Rebecca finally realized that her marriage was over.
Do not be Rebecca. Don’t wait for someone to hit you over the head with bad news. If your husband is not taking active steps to change unacceptable behavior, then it’s up to you to take action. It could literally save your life.
When It’s Time to Admit the Marriage Is Over
Among the women who come through the door of my legal practice, I often observe a great deal of “magical thinking.” The woman is depleted and confused and unsure whether to get divorced. She knows something is wrong — her husband isn’t “showing up fully” and finances have become strained — but she doesn’t have a complete picture of what is happening. Often, by the time she sees me, the woman is already in marital counseling with her husband, who continues to proclaim that he wants to “do the right thing.” While at first this placated her to a certain degree, nothing has changed, and so she asks me — a divorce attorney — what she should do.
Typically, women don’t come to me already convinced that they want to untie the knot of their marriage. They want reassurance that they don’t need to do anything — yet. Sometimes, a woman will decide to file for divorce as a “wake-up call,” hoping this will bring her husband to his senses and she won’t have to follow through. Women often hope against hope to save their marriages, even when, from the outside, it’s easy to see they are already broken beyond repair. Instead, the woman dances around the truth for a while, until one day, I receive an emergency phone call — often on Saturday morning, usually very early. The woman has just learned that her husband has been carrying on a lengthy affair. She usually finds out because he is careless with his cell phone or computer or someone posts something on social media. The woman is always shocked — first by the infidelity, and then, as we unwind the tangled web of her life, by other revelations. We often learn that, in addition to his infidelity, her husband has been draining marital assets to support his “secret life.”
WISE WOMEN KNOW
“All great changes are preceded by chaos.”
— Deepak Chopra
Even in the face of duplicity and betrayal, many women still refuse to acknowledge that the marriage is over, and they wait to take action, still hoping for their husband to come to his senses. A woman will sometimes convince herself that her husband is just going through a phase and will come back around. I am here to tell you that it rarely happens, and the inability to face the truth often leads to financial and emotional ruin for the woman.
Admitting that your marriage is over and taking appropriate action is often the hardest choice to make. I know, from personal experience and from working with my clients, how hard it is. It requires tremendous courage to take the first step out of your marriage and into a new life. No one can make the decision to get a divorce for you. But if you have lost your sense of joy, life has become a struggle, and the red flags are flying, it is time to wake up and take action.
Once you’ve decided to end your marriage, take control of your life and file for divorce first. Doing so, you will set the agenda, the pace, and the tone of your divorce, and you will take charge of your future. Do not delay. Before your husband is served with papers, he can move assets and money with few repercussions — and it happens all the time. Once he is served, he can no longer move or dissipate assets. Take control of the process, hire a lawyer, and move forward.
In my work, I see many women who are taken advantage of because they are hesitant to take the first step. Whether women are in denial or clinging to hope that the marriage can be saved — delaying is a recipe for disaster. Consider Sara’s story. Sara sensed there were problems in her marriage, and she convinced her husband to attend counseling, which they did for several years. Her husband claimed that he also wanted to save their marriage, but during this time, he bought a Porsche, got plastic surgery on his face, traveled out of the country frequently “on business,” and claimed that his income from self-employment was radically reduced, despite the good economy. He eventually told Sara that he wanted a divorce and convinced her to attend mediation. After it became clear that her husband was using mediation in an attempt to minimize what he was going to pay her in spousal support, Sara hired me. After our first meeting, I discovered (through social media) that Sara’s husband was having an affair with a woman in Brazil who claimed to be his “wife” and that he was draining funds from their business to pay for his international trips to visit his girlfriend. He was also claiming these trips as business expenses. In other words, Sara’s hesitation gave her husband all the time he needed to enjoy his dalliance, drain their bank account, and subject Sara to possible tax liability for claiming business expenses illegally. He’d set things up to take full advantage of Sara.
I sometimes find it hard to believe the lengths men will go in their efforts to minimize their support obligations to their wives and children, but they can get very crafty. One such case was the story of the “soiled woman.” Catherine and Bill lived in California, had been married for twenty years, and were in marriage counseling because Bill had had multiple affairs. During counseling, Catherine admitted that she had also had a brief “fling” during the marriage. Although Catherine knew that the marriage needed to end, she was dragging her feet. She had never worked and was reluctant to file for divorce because of the financial support Bill provided, since he was a successful businessman. Meanwhile, Bill filed for divorce in Idaho, where he had established residency after living there only six weeks. Since Idaho is a “fault” state, the judge found that Catherine’s affair caused her to be a “soiled woman”; therefore, he ruled that she was not entitled to spousal support. Had Catherine filed first in California, she would have been entitled to significant spousal support under California law, which is a “no fault” state.
Once you’ve decided that your marriage is over, do not delay. Make the first move. This is an essential step to taking back your power.
If your husband files for divorce first, do not fear. Inevitably, this will be a surprise, but you can handle the unexpected and take control. Remember my client Mary from chapter 1? The morning when her husband of thirty-three years, Mark, tapped her on the shoulder and said, “I’m leaving,” Mary assumed Mark was going to the gym or maybe to pick up bagels for breakfast. He was dressed in his workout clothes. So Mary turned back to her computer to keep working. Then Mark said, “You need to retain a lawyer.”
When Mary walked through the doors of my office, she was still shocked and surprised. As she described it to me, after their youngest child had headed off to college, she and Mark had grown apart, and they were in marital counseling. Mark had recently been fired from his high-paying job as the CFO of a bank, and he was depressed. Mary felt certain that they would get back on an even keel — and then, that Saturday morning.
After further investigation, the facts turned out to be quite different. Instead, Mark had been carrying on a lengthy affair with a colleague at the bank, and he had retired early from his high-paying job so that he could travel around the world with his girlfriend. When
