Background:
Trying for a friendly split, even though I harbour a lot of anger over the circumstances of the breakup. I no longer have any respect for him as a human being and would prefer to never have to see him again. Seems I'm pretty good at concealing this to both him and our two small sons. I never badmouth him to them.
I have reasonably good, secure income with benefits. He is self-employed and makes far less than minimum wage, on paper at least. Reality, who knows?
He's the one who moved out, and got a cheap apartment that we both agree is no place for our sons to even visit. Also, he seems to consider it his love nest with the former mistress. Anyways, it means I have the boys living with me for all overnights, but he comes over regularly for breakfast and to get them to daycare, and a couple evenings a week to do their bedtimes, and all day Sunday where they do outings but get home for naptime. It's been very stable for the boys and we agree that this is best for them, at least at this point. Aside from it being incredibly stressful on me, this system helps me meet certain work obligations, and overall, he's not actually around much less than he was when he lived with us. The boys are adjusting beautifully.
Maybe I should add that equalization consisted mainly of I get the house and mortgage, he gets the business, I get my pension, he gets the spousal RRSP.
We are trying to do most of the separation agreement on our own, after having a mediator get us started. However, we are at the stage for independent legal advice, and my lawyer did a bunch of wording changes that we adapted, and now his lawyer is doing the same. We've agreed that I will not be paying him spousal support (mainly because I couldn't afford to do that and also keep the house for the boys, and also he's got some male pride going on there, I think) and his low official income means that by table amount, he owes $0 child support.
The main thing his lawyer wants though, is to get a clause that I will not impute an income on him for child support later on, and I'm not sure I should do that. Right now, I'm content to not expect child support indefinitely, as we're doing okay and he does contribute a bit, unofficially and unexpectedly, such as bringing groceries, putting gas in my car, etc.
But what happens if he decides to close his business and not seek new employment, living off his girlfriend's income? I feel okay with not imputing as long as he still maintains what was once the family business, but I'm not okay with him being voluntarily unemployed.
But what happens if we work up to 50-50 once he lives in a nicer place? I would not be able to pay him much child support either unless I reduced the offset by imputing him an income. And what if the boys decide they want to live with him when they are teenagers? If I can't do offset easily, I have no idea how I would do full child support, although I suppose then I wouldn't have the expense of feeding teenage boys.
We haven't hit court and all the problems I read about here, and hopefully won't. I am still hoping we can file jointly once we have this agreement all hashed out.
Any suggestions for how I can approach rejecting the 'no imputing ever' clause without endangering all our other fragile agreements?
In a lot of ways, I think I'm doing excellently as far as breakups go, considering some of the stories I read here, and I don't want to lose that, but I don't want to give something up to achieve the agreement that I could end up regretting either.
Trying for a friendly split, even though I harbour a lot of anger over the circumstances of the breakup. I no longer have any respect for him as a human being and would prefer to never have to see him again. Seems I'm pretty good at concealing this to both him and our two small sons. I never badmouth him to them.
I have reasonably good, secure income with benefits. He is self-employed and makes far less than minimum wage, on paper at least. Reality, who knows?
He's the one who moved out, and got a cheap apartment that we both agree is no place for our sons to even visit. Also, he seems to consider it his love nest with the former mistress. Anyways, it means I have the boys living with me for all overnights, but he comes over regularly for breakfast and to get them to daycare, and a couple evenings a week to do their bedtimes, and all day Sunday where they do outings but get home for naptime. It's been very stable for the boys and we agree that this is best for them, at least at this point. Aside from it being incredibly stressful on me, this system helps me meet certain work obligations, and overall, he's not actually around much less than he was when he lived with us. The boys are adjusting beautifully.
Maybe I should add that equalization consisted mainly of I get the house and mortgage, he gets the business, I get my pension, he gets the spousal RRSP.
We are trying to do most of the separation agreement on our own, after having a mediator get us started. However, we are at the stage for independent legal advice, and my lawyer did a bunch of wording changes that we adapted, and now his lawyer is doing the same. We've agreed that I will not be paying him spousal support (mainly because I couldn't afford to do that and also keep the house for the boys, and also he's got some male pride going on there, I think) and his low official income means that by table amount, he owes $0 child support.
The main thing his lawyer wants though, is to get a clause that I will not impute an income on him for child support later on, and I'm not sure I should do that. Right now, I'm content to not expect child support indefinitely, as we're doing okay and he does contribute a bit, unofficially and unexpectedly, such as bringing groceries, putting gas in my car, etc.
But what happens if he decides to close his business and not seek new employment, living off his girlfriend's income? I feel okay with not imputing as long as he still maintains what was once the family business, but I'm not okay with him being voluntarily unemployed.
But what happens if we work up to 50-50 once he lives in a nicer place? I would not be able to pay him much child support either unless I reduced the offset by imputing him an income. And what if the boys decide they want to live with him when they are teenagers? If I can't do offset easily, I have no idea how I would do full child support, although I suppose then I wouldn't have the expense of feeding teenage boys.
We haven't hit court and all the problems I read about here, and hopefully won't. I am still hoping we can file jointly once we have this agreement all hashed out.
Any suggestions for how I can approach rejecting the 'no imputing ever' clause without endangering all our other fragile agreements?
In a lot of ways, I think I'm doing excellently as far as breakups go, considering some of the stories I read here, and I don't want to lose that, but I don't want to give something up to achieve the agreement that I could end up regretting either.
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