Not sure where to begin here. This is my story of my marriages, divorces, breakups and experiences. Let me add that I am not an attorney and have no business giving out legal advice, nor am I a writer. So please bear with me.

I am sharing this with you to possibly help you out and to let you know how I should have prepared for the events and legal battles that I have been involved in.

I’m hoping this blog will save you time heartache and money. I will update it as time and finances allow.

If you want to contribute and spur me on, or if you have learned anything useful, please send a donation to my PayPal account ChampionDad1@yahoo.com

Thank you for your help and understanding.

1
My first marriage lasted 17 years and resulted in two children, ages 13 and 16 at the time of the divorce. The marriage sadly ended after I had an affair that resulted in a child. My wife was devastated but she struggled to deal with the situation and we tried to keep the family together. After several months of work and marriage counseling it turned out to be too much. She decided to end things and we parted.

Our marriage ended in a divorce that was done “Pro Se” (without lawyers). We were polite to each other and admitted that we each had done wrong in the relationship. We had very little money at the time, hence the Pro Se divorce. The cost was $350, or $175 each - pretty reasonable.

The divorce was handled by an attorney that simply handled the paperwork and little else. My wife and I worked out the details of the divorce between us with little legal assistance. In retrospect, we should have worked things out, and then each of us should have paid an attorney to look things over and point out, and suggest alternatives, to areas that were left unclear by our inexperience and ignorance.

One of the issues we had to deal with was the house, and it’s payment. We decided that we would both be responsible for the $750 a month house payment. Since my ex-wife decided to stay there we agreed that she would pay the entire amount because she couldn’t rent a place that nice for the same amount of money.

After we parted ways things were okay, we were amicable and courteous to each other and we got along. Many of our friends took her side because the obvious reason for the split was my infidelity. That was tough on me. Even another soccer parent – a minister at that, would avoid me like the plague when we saw each other at soccer games.

My ex-wife then got interested in the soccer coach, a good guy that I had helped at soccer practices. Little did I know how much of a control freak he was!! He went over the divorce paperwork and discovered the mortgage payment issue. He realized that I had been responsible for one half of that $750 per month payment! She had lived there for 22 months leaving me to pay up on my half – the verbal agreement wasn’t good enough. This meant that he figured that I owed her $8250!!! There were a few other minor issues that we were bickering about, but that was the big one.

I had since hired an attorney for other family matters concerning my illegitimate son and asked him about it. Our attorney’s (she/they, had also hired one) talked, and the only resolution was to hire a third party attorney as a mediator. The only one available was in a town 50 miles away and charged $350 and hour. Needless to say, this cheap, $175 investment of a Pro Se divorce was about to cost me a whole lot more. Once again, if I were to do it over, I should have paid an attorney to look things over and point out, and suggest alternatives, to our Pro Se agreement.

2
Between splitting up with my ex-wife, and moving in with the mother of my new son, mom took me to court. Paternity was proven (99.87% positive he was my son) and I was given visitation 3 hours a day, 4 times a week. This was okay since I moved in with mom and it was really a non issue. Other things that were decided at the paternity hearing was that the boys name would be a hyphenated one, my last name-her last name (ex.: Smith-Johnson).


**Side note here, I was advised not to get too attached to the baby. My attorney told me that if I saw him extensively, took him alone with me to play etc., there would be a psychological and emotional attachment. If paternity proved that I was not the father and there was this attachment I could still be made to pay child support because I had created a parental bond between the child and myself!**


Things went well for almost a year and then started getting shaky. I learned more and more about mom and became quite disenchanted. It turns out that her three other children were by three other men! At the time of my child’s birth, their ages were 4, 9 and 13. Mom had been married only once, to the 9 year old's dad and that lasted a short time as well.


**I’ll go off on another tangent here and give more background on this woman. She worked second shift at the plant that I worked at as a production supervisor. She had a day job, and after she finished that one, she went to work at the plant that I was at. We hit it off and soon after we started having our tête-à-tête’s after second shift got over with. When she first found out that she was pregnant, she confided in me that she had, had two previous miscarriages. These pregnancies by two additional men! If you’re keeping count, that’s six pregnancies by six men – what the hell did I get myself into???!!!**


At one point in the relationship she told me that she did not really have miscarriages, but rather, she had abortions! She told me that she was studying my reaction to her comment that she had miscarriages, and if I had looked encouraged, she would have aborted our child as well!

Mom’s children were difficult at best. They were growing up very independently. With mom working two jobs they were left alone to fend for themselves. For the most part, the 13 year old daughter was running the household. When she turned 15 she was seeing an older boy, (man actually as he was 19). On one particular occasion, when police were called to the house to break up a fight between the daughter and mom, the police took her alone to her bedroom. As they talked and looked around they spotted what looked like marijuana on her dresser! They were given permission to search the room by mom and they found three baggies of pot and a postal scale. I know it’s easy to jump to conclusions, but her boyfriend had, had some shady dealings and was involved in drugs. It looked like she might be working for him, dividing up the stash or even dealing herself.

The 9 year old boy went between his mom’s house and his dad’s. Placement for him was two weeks at dads and one week at moms with Wednesday’s (in the middle of the week) spent at the other parent’s house. He was an only child at his father’s house. This was very trying on him. Time spent at dads house, he did as he pleased, and got what he wanted. While at moms house the only supervision he had was from his older sister. They fought like typical siblings only much worse as there was a lot of resentment from him.

The four year old never saw his father. In the time I spent with his mother he only saw his dad twice. His dad lived about 15 miles away, had an older son, was in and out of jail for various drug and violence related crimes and simply wanted nothing to do with the boy’s mother.

I would try to supervise the kids, but they didn’t like that someone new was in charge! I didn’t order them around or give them needless chores to do, but if mom asked them to wash the dishes I simply followed up later and asked if they were done yet. When the answer was “No” rather than tell them to do them, I asked them when they could get the job done. When their (self imposed) deadline was passed I would ask them again why things hadn’t been done.

Life went on but soon things took a turn for the worse. I got fired from my job of 11 years. Mom had worked at the same plant that I did. I was a supervisor and she was a security guard. It turns out that they frown on relationships like ours. I had been pretty distracted by my family’s break-up and by the divorce. I was admittedly distracted by it and it showed in my job performance.

The ax fell when, after checking at work, I opened my work email and read some emails from my friends outside the company. I got caught and was fired for neglecting my job.

Things didn’t appear so bad at first, after all, I would receive 22 weeks severance, plus 4 weeks vacation so I was getting paid for half a year more. Little did I know how it looked to get fired from a job that I had held for 11 years. I couldn’t get hired! Potential employers knew that something had gone wrong and I was let go – and not by my choosing.

Things were going okay with mom until the severance ran out! At about that time I took a job installing siding on houses. Not my dream job, but it helped put food on the table. Soon after that mom lost her security guard job, I guess the plant really frowned on us!

We were able to hold the relationship together for two years. But finally that had to come to an end as well. Her reasoning: I had cheated on my (first) wife to be with her, I would cheat on her to be with someone else. She never trusted me (even though she had, had a boyfriend at the time too).

I was able to finally land a job, but it was as a night shift supervisor in a city 60 miles away. A friend of mine had just moved to the area and had offered me lodging at his place in a spare bedroom. This would allow me to get back on my feet and not have to make the 120 mile commute each day.

The first week went well. The man training me was going to take me out for a drink on Friday after my first week on the job. I told mom that I would drive home on Saturday morning rather than late at night after drinking. She told me “Absolutely not!” If I didn’t come home that night my stuff would be out on the curb. Well, I’m not a good one to throw an ultimatum at. I came home on Saturday and my stuff was on the curb.

I packed my stuff up and was on my way. I was back to the visitation schedule of 3 hours a day, 4 times a week. Mom readily agreed to a verbal modification of the placement to 3 times a week for 4 hours. This kept my overall hours the same, but eliminated one additional day of commuting. I visited my son once during the week, and twice on the weekends. Visits often consisted of us grabbing a bite to eat at a fast food restaurant and then we would go to a park and play for the remaining time.

Things worked out o.k. until I met the woman that would eventually end up being my second wife. My son’s mother had completely severed ties with me except for her obligations required by our mutual child. She hated the fact that I was seeing someone else and turned more bitter than ever.

The time came when my first wife remarried and our house would be vacant. My job as a night supervisor had been a temporary one and ended after six months. Girlfriend and her children would move with me back home and live there rather than rent a house and have mine sit empty.

Eventually I took mom back to court and got more visitation. I ended up with five nights out of 14 but placement started after school and ended before school started. Some of the overnights were on weekends. This really frazzled mom since her child support went down because I got overnights and I still hadn’t gotten a job that paid anywhere near as much as I had been paid from the supervisor job that I had when I was fired.

3
Eventually I remarried. It wasn’t until later that I saw the similarities in the new wife and my son’s mother. Well, one major similarity: both were single parents that had worked two jobs while trying to raise their children. The issues that the first woman had didn’t work for this woman either.

I’ll spare you readers the messy details and get to the point(s).
My second wife and I had “irreconcilable differences” and after nearly five years decided to break things off.

At first the split was civil, a clean sharing of the mutual property etc. The division of property went pretty smoothly. She took the small pickup truck, I kept my car etc. By mutual agreement, she kept one dog, and the cat, but I kept the other dog. She had made it clear that she wanted the other two pets, but I could have the dog. No problem there. She was helpful, even encouraging me the take the dog to a vet to have her spade (she was a year old).

Then things got ugly! We went to court for the hearing. I though it was going to be a simple, in the courtroom and out and then the marriage would be over. But no! When the judge asked if there were any unresolved issues she said that she wanted some of the things that I had, namely, a sword that belonged to my father, my car, and the dog.

I was quite taken by surprise by this, completely off guard.

I prepared for the final court hearing; my mother was there to testify that she had given me dad’s sword. My car was in need of repair and she already had a vehicle to drive. I had papers from the vet showing that I had taken in the dog for routine checkups to show that I was taking good care of her.

I saved the sword and the car; the dog on the other hand went to her! The only reasoning that was obvious: the judge wanted to be King Solomon, cut the baby in half and give equal amounts to each mother. Or at least give her something!

From this experience and from hearing of others experiences I’ve found that a lot of judges are like this thinking that their being fair to both sides. What should I have done? I should have gone to the first hearing with a list of things that she had and that I wanted. Even if I was satisfied with the split, this would have been my hedge against her possible list. If she listed three things that I had, then I could list three things that she had. These items could be used to negotiate with her, “O.K., I’ll take the cat off my list if you take the dog off of yours.” kind of thing. If the list is long enough you can barter with equal types of items. For example, “If you take my dads sword off of your list, I’ll take your moms clown collection off of mine.” If things are harmonious in the courtroom, you don’t have to use the list at all (but you’ll have it just in case!).

The $$ at the end of this chapter: $6724 in attorney’s fee’s plus the $175 that my ex-wife encouraged me to incur by having the dog spade, and then taking her back!