Divorce Support Forums: tax refund..he took it all

Sam, she's not getting $4500 a month. From his $20,000 a month that he gets, accumulated from various pays & consulting positions, he deposits $4500 into an account from which she is supposed to pay the mortgage & utilities and bills. Of that amount, $1500 goes to the mortgage and utilities on the house she's living in, the rest goes to his own bills.

He does nto account for the other $15,000 per month that he receives from various sources, and who knows where it's going.

Yep, it's Gigi... it doesn't matter who moved out. He's controlling the pursestrings and demanding that she live on $38,000 a year (what he's giving to her plus her own income) while he lives on more than $150,000 per year. His own mortgage & utilities must be about $3500 per month because that's what's left over after her $1500 per month used for hers. So what's going on with the other ... gosh, it's about a hundred thousand, that he's earning every year? She's said some stuff about his arrogance, paranoia, & inability to handle finances, so I'm making some educated guesses when I say his othe rincome is not going for community purposes but rather is being frittered away on who knows what... whetehr it's gambling or a girlfriend or his own high end taste in whatever... it's something... and if he can't manage his spending, then her own credit is tied up with his and that's the potential damage. She could live by scrimping & saving and shpping at goodwill so that she never has credit debt, and STILL end up with bad credit if he's hiding stuff from her... and we know he's hiding SOMETHING... because he's got about $100K of income that she has no idea what he does with it.

And she says this has been the arrangement for the past 3 years of thier 32 year marriage. From most formulas, the amount of income she'd get from him would be about 50%... apparently it's 40% by the dissomaster program. In California (where she is), a community property state, she'd be entitled to half of everything they accumulated in the past 32 years ... and considering that they have at least 2 homes there that we know about, and the house values over the past 30 years there as well as his ongoing income, we can assume that the accumulation of assets has been substantial.

Given the numbers, what she's told us... it doesn't take a huge leap of logic to see that she's got some fear of taking the steps and negotiating a solution... it doesn't take a leap of logic that what he's sending to her is the scraps.

Now, OP... here's the thing. You're right that it's only another few years to retirement so it's not worth a huge fight to get extra income attributed to you. NOT worth the lawyer's fees... given the risk and likelihood that you'd end up with JUST enough more for the next few years to pay off those lawyers' fees, and then he retires.

But what I'm worried about is not the next few years, it's the years after that. What makes you think that he's suddenly going to give you 50% of everything (as your state says you deserve) after he retires and is living on a fixed income... when he doesn't want to give that to you NOW?

How about this... you get the divorce going, you do NOT ask for anything more than $1500 per month in alimony, (well, make it more like $2000 per month to account for the fact that alimony is taxable)... until his retirement, and after that you get half his retirement, and get the retirement accounts, pensions, houses, cars, etc split NOW. He may very well be willing to do this without argument since it's no bigger commitment to pay you than he's been paying so far, and since you're willing to live with that as your demand, then great. If you send the initial papers in with a proposed settlement agreement where you explain that all you're asking for is what he's already promised, and you're just trying to finalize things... he might even be darned friendly about it.

After it's final, you may end up having to pay COBRA for healthcare benefits. You'll have to look into that, or maybe your own full time job will get that for you?

Heck, if you're HAPPY keeping the smaller house and letting him take the bigger one (even if the equity is higher), then you could do that as well.

What this does for you? It puts you in no worse position than if you kept the same thing up as you're doing now, but with certainty that it's DONE and not having to walk on eggshells over it. It prevents you from inheriting from him if he passes away, so widows benefits are not an issue... but is your peace of mind really worth it? Is the possibility of getting rich through inheritance really worth walking on eggshells during what SHOULD be your best pre-retirement years? It's not like you expect it, so why hang on to the marriage in the hopes of becoming a widow? That is NOT a reason not to do this.

What else this does for you is it prevents him from finding another way to cut you out once retirement age hits. Because it's HIGHLY unlikely that he'll suddenly love living on so much less than he does not. For most prudent people, they plan to have investment (pension, etc) income of 70-80% of their pre-retirement income to see them through retirement comfortably ... so if he's figured that out... and NOW he's giving you less than 10% of the income he gets pre-retirement, why in hte WORLD do you think he'd be happy to give you 50% of his POST-retirement income... which would cut his own post-retirement incoem down to 35% of his pre-retirement income (with you getting the other 35%).

Do you see how likely it is that it will not do you any good to stay sitting quietly in the woods, praying for him to do the riht thing for you every month by depositing the money needed to pay the mortgage... do you SEE how this is NOT going to result in him giving you half his retirement as promised? Do you see how he's goign to spend the next 3 years trying to figure out how to cut you out of the retirement?

If you finalize it now while he's not thinking that far ahead (apparently, if he's still promising you get half of the retirement)... then maybe you'll GET the stuff he's promised, that you're willing ot live with... rather than having to keep quiet, keep the peace, adn pray for him to do the right thing from moment to moment.