I’m Scared For Divorce Mediation

He’ll fight what’s legally mine.

Mediation is supposed to be a neutral-party activity aimed at compromises and keeping things civil.

That’s not how my divorce mediation will go. Not by a long shot.

Joseph’s attitude towards our divorce is that since I’m the one who wants it, I’m the one who should have to suffer the consequences. Why should he have to change his life just because I’m the unhappy one who wants to end things instead of staying and working on our marriage?

I’ve tried to lessen the impact on him. All of my side hustle money (sniff, goodbye months of effort on Medium) went towards paying for the mediators and the court filing fees. Filing isn’t cheap; I have no idea how low-income people afford it. Joseph flip-flopped on whether he would split his inheritance with me and then decided against it.

He even wanted my wedding ring back. The one thing I have that I’m legally entitled to keeping. So I told him that I’ll save it and give the diamond to our daughter when she’s older. Joseph “compromised” on that. He’ll flip his shit when he finds out I sold it but that’s a future, Divorced Me problem.

I don’t trust him to not be sketchy. He only deposits money in our shared bank account when I nag at him that we will be at zero. When I did the math showing Joseph how much we each had contributed to the shared account for months, he got defensive and prattled on about physical therapy copays and that he didn’t have the money.

Yeah, tell that to the endless eBay boxes showing up each day.

Today was my 1:1 with our mediator. We each get individual sessions before we meet all together. Not wanting Joseph to overhear the conversation and get angry, I did the Zoom call in my car parked in the garage (close enough so I could still get wifi) with the phone propped up on the dashboard.

I could barely read my questions in the dark car. That’s because I wrote my questions in French, in case I left them on my desk and Joseph comes across them. This is the level of PTSD I have from living with his hostility; I have to use my own secret code to keep my notes hidden to avoid his wrath.

My initial questions were about paperwork logistics. Then I got into the psychological aspect of this process.

“When you go through the list of topics, can you bring up the wedding ring specifically as something that I’m entitled to? If I say it, he’ll get mad.”

Amanda says she will ask us about jewelry when we go through the list.

“He has a vintage car he bought when we were engaged. I can’t determine the price, it’s anywhere between $40k to $100k. Am I entitled to any of that?”

While I’m not entitled to it per se, I tell her how it’s taken up garage space everywhere we’ve lived, I’ve had to pay for it to be professionally moved, and my car has been towed more than once because I could never park my car in the garage when we first rented because I was stuck parking in a red zone. Heck, when 8 months pregnant in the sweltering California heat, I drove to the ghetto to pick up a fuel tank from a scrap yard. If that doesn’t earn me a fraction of the car, I don’t know what will.

“What if he doesn’t sign when he receives the first document for us to file?”

At this point, Amanda is catching onto my situation. She tells me worst case, it goes to court, but either way he’s going to have to sign it.

“What if he doesn’t fill out all the financial spreadsheets? I know he doesn’t know the cost of half those things or how to find out.”

She tells me that I can’t do the work for him (good, because I wasn’t planning on it…he has full access to everything needed to fill the forms out himself). If Joseph doesn’t fill out these forms, the process moves ahead with basic default values. It’s in his best interest to fill out the spreadsheets.

The anxiety in my voice must have been high because Amanda tries calming me down. She says that by the time we’ve filed with the court and we get to the logistics stage, everyone eventually gets on board.

I explain that Joseph will fight for things like the ring because he wants me to suffer. “Why should you suffer?” she asks. I tell her that because I’m the one who wants the divorce, he isn’t going to give me anything and I’ll be lucky to walk away with a microwave and a cardboard box.

Amanda laughs and tells me that it’s an absurd argument. The calculations for child support are done through a court system, neither of us gets any say in them. She clearly thinks it’s ridiculous to penalize one person for wanting to end a marriage.

Lastly, I ask about his inheritance. While I’m not entitled to any of it, I don’t even know the full amount. When I asked Joseph, he said “around $400k”. We closed the bank account years ago that had the check deposited into it before we bought our current house. I’m not cool with a guesstimate when it comes to thousands of dollars. Since I wrote this article, it is now up to approximately $600k.

It turns out, the onus is on him to prove how much he received, such as finding the paperwork or having his brother (who bought out his half) provide proof of the amount.

On the downside, it’s on me to prove that my parents gave us a small chunk on a home we bought 8 years ago; bank statements don’t go past 7 years. I’m praying my mother has something she can provide as evidence. I lied and told her I needed it to refinance the house. It’s a coin toss if she’ll believe it or not.

I don’t trust Joseph to not alter the bank statements for the accounts I don’t have access to and fudge the numbers. If it looks dicey, I’m going to demand that he log into the accounts in front of me. It’ll enrage him. But I’m willing to show full financial transparency knowing that I’m untrustworthy to him; Joseph needs to adopt the same open-book policy.

My goal is to have the divorce finalized by December 31st so that I don’t have to file joint taxes with Joseph next year. That means the filing documents must be submitted before June 30th. It consists of me electronically signing the Petitioner line on the form. Then the lawyers print it out and mail it to Joseph (despite that I could walk over to the kitchen and do that myself) as the Respondent. Once he signs it and sends it back, then the clock starts.

Will Joseph immediately and willingly sign the page?

Your guess is as good as mine.

I wrote this a month ago and never posted it. The situation has progressed further, but for now this is the account of my Wannabe Divorced life last month.