A little over a year ago I found myself becoming a statistic as my marriage crumbled and I filed for divorce from my wife of 24 years. I had been unhappy for most of those years, but for some reason I never thought it would end in divorce -- I was always too terrified of the prospect. In the end, three years of marriage counseling failed to help us reconcile our differences, and we mutually agreed to end it.
Neither one of us had any interest in a War of the Roses - type scenario. We were able to keep our interactions civil, which was enormously helpful since we had bought a big house a few years earlier and could not afford to set up another household on our income. Therefore we have both continued to live in the same house as our divorce process dragged on. Now, as the finalization of our divorce nears, it seems likely that we will actually be divorced long before we can sell the house and set up separate domiciles.
From the beginning I tried to convince my wife that we should go through a mediation process instead of the traditional adversarial divorce. I found this book in the library and it made a lot of sense. She was having none of it, though -- she felt that mediation was "experimental," that no one she knew of had ever gone through it, and she had no interest in trying it.
So, we went through a traditional adversarial process, paying lawyers thousands of dollars to waste our time with ridiculous discovery and "interrogatories," and ended up agreeing to a settlement suggested by a mediator after a year of sluggish legal wrangling.
Now, we have a settlement appearance before a judge in about a week, and I expect we'll be divorced on that day or soon after. I got the idea for this blog during the past year of being ground through the New Jersey divorce machine, but never acted on it until now, when I'm almost finished. I hope it will become a place for people involved in New Jersey divorces to discuss their experiences and exchange ideas and advice. I certainly could have used such a site over the past year; hopefully it will be useful for others going through the process.
1 comment:
Didn't go through divorce but went through a "palimony" lawsuit by my deceased mother's boyfriend. He was treated just like a spouse. I threw in the towel when I learned that I and my sister were to be subjected to interrogatories involving personal issues that occurred in our childhood. My impression is that all these problems were caused by entitled feminists. Divorce should be this: 50%/50% marital assets. A pension is not a marital asset. Alimony to stay-at-home spouse no more than five years. Child support ends at 18. Anything else is highway robbery.
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