Ex-Spouses and Certified Letters...The news is never good when they are used in the same sentence

IMG_20130520_072218_886.jpgOn Friday, I was informed after the kids had been with their Dad for an hour or so that they were at a new address. A permanent one. It seems my ex-husband has a brand new home in a brand new neighborhood. This certified letter notice from him showed up in our mailbox the following day.

This does not bode well.

I predict it will have something to do with the money he says I owe him for bills on the old house.

Which I do.

Bills he wanted me to pay when I no longer had access to the house.

Which I didn't.

The house he thought he should put new locks on while I was still moving.

which he did.

and the house, without my name on the title. It got left off  without my knowledge all those years ago.

Which he did know about.

I told Stoic we were moving when we had begun our move.
I also told him that it would take some time because I was working and couldn't take off.
He wasn't driving, yet and the  house wasn't due him until July.
I didn't feel compelled to race out with all that was on my plate or to inconvenience him, because it didn't.


I told Stoic because I didn't want to have the kids keep the news from him. I don't want them ever having to make anxiety provoking decisions like when to tell dad what. They already try to protect me too much.

I knew telling him we were moving was not in my best interest.
Why it wasn't, I couldn't put my finger on at the time.
It was a gut instinct.
I just knew.

Ideally, we would have moved all at once, but I didn't have any days left to take off. Those I used up on four kids with recurrent strep, my father's cancer and multiple divorce court dates.

True, we were moving late at night or squeezing a trip in on the weekend between games and birthday parties and other commitments. We were moving fast because of the fourteen hour days I was keeping at work and because the short haul did not demand great packing. My contract was in jeopardy and I was fighting to keep it, paying my dues on a new faculty with new curriculum and dealing with a hot mess of a school year. I needed my job more than ever, but I didn't bother with many explanations. He wouldn't have cared about any of the above or that the new house became suddenly available or that I couldn't and wouldn't cancel a camping trip for the kids at Spring Break when the word on the house came down right at that time. Reasonable rentals/leases on four bedroom homes in an old town like Galveston go quick.

I didn't explain ay of this because he wouldn't have cared and his family wouldn't either. Stoic answers by family committee. His opinions are often given to him, given the condition of most of his left hemisphere, especially his frontal lobe.

Though I will say this: My decision to honor my promise to take the kids camping with Knight would not have been the decision Stoic would ever have made. Regardless of us cancelling on them the summer prior. It illustrates a very fundamental difference between us. He would have cancelled another trip and moved instead of honoring the promise and working the problem. Like for instance coming home early enough to begin the move before classes started again.

Was my vacation not a vacation?
NOPE.
But I didn't care.
I had promised and I was willing to take on the tasks come hell or highwater.whatever that meant consequence wise with Stoic.

So in line with that sense that the news would not precipitate anything favorable much less fair for me, Stoic validated that pit in my stomach when he proceeded to go to the house and put new locks on the door as soon as he found out.
Ok.
He didn't do it.
He can't move his right arm,
but he and his camp went at it.
Yeah.
It hadn't been in my best interest.

Still, he said he/they did it because the house was in disarray. Ummmm. We were moving. We had lived there twenty years. It WAS in disarray and he only knew that because they were on the property before the decree stipulated..  

Before he felt it his right to go in before the date we agreed upon and began making the move difficult, I had every intention of cleaning up.  
After he began the bullying again with his family riding shotgun?
Yeah.
Not so much.
I stopped caring about the mess.

It was right at that time in late March that  I had found out he had claimed on four kids he hadn't raised all year. Moreover, this is the same tax return we had agreed to split at mediation in early March, but that had already been filed and deposited in January. The one I was going to use to pay the kids' tuition for the school he wanted to pull them out of early in the separation when the kids were in no shape for more change than what the divorce was serving up.
Again.
Money came first. 

Incredulity abounded in me.
He kept reminding me that I needed to adhere to the divorce decree and pay the final bills,
but he still exercised this selective adherence to the decree.
You know.
He wanted ME to adhere, but he didn't need to.
Well,
one thing was certain:
the stroke didn't seem to affect his balls.

I knew he was not going to bend on the tax return.
I knew the money was gone.
So some things which were stipulated I leave behind weren't.
I took the refrigerator hoping to sell it and ameliorate the loss of some of the money from our tax return.
Was it much?
No.
But dammit,
it was the priniciple.
Other items of sentimental value or collector's value I left.
Again,
on principle.

A couple of weeks ago, he sent me an email about how I riddled I was with character flaws, had only sat in a hospital for three months to make it appear to others that I cared and had done nothing but spend all his money in bars and on affairs. He sent it to justify violating the decree and filing our taxes without my knowledge and he chided me to earn his respect  in a certain way because it was poor form to plead that we behave amicably for the children's sake. Ugh. I almost put my fist through drywall on that one.

What has been the most insulting in all of this is how little of our communication is private. I deal with an ex-family not an ex-husband.

I know now the email is precipitating what he was lining up with the new house and with whatever is in that certified letter.

One thing he kept repeating at the end of our separation when he realized I wanted out whether Knight was in the picture or not, (I had been the one to break things off with Knight around the time Stoic was trying so hard to have me come back) was ''I will not be shit upon.''

That had given me a not so good feeling there, too, but mostly I knew what that meant: Oh you don't want me? Really? Even as a second choice? Alrighty then. all said and intoned like a man bent on a special kind of revenge.

The uneasy feeling I had when I told him about the move, is back.
And the feeling probably corollates to the plans he has to throw a big, scalding pan of "Oh Really, You
Left Me, Gave Me a Stroke and Ruined My Life?" grease all over me.

The letter will not be good, whatever it is.


Comments

  1. Can you not get a pair and attack him and his? Get your lawyer to put a stop to the harassment and to adhere to the divorce contract. Sue him for your half of the tax refund. Make his and his family's life hell... like he is doing to you.

    ReplyDelete

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