At the precipice

Well, dear readers, it has been awhile, and a few things have progressed. I find myself at the precipice, waiting to find out what my soon-to-be-ex (STBE) wants to take from me in order to get satisfaction.

My wife will not speak directly to me about this, so we will meet with a moderator and my wife will again bring along her brother. Yup. Two against one. Unusual, so the moderator says, but okay as long as everyone agrees to it.

This is our third session. The first two sessions were fairly benign, mostly fact gathering, but even so my STBE had to leave the room because it was too tense for her. She could not stand to hear me say that I felt ownership of the house because I had put work into it. In all fairness it is she who has put the majority of the work into the house, and I have put the majority of the money into it, but even so - she has contributed some money and I have contributed some work.

I have no idea how she will take it when I say that I wish to retain the house. In essence I wish to buy her out - using some of my pension and most of my 401K to do it.

Why am I wanting this? It comes down to my youngest daughter, who is 13. I need to retain the house so that she may have stability and so that I will have 50% physical custody. I want custody to be 50/50. I have a very good relationship with my daughter, and my daughter wishes to have custody as 50/50, so I think that is that.

If my STBE fights me on this I have a two step response. The first is to list the things I have just stated. In addition, I am the one with good friends in the neighborhood, and I do not have a feud with a neighbor, and I do not have a job at the moment so I would likely not get a mortgage at this time, and my STBE dislikes much of the work that a large house entails, and my STBE is the one who wishes to leave the marriage.

If that does not work then I go on to step two, the big stuff. My STBE and brother have said that they will NOT use their money to bully me, and I will hold them to that. In addition, I know that my STBE forged my signature last year, and I highly suspect there has been some shady tax stuff going on in their family, and I would go public with that information if I needed to. My in-laws have the core value of 'protecting the money' and the deeper core value of 'protecting the family name' so any hint of accusations would be painful to them. I have already given interviews to the press about my layoff from IBM, and the press, here and in my in-law's small town, are looking for a followup. I would like to tell the press that in these troubling times my in-laws have stuck with me and supported me through this rough patch. I would like to say that. But if I must tell the truth I will state that when the chips were down my in-laws abandoned me when I needed them most. My wife kept hidden funds from me, and is withholding them from the marital assets. My in-law's family business, that wants to have such a wonderful reputation, is run by people who put money before family.

I do not wish to air dirty laundry, but if they back me into a corner I will use everything I have to get a fair deal. If you fuck with the bull you get the horns.

I sincerely hope that I do not have to do this. My father-in-law was the sweetest guy you could ever meet, and his only flaw was that he got beholden to a shrew of a wife who threatened to remove her family money and ruin him if he divorced her. Because of that family money my Father-in-law was able to buy a second bank, but he paid a dear price for that bank, a very dear price. He spent his whole life trying to make his wife happy, and this woman could never be happy. I am convinced she suffers from the same malady that my wife has, OCPD. Check it out, it is listed in the DSM IV manual.

My mother-in-law's inherited wealth caused her to reject her brother so hurtfully that they never reconciled for the rest of his life. It also allowed my mother-in-law to rule a household and become a grotesque caricature of a human woman. Physically she is so enormous from the waist down she is unable to walk without a walker. Her upper torso is fairly normal, but her hair is dyed clown orange in some hopeless attempt to recreate the natural color it may have had when she was young.

Physical attributes aside, her brain is out of whack. She has never worked a day in her life, and she would be unable to do much if she had to. She cannot understand how to use a microwave oven and she refuses to cook. She had a lovely singing voice but that was it. She was normally frustrated and angry most of the time, and the small town doctor gave her tranquilizers which did not settle her down, but which allowed her to go on frantic tirades, hitting her husband and children, yelling horrible things at them, and having no recollection later of any of that happening. Barbiturates will do that to a person.

My wife tells terrible tales of hiding from her mother with a friend in a closet, or getting dropped off at a gymnastics meet and being told by her mother "I hope you fail!" Her mother frequently demanded that her husband, the President of two banks, come home and explain things to her.

Yup. This was no peaceful household, and now that my Father-in-law has passed away it seems the tyrant is running the show. And my wife has morphed into her Mother. Shudder.

So that is the pickle old Tripp has gotten himself into. I have my brains, a little money, some information, and that is about it. I am facing a red-headed OCPD millionaire Irish woman along with her short, stout, wimpy brother, backed by their elderly, tyrannical, multimillionaire mother.

Wish me luck, dear readers, wish me luck.