. And it seems, in his marriage to your mother. He shouldn't be doing that, period.
Just because you are an adult doesn't make it okay. And if you are not an adult, what he's doing is even worse.
Let your parents deal with their divorce. It is their divorce, not yours. You have no business in the middle of it.
But to answer your question, the inheritance is probably not community property (a lawyer would be able to tell your father for sure). The retirement is community property and will be split 50/50, along with any of the marital debt. California is a community property state, all marital assets get split.
|
Mek
New
Reged: 03/31/08
Posts: 4
|
|
I am no expert here but I think I'd have to disagree with Jada. You are talking about what you feel is your safety, not just "their" divorce. I think you are entitled to be involved in your safety. I for one knows how it feels to be on the receiving side of a angry persons rampage... and its not fun.
I don't know much about the sharing of the property funds, but as I understand it, any asset which is an inheritance is rarely ever split unless it is gifted. If there is no "transmutation" of said assets then it is mostly his. But I am no expert. I just know that you need to do what is safest and healthiest for you and your family. But if your feelings are unwarented then you should ask someone older and wiser than you, that knows you and your family better, on what you should do. I wish you the best. I am sorry if I am not much help.
-Mek
|
gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5042
|
|
You need to stay out of your parents' business. Did your mother stay home to maybe give birth to you and your siblings? For your father to complain about that NOW is kind of late. and there's nothing lazy about a woman wo chooses to chase around a pack of toddlers so you need to stop thinking in those terms. You should not be judging your mother for decisions made when you were a baby. If your father really disapproved of those deisions, he'd have divorced her years ago.
Now, if you truly fear your mother, get out of the house. Call CPS for younger siblings' safety. Get on your own two feet if you're an adult and stop relying upon your parents (and sticking your nose in their business).
Your Dad needs to be consulting a lawyer, not you. The lawyer will tell him that he has nothing to worry abou twith the mineral rights that he inherited. California is a community property state. Your Dad will need to figure out what his work issues are, whether the injury qualifies for worker's compensation or some kind of disability payments, or whether he's goign to be able to return to work sometime. Whatever the financial arrangements, they're going to be tougher for everyone concerned if your Dad loses his job.
The assets will be split in half, which includes his retirement account and pension eligibility. But if his maximum income is a disability payment, then that will be the income that is used when calculating whether either owes alimony to the other. If your mother is now working and your dad is determined to be permanently disabiled, it may even end up that she owes alimony to him.
But this is not for you to figure out, it's for his laweyr to do. Send him to a laweyr and you step back.
Try to find a way to understand that your mother may not be all as evil as you claim. A problem handling money, a decision to stay at home for half a marriage while children are being raised, a disagreement about how to plan for the future, retirement, etc., is not by itself any indicator of violence, but if she has truly been physically violent in the past, you need to protect yourself and your siblings, and let your Dad handle his own adult decision about his marriage on his own.
And if your mother has not actually been physically violent, please understand that there are two sides to nearly every story, and your exceptionally one-sided presentation suggests that maybe you've been allowed to take sides in a situation where you should have been helped NOT to do so.
Both provided 50% of your DNA and 50% of your upbringing, and both deserve an equal portion of your respect. If your mother is truly evil, then you need therapy, and a lot of it, because you will not have a correct point of view on how to be in a normal family. But if, as I suspect, you made a choice to choose up sides in the divorce and have chosen your Dad's side because he is ... whatever, more econonically generous or whatever... well, this is a wrong thing and you need to allow for the possibility that your mother is not quite that evil.
No child, not even an adult child, should ever be in a position to say their own mother is evil.
Now, I want you to know who this advice is coming from. I am the stepmother of some wonderful children whose mother is diagnosed as a narcissist. She spends every dime she can get her mitts on and hasn't saved up a dime for the kid's college, and if she had her way, we'd be giving all out money to her for her version of fun and we'd have nothing left to save for the kid's college either. She is the sports/stage mother from hell. Truly. She regularly beat their father (physically) and after years of that, she realized it didn't work very well and switched tactics, berating him and treating him like dirt. She said demeaning things about him in public, called him not a man, moved out of the bedroom and started sleeping with the daughter years before the separation (and continued sleeping with her till she was a teen adn it was an embarassing little problem we all had to deal with after the divorce was final). She flashes her teen sons, suggesting when they see a pretty girl on TV that if they want to see boobies, that they should look at hers instead.
It's trashy, nasty, abusive. My husband left, told all the right people about what had happened, but because it had been so long that she had been doing it and she was promising never to do certain of those things again, the authorities thought it would be better fo rthe kids to just go to counseling rather than have to testify agains tthier mother. Her parting shot, about half a year after the separation, was to accuse thier father of violence and keep the kids away from him for another 6 months... the kid who was the supposed "victim" of his violence is an adult and says he believes she exaggerated the claim of violence because the divorce was going bad for her. Oddly, he came up with this on his own because my husband never spoke to him about the situation at all, being unable to be in contact at all with a person named as a "victim" in a crime being charged against him. The case was delayed, delayed, etc. by prosecutors and finally prosecuted only when the ex wife insisted, nad they they dropped it after my hsuband proved he went to counseling.
TRULY, this woman is evil.
But do you think we've ever given the kids any inforamtion that would let them think that thier mother is evil? She may be mistaken about certain financial budgeting principles, she may be wrong about what the judge said, or whatever, but we will NEVER make the children choose between her and their fahter. We will never let them get to a point where they have to call her evil.
She tried to do that to them, in the 6 months that she had kidnapped them. And they were ordered into therapy for it. After a few sessions, they realized that their Dad did not suddenly snap or go crazy, that is not how crazy works. They understood that they did not have to choose up sides, not one side or the other, and it was wrong for anyone to say they should. And they were told that if she told them that he was evil or crazy or abusive, that she was mistaken and they didn't need to be angry at her for it, just understand that not everything she says is totally accurate (they already knew this, it was not news to them... they're not stupid!)
I explained this background so you'd understand. You should not be in a position to even think these things about your mother, unless she has pysically beaten you repeatedly. And I doubt she has, or else you'd not be living with her, she'd be in jail, and you'd not be worried that she would snap when your father finally shares with HER what he's obviously shared with YOU... that he intends to divorce her. for him to share this with you, to share wit you that he worries that she's going to snap, to share that much of his money worries with you. IT's wrong, it's VERY mistaken. He should not have done it.
YOu need therapy to help you get over this, but remember, your mother is the same woman who baked cookies for you as a toddler or held your head while you were throwing up theh last time you had the flu. She's the person who went to all the parent-teacher things while your Dad was working and she probably did a few other good things for you as well.
In a few more years, you'll be old enough to understand that NO one is ALL good, and NO ONE is ALL BAD either. Heck, even my husband's ex, she's a lot of fun and does parties really well. She makes people she likes feel like part of the gang and ... well, the kids love her house, which is like disneyland every day. As bad as this is for her mothering skills, she is NOT a bad person. NO ONE is ALL BAD.
You need to get that thought of your mother out of your head, and your dad is not the person to help you do this.
Get him to a lawyer, get yourself to a counselor. And good luck.
|
tdub
New
Reged: 04/27/08
Posts: 3
|
|
This is mainly to "gigi."
Round 2. I spent so long to write a response that it was erased when I sent it (hope you guys know what I mean).
Here were go again. Anyways I'm 19. I mainly told you those things about my mom to illustrate the point that my dad is not trying to do anything immoral by ensuring that the oil check stays his, and I didn't want to be preached to about the wife's needs.
I'm so sick of women being treated and told they're better than men ("fairer sex," and whatnot), when the truth is we're all equal. There's no doubt about it; women are given the benefit of the doubt. The sympathy. The empathy. My dad is the sweetest man. My mom is an animal. Period.
Want to hear about my mom? Fine.
When my sister and I were in elementary school, my dad woke up my mom in the evening to ask my mom something (presumably about money) and my mom went into a rage, calling my dad's inheritance from his parents "dead money." She became violent, pushing, prodding, etc. She started hitting him. The fight progressed out into the rain, my dad fighting back because he realized he was going to get hurt otherwise. So my lovely mother pushed him down several times, hitting him. Yes, my dad hit back, but because he was drunk and she was no longer a woman; she was an animal with intent to kill. Who knows how bad my dad would've been hurt if he didn't walk away... The next day was Thanksgiving, and my parents showed up to the family get-together with black eyes and on crutches.
Two years ago, my mom came home from partying drunk, screaming, grunting, cursing, and crying. She went into the kitchen's knife drawer, grabbed a knife, and tried to slit her wrists. My dad and I had to use all of our strength to pull the knife from her grips. She was pushing and hitting my dad. She pushed me and at one point picked me up over her head just like a wrestler would. Her strength really is amazing. We called the cops as soon as we could. Two cops came. One took her outside, talked to her, and brought her back in, telling us that she's "no longer a threat." The nerve. The cop went ahead and decided for us that we're no longer in fear of our safety. Apparently, he got to decide if our fear was genuine. A year later my parents quit drinking, but recently my mom comes home buzzed to drunk most nights, while my dad is still sober, yet she vehemently denies drinking while simultaneously accusing my dad of doing so.
She's gone to therapy, but then she stops and reverts. We've put up with it for too long. I haven't spoken to her in weeks because I know she'll make me regret being nice to her.
She wants sympathy. She never goes to her parents, except to hear the words "oh, you poor thing!" She went to get sympathy from her parents, recently. As soon as she left, her parents called my dad and I to tell us what all was said. My mom came home later that night and twisted everything around, saying her parents put her down and accused her of things, yada-yada, which was not the case.
All my dad, sister, and I want is to be happy. Anyone who willingly impedes another's happiness is a bad person. She makes life miserable.
Telling me I'm the one who needs therapy... In that case, my sister, dad, grandparents, uncles, and aunts need therapy, too. It couldn't simply be that my mother is indeed mentally unsound and destructive, could it?
It seems like you've never dealt with a sociopath. I don't pretend to understand you or your situation, not one bit, so why try to say you understand our situation better than ourselves?
Edited by tdub (04/29/08 09:29 PM)
|
Jada
Platinum
Reged: 06/02/07
Posts: 3314
|
|
You really need counseling to deal with your issues.
And you need to not involve yourself in your parents divorce.
Just like their marriage was theirs to do with as they wanted, so is their divorce.
You do realize that your father isn't blameless, don't you?
From what you have written BOTH of your parents are alcoholics. And, unfortunately, BOTH of them had a negative impact on you and your siblings lives.
Have you heard of Al-a-Teen? It's for children of alcoholics.
And, yes, you do need therapy. And this is coming from a person whose father is an alcoholic. You are clearly angry and have issues that you need to deal with.
BTW, I do think that you are angry at your father, too. And one day, you will have the maturity to understand that placing him on a pedestal while villifying your mother for doing the same thing your father did was your way of trying to make sense of your childhood. It was hard growing up with one alcoholic parent, I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to grow up with two.
http://www.al-anon.org/meetings/meeting.html
|
tdub
New
Reged: 04/27/08
Posts: 3
|
|
[quote]You really need counseling to deal with your issues.
And you need to not involve yourself in your parents divorce.
Just like their marriage was theirs to do with as they wanted, so is their divorce.
You do realize that your father isn't blameless, don't you?
From what you have written BOTH of your parents are alcoholics. And, unfortunately, BOTH of them had a negative impact on you and your siblings lives.
Have you heard of Al-a-Teen? It's for children of alcoholics.
And, yes, you do need therapy. And this is coming from a person whose father is an alcoholic. You are clearly angry and have issues that you need to deal with.
BTW, I do think that you are angry at your father, too. And one day, you will have the maturity to understand that placing him on a pedestal while villifying your mother for doing the same thing your father did was your way of trying to make sense of your childhood. It was hard growing up with one alcoholic parent, I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to grow up with two.
http://www.al-anon.org/meetings/meeting.html [/quote]
Do you respond with anything other than back-handed advice?
Course I'm angry. Who wouldn't be? You know what though? Anger is okay. It's a human emotion, and it's healthy and normal. It doesn't seep into my relations with others. And of course part of the marriage's blame is on my dad for sticking with her. He's changing it, though.
Nice welcome wagon.
|
Jada
Platinum
Reged: 06/02/07
Posts: 3314
|
|
His blame is more than just sticking with her.
Your mother wasn't the only who was drinking.
Your mother wasn't the only one who was beating up another person.
Your father was right there with her. Actively participating in the fights.
I have been there. When my ex was out of control, I wasn't fighting with him. I was looking for a way to escape. I was calling the cops. I was taking the kids and leaving. I didn't fight back. I just got the he!! out of there.
Anger isn't healthy when it is having such a negative impact on your life. And it is.
And in a few years, when you have matured some more, you will see that. Seriously, get the therapy.
|
MommaMia
Platinum
Reged: 02/17/07
Posts: 376
|
|
Do you love your mom?
Would it be ok to you if she was on the street as long as your dad kept his money?
Sounds like your whole family has issues (we all do), and your mom may truly be mentally ill. But I agree with the others, step back and try not to get into your parents divorce. It's ok that you really support your dad, but badmouthing your mom will not help him, you or your mother.
I second the alanon meeting. Go. I promise you will have a revelation.
|
gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5042
|
|
Your Dad gets to keep the inheritance. Stop worrying about that. Your MOm does not deserve any little bit of it. Your Dad and Mom are both drunks and thank God and AA that your Dad is not drinking. But for you to have that much information about a single fight they had when you were in grade school is inappropraite. You have clearly decided who was at fault in that fight, but your Dad chose not to leave her or to protect you back then, and remained in the sitaution for anotehr... well, must be about a decade at this point!
I don't know that your mother is a sociopath, but many addicted persons seem very similar to sociopaths when they're drinking. Most actual sociopaths don't drink, though. They're too controlled for that. And counseling won't help them, will never help them in my personal opinion (not that the therapists will ever give up on the possibiltiy of helping).
Addictions are a whole problem of their own, and no one needs to be a sociopath in order for an addiction to cause havoc for thier family. And yes, their families clearly need therapy, just like the family of sociopaths and narcissists. Because the families are more emotionally shredded than the people who are the cause of the problems. For your mother, remove the alcohol and there would be a huge turnaround... but for you, it would be hard, if not impossible, to figure out how to manage life within the new constallation of the non-alcoholic family. That's just the way it is. I don't need a crystal ball to know that. I've been involved with enough alcoholics to know.
At the ripe old age of 19, you have diagnosed your mother with a serious emotional disturbance, suggested that the drinking is almost just superimposed on top of this other problem that you seem to think is more serious, have decided who was at fault for a fight between your parents when you were just a young child, and taken on the task fo somehow defending your father's honor, getting intimately involved in the situation to the point where you are accepting calls from your own grandparents which are probably calls meant for your father. When you say, "they called to tell US..." (emphasis added) as if you, the son, are somehow part of the whole marital thing... it's a huge clue that you are overinvolved in your parents' marriage.
PLEASE, let your dad deal with this. Get him a good lawyer. You clearly do not want the help that you need for having grown up in a family wehre both parents were alcoholics, but don't ditch the rest of our message. For you to be here... a KID who is trying to help is dad divorce his mom... it's just not right. Get Dad a good lawyer and then BUTT OUT.
Someday you'll understand. A kid should never have as much information about thier parents' relationship as you have. They should never have as much inforation about what the various arguments were about as you have. They sould never know the specifics of disagreements about money & etc., should never know which parent is waking the other up, should never have the opportunity to have to make a choice that one is more innocent than the other.
Your mother is clearly out of control. Is that what you need to hear? Well, if so, then I'm saying it. She is CLEARLY wrong. But is she evil? Probably not. Is her family evil for taking her in and sympathizing? Probably not. For you to cut off a whole half of your own DNA just so you can champion your father. He needs to man up, do his own research on the law, get a lawyer, and tell you to butt out, frankly. For him to let you get this involved is wrong-minded. And if you've done this behind his back in some mis-guided attempt to tell him his own business, then I'd not be surprised if he didn't tell you to back off anyways. Maybe in nicer terms, but the sentiment is the same. NO child, no matter HOW evil thier mother is, should EVER be involved in thier parents' divorce.
Get your Dad in contact with a good lawyer.
Get yourself in contact with some version of therapy or support for kids of alchoholics.
Or don't. Your choice. You've gotten your answers. Your Mom does not get part of your Dad's "dead money". Some of us here have a little more experience than you'll EVER know about how the world works, how divorce works, how the inheritances will be divided (or not), sociopaths, narcissists, addicts... and when we tell you that as a child, even an adult child, you're way too involved in your Daddy's business ... well, just wait another 10 years till you understand a little better and THEN tell us that it's right for a kid to be lookign for divorce information for his father, vilifying his mother, and looking for ways to cut her off and APPARENTLY looking to get revenge for all the mistakes she made in his youth, by helping his dad with the divorce...
I think in a few years you'll understand and be embarassed. At least I hope you have the capacity to understand that when a few years rolls around. I HOPE by that time that you've gotten enough help for yourself that you are capable of understanding it.
Truly... take it or leave it. We care, we've given advice, you're in a very tough position. Give your father the advice and then bow out & take care of yourself
|
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit
Reply
Quote
