Personal Update -- Full Speed Ahead

[eurydicebound]

The current deadline is August, ladies and gents: That's the month by which David should be moved out and in his own place, and paperwork should be proceeding on the divorce (not going to count on it being complete by that date, given Washington's 90-day waiting period). David's begun the process of researching money and places and whatnot, and the entire picture looks far rosier than he'd originally thought. We're figuring out how much money we'd need to save up for him to get a place with furniture for him and kiddos, and will begin putting it aside post haste. (The kids will live with me most of the time, but we're doing joint custody -- I'll drop them off at school in the mornings, he'll pick them up and take them to choir and such and feed them dinner, then they'll spend the night back with me or him, depending, and then every other weekend we'll trade off who keeps them... and probably still have an occasional family outing or dinner or something.)

I'm really glad things are moving forward again. My next big quandry is whether to simply go with a service that will fill out the forms appropriately or to go with a mediator. We aren't having any problems deciding how to split things up or do custody/parenting stuff, so it's mainly a question of how to get the paperwork right so that we can do this with as little court time as humanly possible and as fairly for both parties as possible.

Never thought I'd be happy to get divorced, and part of me is sad about it. Still, halfway between light and dark, love and hate, is no way to live. If we can't do it right, I'd rather not do it at all than have some half-assed marriage that makes everyone miserable. All things considered, I'm looking forward to the future.

Comments

[jasonlblair.livejournal.com]

Boat drinks at GenCon, girl. Boat drinks at GenCon.

[mercuryeric.livejournal.com]

My next big quandry is whether to simply go with a service that will fill out the forms appropriately or to go with a mediator.

No matter what you do, make sure a lawyer sees the papers. It's worth a few hundred bucks now, as opposed to thousands of dollars in legal fees later. My ex and I "amicably separated" and divorced, simply filling out the forms ourselves (nolo contendre marriage dissolutions are quite common in this state), but I quietly had a lawyer review the papers, and he caughts some important stuff (notably in the area of intellectual property rights).

Make sure you carve that stuff out; you don't want to write an award-winning, best-selling novel, and have an ex come back and say, "Hey, she came up with that idea when we were married, and I should get a piece." Sure, things are generally pleasant now, but you really never know what's going to happen later.

Never thought I'd be happy to get divorced, and part of me is sad about it...

That's certainly understandable. I know I was pretty bummed out about mine, but when I sat down and looked at it, really hard, and accepted the parts of it I owned, well... let's just say I decided I could live with it just fine, and that the overwhelming emotional response was extreme relief. Which, I suspect, speaks volumes about my happiness in my first marriage.

Based on today's missive, I'm betting you'll be relieved, too.

Good on you, says I.

-E

[iamnikchick.livejournal.com]

I have the name of a simply fabulous and definitely not expensive family lawyer who helped me fill out the paperwork so I could do it myself. I worked from a generic template that I think I found online to outline the basics of the agreement, and then we were able to use my lawyer time to go over it in detail and add or amend any language. Smooth as silk once we got all the signatures in place, and that was with an ex who was being far less cooperative about the arrangements.

Congratulations on moving ahead.

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Cool. I would be very interested in that name. Oh, and I have a check that belongs to you. Would you prefer that I mail it or run it by?

[trollbabe.livejournal.com]

Hey lady, just wanted to say that while this is, of course, not much with the fun, I'm glad to see you're feeling more or less okay about it all. At least as okay as one can be in this kind of situation.

I think about how torn up you were about all this a year or even six months ago, and I'm glad to see that your outlook has improved so dramatically. Not that you're thrilled about it or anything, but rather that... you seem pretty confident that you're going to come through this all right. While it's certainly not what you planned or hoped for, it's not the end of your world, either.

And hey - if somehow I don't make it to GC to help with the boat drink-ing, I'll make JLB get you one from me too. ;)

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Light at the end of the tunnel is good. *hug* It's so much easier to do this amicably than not (says the girl whose divorce lawyer had to send a sheriff -- I didn't even know we had them in Canada! -- to the other side of the country in order to serve papers, fifteen years ago... gaaah...). You sound better than you've been in a long time, and that's the best part. :)