Pre-Divorce Advice?

[cape split]

First post here so if I'm off asking in this section let me know

In a nutshell:

The bones -

Married 6 years, two wonderful kids still very young, I currently pay for most everything as my wife doesn't really want to work much at all since children - (very) small business pays for basically the cable bill and a little more, we have few assets, I'm on a contract position ending in a year. At one point, she was the greatest thing I had ever had in my life and now I usually feel like she is a problem to deal with.

The problem -

Despite my attempts sex hasn't existed basically since the first pregnancy nearly 4 years ago, she has become basically a randomly nasty person toward me and anyone associated with me, I have felt alone for longer than I can remember, according to friends and family I do more than my share with the kids as well as extensive house renos, maintanence, business dealings, etc, I have asked to go to therapy and she refuses because the situation is "my fault", she admits no wrong (ever) right up to punching me in the eye twice after throwing a bottle against a wall while I was holding our youngest (5 months at the time) and to today she still accuses me of "making her do it", I have initiated long talks asking that we both admit we are part of a single problem which I am then told is wrong because things are again "my fault", she has threatened to leave multiple times while saying to others that "he'll never leave because of the kids", I feel trapped, depressed and alone and really do not know what to do.

The options -

Stay and live with it. Hope it will get better or maybe find a hobby to pass a few years until at least the kids are old enough to know me a little then reassess.

Separate/divorce, in which case she will be gone with the kids to a place 1000 km away and I expect to be basically broke in my 40's.

Frankly, from what I read, I am terrified at the prospect of divorce because I expect to basically have my time with the kids almost eliminated and also to be ruined financially. I don't have enough cash to live long as it is without a job and I love the kids to death. I'm also not 25 anymore so starting over financially now is basically a lost cause and truthfully why bother if all I do is service payments to not even be a part of my kids lives?

I guess my questions are firstly am I being realistic here or not in terms of options and expectations? Secondly, is it better to maybe just try to stick it out and hope for the best? Thirdly, if a divorce becomes inevitable, what should I do to prepare and is it better to just get it over with and file first?

Any input would be appreciated.

Please as well.....we're really quite regular people, both educated, etc who once had the best sex in the world and built our entire lives around each other. This wasn't puppy love gone bad either. It's just...gone bad.

[Mess]

I'm not sure where you live or what jurisdiction the laws are.

Generally the default law when couples split is that each has joint custody, unless there is a very good reason to prove sole custody. The trend these days is to have shared parenting, somewhere between 40/60% unless there is a very good reason not to.

She can't just automaticly move away with the kids. The fact that you suspect this could happen should enable you to take steps beforehand.

Here is some personal advice: Your wife sounds so much like mine, and your marriage so much like mine that it is crazy. Your wife is probably Narcissistic or boarderline. She won't take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. She blames you. This means she will never change herself, and even if you take 15 self-improvement courses, things won't improve because both people have to change to solve a problem.

You really have to come to terms with that, her behaviour will grind you down until you can barely take care of yourself, much less your family.

Here is what you can do to protect yourself:

Keep an eye on the family finances and don't let her run up huge debt. You will have to split the debt. Don't allow joint accounts or at least make sure that joint accounts have limited funds for day to day bills.

Be as involved with the children as you possibly can. Spend a few hours a day caring for them exclusively when you get home from work. Frame it as giving your wife a break, encourage her to go out with friends, or you take the kids out. Take them to the doctor, dentist, out on playdates with their friends and other parents. Be visible in the community with them, don't let her in the future make claims that you were an absent parent.

Read them stories at night and put them to bed. When they are sick, take a few days off work to help your wife take care of them.

You have to establish yourself as a caregiver and fully involved with the children. You need to engage in shared parenting NOW if you are going to have a half a hope to get it when you split. (You WILL split, I'm sorry, if not now, then some day.)

As a side benefit, your children will become just as attached to you as they are to your wife and would not accept your wife taking them away.

If you say you can't do this, then figure out why the hell not. Why did you become a parent then? If you can't, or won't, then you aren't losing anything if she takes them away. This is the tough part of my advice, you have to make the hard decisions and change things.

In getting along with your wife, you have to play the game, at least for a while. Things have to change so you are fully involved so you have a hope of keeping your kids. Explain everything so it is to her advantage. It gives her time to herself, time to spend with her friends, it equalizes the workload, etc.

Try to hold out at least until the kids get to school age. Establishing them at the school, getting them involved with activities, lessons, friendships etc puts roots in your neighbourhood and means you have a much better chance of arguing that they can't be removed.

Most of the things I'm describing, your wife will enjoy anyway, she will love you helping more with the children. The difference between this and a family that works, and you will keep this to yourself, is that you aren't a family. There is time where you are with the kids, there is time where she is. You are already separated, you just live together. I'm sure you know this already.

Talk to your doctor and try to get a therapist, maybe keep this to yourself, but the future will be hard, and you need help getting through this.

Again, keep an eye on finances. You will have to split assets, that will be hard enough, but if you build up debt this will be a killer.

Try to get through the next few years at least, but have a plan and become a shared parent with your kids. Keep researching the laws and understand how to make your position stronger.

[cape split]

Thanks for the advice. I’m in Ontario BTW.

I appreciate the advice on the kids but truthfully I do a lot of that already but will never be able to compete with her in this area. She has 30+ hrs off during weekdays where she can do things with the kids – mall, playgroups, parks, friends houses, etc. I have a few hours after work (and after making dinner, doing a few chores and the like) and then weekends which are usually full of errands, etc. That being said, I’m always home by 5:30 in the week, never, ever go out with friends (new city for the last 1.5 years and no time to make them) or do anything myself in terms of hobbies (I tried to go fishing one weekend and she lost her mind so I decided to keep the peace instead)

On your average weekend though, I get up with the kids (usually 6:30), make them breakfast, clean up, play with them, etc while she often sleeps until 9-10:00. I take them to activities as well but she often sees weekends as her time to relax and my “turn” to do the humdrum household things as well as house renos, etc so there’s not a lot of time for a huge amount of external things. The up side is we are very attached and I love my relationship with my kids more than anything in the world right now.

I once heard about some sort of sexual dysfunction condition in men after their wives have kids and I wonder if this is possible in women now. She once told me calmly after our first that she wanted to be a good mother but didn’t care about being a wife anymore. Crazy me because here I was thinking they might be somehow related. This odd mommy identity with me as a growing annoyance and cash source for her has me very worried. It has reached the point where anything I do is criticized (even the way I breathe and walk at times), she has called me “disgusting” and an “ass” on numerous occasions among other things and frankly I am quite worried that she will just decide one day that her life is strictly about the kids and just move back to her family. FYI, both of our families live days apart but hers is much closer.

If there were no kids involved I would have cut my losses long ago and divorced truthfully. I am desperately afraid however that if things go to total pot I will end up paying her huge amounts while she lives far away and I don’t even get to see the kids almost at all because I won’t even be able to afford travel or to leave my job in this location.

Questions:
1. Is there any advantage to filing first?
2. Is it a disadvantage for me if she left without first assuming a real job and better income again?
3. Can she just take my kids away and move back to her mother’s on a whim?
4. I have some limited email records of my wanting to go to therapy, her refusing, etc as well as other items so is this worthwhile or does it matter, assuming things went really bad?
5. I have shouldered all of the debt over the past while so is that split/accounted for in a divorce or do I keep it?
6. Does the fact that we don’t have a sex life matter at all?

As well, believe it or not, my life is essentially about work and then work at home with an often cold, complaining wife who blames me for the weather. The only light is when I get to play with the kids in between household chores and bedtime. I am desperate for a little time to myself though (maybe kayaking, fishing or something) as well so would this be seen as a bad thing in a divorce in terms of time not spent at home or with kids? I have actually been thinking of sticking it out until the kids are in school but I need something to get me through the years besides being shat upon for not dry-walling correctly.

And to your points, I have been encouraging her to go out with friends, take a weekend off, etc but she won’t. She often travels (3-4 times per year) home to see her family and that certainly counts for something I would think but it never makes her happy for long. Sooner or later she will blow up at me and blame me for ruining something. My gad I tried to put a vegetable garden in last year for the kids and that made her mad! Apparently I always “ruin” things she wanted to do. Of course, I offered it to her and she said it was “too late”.

I just don’t know what to do anymore.

[billiechic]

WOW! Listen to Mess, he's given you very good advice and I won't bother to repeat it.

You do need to be as involved as you can with the kids, but I hope the court will not penalize you for having to work. She can't claim the time when you are at work and lord it over you, as someone needs to bring home the money to live on. Get involved in their schools, teams, help with homework etc. GO to parent teacher meetings, attend doctor visits. Make sure that there are professional people who see that you are involved. If things go bad then they can attest that you were an involved parent.

But don't take too long to leave. I know how much damage you are suffering emotionally from that kind of abuse and every day that you stay is breaking you down, especially after you have realized you want out. Please don't think that it is better to stay for the kids, they see that you are suffering and need a happy, loving father, not one who is living on autopilot to try and avoid arguments. Trust me, I've been there and there is happiness out there for you.

[got2bkid]

Sorry to hear of your predicament, you must feel trapped and it is understandable. It sounds like she has a personality disorder on her part, like Mess said. There are alot of people that lie in the middle of the spectrum of mental disorders that are never diagnosed and most people (except those directly affected) would never even notice. You should do some reading on borderline personalities, it may help you.

While you'll get great advice on this board, keep in mind that a lot of the men posting/giving advice on this board either have shared custody, or sole custody, and that is NOT the norm. And I believe they spent a lot of time and $$$ fighting it, which not all men are able to do.

The reality is, in Canada 90% of mothers do have physical custody. Most couples now have what is called "joint custody". That is just a fancy (and confusing) term that says you are still able to be fully involved in the decisions regarding your children's lives, but they still live with one parent (90% mothers in Canada) and you'll still pay full child support plus your proportion of extra-ordianary expenses like day-care, medical, camps etc.

So you need to strive to get SHARED custody. You need to strive to get 40%or more of time with your children. You will most likely be paying spousal support (for a while) and child support, so if you have your children 40% or more of the time or more, it will be better for your relationship with your children and your pocketbook (you should be paying less than the full amount, although this is not always the case). Also, shared parenting frees up time for your wife (ex) to get some work related skills and get back to work. Most studies (see Edward Kruk) now have proven that children do best in life when they are allowed equal time with both parents after divorce (except where one parent is unfit obviously).

Document everything you do for and with the children. Learn about the benefits to kids regarding shared parenting. Try to get her working at a job while you are still together. And when the time comes and you are actually going through the divorce, don't trash her, but stay focused on the KIDS and how your involvement FULLY (ie - more than every other weekend) will benefit THEM.

My husband is living what you are scared of. His ex moved accross the country with his kids 8 years ago, he only sees them 2X/year. He works hard, and between child support and "extras" and "access" he pays out 1/2 of his net income every month, which leaves his real income below the poverty line. Before he moved in with me, he lived in a rooming house in order to survive. It wasn't the best situation for his children to visit in, having strangers in the household that he barely knew. Plus, the expenses he had when the children visited him left him eating rice for the last 2 weeks of every month. And let me tell you he is a great man and a wonderful father and I tell him that every single day! It does happen to good, hard-working decent people, so you are right to be careful and thoughtful at this point now. Good for you. The more information you have now, the better off you'll be in the long run.

So, stay as long as you can, but if she won't acknowledge her faults, it does sound like she may not be able to change. Psychiatrists have a saying, it is harder to treat a boderline than a psycopath, because at least psycopaths can acknowledge they have faults, which is the first step to fixing them.

Questions:
1. Is there any advantage to filing first? Not sure
2. Is it a disadvantage for me if she left without first assuming a real job and better income again? YES
3. Can she just take my kids away and move back to her mother’s on a whim?NO
4. I have some limited email records of my wanting to go to therapy, her refusing, etc as well as other items so is this worthwhile or does it matter, assuming things went really bad?NO (no-fault divorce)
5. I have shouldered all of the debt over the past while so is that split/accounted for in a divorce or do I keep it? NO
6. Does the fact that we don’t have a sex life matter at all?NO

[dadtotheend]

If she does try to take the kids a long way away from you, you have to run, not walk to the nearest courthouse and get an emergency motion blocking the move, or forcing the kids to return home. If you wait, even for a week or two, you could be screwed.

The other major point about this is that if she moves out with the kids, and she starts an application in the courts at the new location, it will be very difficult for you because that will be where all the court activity will be located, which will obviously create a major burden for you. You will need to beat her to the courthouse to ensure that the matter is heard in the jurisdiction in which you live now.

[cape split]

Thanks folks. I really do appreciate the advice.

I'm going to do some research and will hopefully post again with more questions.

[Mess]

got2bkidding, I would be interested to know where you get the figure that 90% of mothers get physical custody in Canada.

AFAIK there is no such statistic. I don't think any father should read such a statistic and feel there is no hope, or little hope.

Going by 1996 statistcs, only 58% of single parents had gone through a divorce. The rest had never been married or were widowed. At this time, 83% were women. However 22% of all single parents were never married, and these would be almost entirely female. (The incidence of children born to a single parent, no marriage and ending up with one parent, the father as parent would be negligable. This is a social phenomena, not a legal one.)

More widowed parents are female, as most industial accidents are going to involve males. All this to say, gross statistics that show women as the predominant single parent don't apply to showing bias in the courtroom.

A 2007 article by the Toronto Star shows that

In 1980, mothers got custody 78.2 per cent of the time. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 47.7 per cent, with joint custody awarded in 43.8 per cent of cases, according to the census report.

I have no statistics for the granting of custody in divorce trials, I think someone posted a .pdf on the boards here a few weeks ago with some statistics on the decisions of two judges (this was a fairly opinionated political article as I recall.) I think we need to understand that over 90% of cases don't make it to trial, and that trial results don't show an accurate picture.

The argument may be, trial results might show the likelyhood of a result at trial. Which is like arguing that most murderers are convicted, so you may as well plead guilty, even if you didn't do it. Every case has to be decided on it's own merits, and if your case has merit then it is worth fighting.

The Star article doesn't necessarily show bias, it does show asymetry. Just under half of cases end up with woman having custody. Just under half have joint custody. A small percentage of men show full custody. However that is heavily weighted by more men working full time as breadwinners, more women as stay at home parents, and men tending to seek joint rather than full custody in the first place.

Women end up with disproportionate levels of custody because of social bias, not legal bias. If there is reason to seek full custody, a man has every chance to have his case heard.

I don't want to claim that there are no unbiased judges, and I would agree that if there is judge bias, it would be generational and fall on the woman's side. But no one should look at the 90% figure and base their actions on that.

[dadtotheend]

Originally Posted by Mess

Women end up with disproportionate levels of custody because of social bias, not legal bias. If there is reason to seek full custody, a man has every chance to have his case heard.

I've said this on this board many times and I'll say it again.

While one would be foolish to think that gender bias does not exist in the courts, the reason Moms get disproportionate levels of custody is that they are still the primary caregivers of children. Go to the kindergarten doors at your local school at pick and drop off times. While there are more and more Dads doing the pick up and drop offs, I'd guess 75% of the parents there are Moms. Of course that isn't conclusive on it's own, but it's an indicator.

That said, Dad's who give up because the stats favour Mom aren't doing themselves and their kids any favours. If you are willing to pour yourself into it, leave no stone unturned, be child-centred and work that extra bit harder to counter act the presence of some gender bias, you can be successful. The stakes will never in your life be higher. If one isn't wiling to do it for one's kids, then what does that say about one's moral fibre?

[billiechic]

FINALLY, a post by Fathers that doesn't attack the courts claiming a bias against them. 2 fathers who fought the court and the social attitudes and have proven that men can be good parents too.

It's nice to see that some people around here can see the reality and not use statistics to gain sympathy. These two are the ones who are changing the system and making it better. 3 cheers!!