Since My Divorce

Divorce Resources

2012-02-09T23:59:03Z

Coming Soon

With the end of Marjorie‘s story, I have a couple of guest posts coming up. This month, Suzanne Cramer is tackling whether it’s better to rent or own your home which to me isn’t such an obvious decision as it used to be. I also have a guest post from Certified Divorce Coach, Karen McMahon about envisioning and creating your new future which seems very timely given that one of Marjorie’s greatest strengths was visualizing her future.

Then I’ll be starting my next story with guest is Michelle Leath who is a certified life coach and blogs at Unlock Your Possibility. She specializes in eating disorders and self-image issues. Michelle’s divorce story is not the high-conflict drama that seems to have characterized the stories of my recent guests. Hers is a story of working through the breakdown of the marriage to a being a collaborative co-parent and reinventing herself. Michelle also shares why she couldn’t go to couples counseling.

Asking someone who is facing marital problems if they’ve considered couples counseling seems to be one of those standard, universal questions. Some states, even mandate it as a prerequisite to filing for divorce. (One of Colorado’s lawmakers was thinking of introducing a bill to this effect just recently but wisely, IMO thought better of it.) Michelle’s story shows that sometimes, therapy isn’t a legitimate option. It’s valuable insight whether you’re the one saying it or you’re the one hearing it.

Giveaway

It’s been a while since I’ve had a giveaway but I’m excited to share that Monday I’ll be kicking off a giveaway for Terry Radigan’s new album The Breakdown of a Breakup. I’m going to keep it super easy to enter so check back for details.

Radigan is an experienced songwriter, producer and instrumentalist having worked with artists such as Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, Pam Tillis, Anuna, Ashley Maclsaac and Faith Hill. The songs reflect her own personal journey after her 20 year marriage came to an abrupt end.

Navigating Your Divorce

Divorce Coach Karen McMahon is also offering a free download of her ebook, Navigating Your Divorce. It’s a helpful basic guide to the legal, financial and emotional do’s and don’ts when beginning your divorce. If you’re in the early stages, I encourage to take advantage of as many resources as you can find especially if they are free. You’ll almost certainly pick up a gem or two from each resource.

Divorce Study

I have to confess that I usually shy away from academic studies around divorce; so often the results seem inconsistent with my anecdotal evidence, which I admit is small and limited. I also dislike the way the studies are used by some to infer that people should just stay married because scientifically it’s better all round. Some of the comments to my recent Huffington Post article cited the Longevity Study so I’ve decided it’s time to read these studies and find out for myself what they really say … I’ll be sharing the results of my readings in the months to come.

Coincidentally, Caroline Tait, a student at Berry College wrote that she’s studying divorce and its effect on future relationships. She’s looking for people to participate in her research by completing a short survey. The survey is anonymous. Caroline’s promised to share her findings although I imagine it might be some months.

Books

Now That He’s Gone, A Financial Therapist’s Guide to Life After Loss by Beverly Tobocman – I haven’t read this yet so I can’t give it my personal recommendation however, it sounds interesting. It’s intended to inspire and comfort “suddenly single” women and retells stories of women who built emotional and financial security after losing their man. It promises to provide a straightforward blueprint for achieving inner peace and rebuilding life as a single.

That completes my roundup for today … if you have resources that you’ve found helpful and would like to recommend to others, do please leave a comment!

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Building the life you want

2012-02-09T00:10:36Z

Although Marjorie’s divorce is not final and she’s still working with temporary custody arrangements, she is hard at work building the life she wants and being the person she was meant to be. Here’s Marjorie:

I met a lot of single moms in the jail who are there because either a boyfriend or a husband or some man in their life, had some effect on their life that brought them to that point. I talked to these women, and when they leave the jail, they have no place to go, too. This happens so often. I was thinking this was a new thing for me, but no, there are women this is happening to all the time.

Talking to the women in jail that night, it was not only helpful for them, but it was helpful for me. I said that night that I was going to come back, and I’m working on that now, through a jail ministry, helping them to look at what they want to do with their life once they get out of jail, once they get out of the cycle of drug abuse, or whatever the case may be, and trying to use that.

What I’m able to do is really connect with these women and try to help them, putting my talents and abilities to use as a coach and try to help them see beyond this situation, beyond this temporary situation that we’re in, because that’s what you have to realize: this is temporary, and as long as you keep fighting for your child, fighting for your rights, fighting for your future, then you’ve got a chance.

You can bring everything that you want out of life, you can bring that to pass. So, I’ve been able to use that as a way to keep me moving forward. Sometimes I don’t feel strong, but that’s the way that I keep myself going. I’m looking towards the future. I’m building the life that I’ve always wanted for myself and my girls. I’m building that life now. That’s keeping me going.

The thing that I’m proud of is that I didn’t lose my mind, which I’m sure is what he was counting on. I’m sure he did not feel that I was going to be strong enough to get as far as I have gotten, and that he would be the only person I would come back to, but I proved a lot to myself, that I can do this, I really can do this, and I’m doing it from scratch.

I’ve surprised myself because this thing is a day-to-day thing. It’s so hard to plan. I can visualize what I want for my future, but I can’t really plan. I’m surprised how I have been able to visualize and manifest some things. In another respect, I have this internal knowing that I’ve always known that this is what I wanted for my life, that this was the path I wanted to take. That’s one of the reasons I knew I had to get out of that marriage, because that marriage was a bit of a block from me moving forward.

Before I separated I was in the foundational part of building the The Single Mom Revolution and it’s just taken on a deeper mission and meaning now for me more than ever, because I’m really doing it not just as having previously been a single mother, and married, but I’m doing it as a single mom and I’m doing it from a place where I’m starting all over again. There’s a great testimony in what I’ve been able to overcome.

I love Marjorie’s indomitable spirit and belief in herself and her willingness to help others.

When I first spoke with Marjorie, she interviewed me for her Single Mom Revolution. I had no idea at that time that her own situation was heading for such troubled times. Marjorie’s new website is now live – Marjorie Bostwick – with a business as an Exit Strategist. Her niche is helping single mompreneurs trapped in a 9 to 5 world, build their businesses to a profitable position. I hadn’t heard the phrase ‘exit strategist’ before but I like it. Knowing Marjorie’s persistence and perseverance, she’d be a great addition to your support team.

This is the last post in Marjorie’s series – I’m grateful to her for sharing her story so far. I hope you’ll join me in wishing Marjorie continued strength and courage at her child custody hearing coming up. I hope that she is reunited with her youngest daughter.

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I really enjoyed reading Marjorie's story. While my story is ... by Emma

What being a non-custodial parent means

2012-02-07T00:22:42Z

Overnight, Marjorie went from being a stay-at-home mom to her two daughters to being the non-custodial parent with very limited access to her youngest daughter.

Her eldest daughter was from a previous relationship and her husband had tried to persuade Marjorie that since she had a child, he should be able to raise their youngest daughter alone. Any mother knows that it doesn’t work like that. Children are not like toys that can be divided up. When Marjorie wouldn’t agree to the proposal, her husband contrived a situation to get Marjorie arrested for domestic violence and then he got a restraining order restricting her contact with their daughter.

Marjorie has been the non-custodial parent for over a year now, and during that time she’s found that the pain of being separated doesn’t go away but there are creative ways to stay involved with her child. Here’s Marjorie:

Well, when it first happened, it was hard for me, because the school had gotten involved. It was almost as if they had to protect her, as if something was wrong with me, so it was hard for me to go to the school. It wasn’t until they started dealing more with my husband and noticing how he would always try to prevent me from being involved with the school that they realized “something’s wrong with this guy.”

At first it was really unbearable, because although she spent some time with me, I was aching and I was hurting because I knew that she had to go. That was really difficult. I knew our time was coming to an end, and she would have to go. For a while, that would preoccupy me. It’s still hard, it’s still hard when she comes. Just last night, she said to me when we were leaving, “This is the worst part of the day for you, mommy.”

I said, “Yes, how did you know?” and she said, “This is the worst part of the day for me too.” We know we have to separate. It is a type of pain that is so unbearable, it’s almost like something is pulling at my heart, and every time I look at her picture, every time I think about what she must be feeling and thinking, what she would be thinking when she’s laying in bed. Her mommy’s not there. Her sister’s not there. That’s when I really start to hurt for her, that she’s had to go through this. I know what I had to go through, but I’m strong, she’s just a little girl, she’s just a little kid.

I worry too about her knowing the anger that her father has, she’s sensed it, she’s seen it. What is that doing to her? That hurts. That makes me hurt, too, that she’s having to deal with that.

The time I spend with her, it is so precious. I don’t think I will ever take loving her for granted again. Even with my oldest, she’s in college now, and every moment that I have, even with her, those moments are precious to me.

Now I’m understanding more about my rights. Even when something like this happens, you still have a rights as a mother…the judge gave him majority custody of her, but it didn’t give him majority rights, and that’s the tug of war. I now go to school, have lunch with her, volunteer, so that means even the days that she can’t be with me here in my home, I can go to the school and I can see her face and I can give her a kiss and I can go on field trips. That’s how I still stay involved with the school and be present in her life.

A lot of times, the parent who has the majority custodial time believes that gives them more rights to the child, and more decision-making, and it’s not so. The child is being used as a pawn. My child is being used as a pawn, and that’s the sad thing, that’s the sickening thing.

Marjorie makes a very important point here about the difference between parenting time and parenting rights and I love the ways she found to stay involved with her child even when she didn’t have custody. It’s this sort of approach that embraces, in my view that being a parent is a state of being, it’s not a responsibility that begins and end with parenting times set out in a legal document. I know that my parenting agreement while stipulating joint decision-making on educational matters didn’t make any reference to either my or my ex’s involvement in school or after-school activities.

So even if you are in a shared custody situation, take Marjorie’s advice, there are still ways to have contact with your children when it’s not your “parenting time.”

Other women who’ve lost or given up custody of a child or children at least temporary are Grace and Andrea so be sure to check out their stories.

Photo credit: healthy lunch ideas

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Self Acceptance

2012-02-05T17:17:18Z

I’m a member of BlogHer’s Live Well panel and this past week I was asked to respond to the questions:

“How do you practice self-acceptance and find unconditional love for yourself? How does practicing love first help you attract more love and happiness in your life?”

Up until a few months ago I would have scratched my head and not known how to respond. As I think about it, I’d not really considered the idea of self-love until after my divorce. After that I noticed the concept coming up more – from friends, from advisers, from my blog guests and most recently from my Fit4Love dating coach, Sheila Paxton.

As Sheila and I talked about the assignment reviewing positive and negative characteristics from my previous relationships, I came to realized that I was blaming myself for my divorce. It’s true that I had initiated the divorce but what I hadn’t been able to accept that my ex played a role in that too. At the time that Sheila and I talked she gave me a daily affirmation practice aimed at unconditional self-acceptance.

I wrote the affirmations on an index card and had the card by my wash basin for weeks. It’s now pinned on my vision board so I see it every time I walk out of my bathroom. My vision board originally started out as a style board recommend in the book Nothing to Wear by Jesse Garza and Joe Lupo. Since I went through Fit4Love it’s really morphed into a bigger concept – a vision board for my life.

Several weeks later, Sheila and I were discussing my values and what values I wanted in a partner. In that moment I stopped blaming myself. It literally happened in a instant, at the end of a sentence. As I was sharing with her some of my ex’s behavior I realized it was that behavior that caused me to lose respect for him and that he was responsible for his behavior, not me. The blame I was feeling was something I was holding over myself.

That was a very significant breakthrough and with it came the release of the final elements self-anger I’d been harboring for some years.

Some of that self-anger had come from realizing that I had been downplaying my strengths, probably since I was a teenager. That was another revelation that has come from my interviews for my blog. I couldn’t change my past but I could commit to celebrating my gifts going forward. It’s easier for me to accept that the past is passed, is done and can’t be undone, when I demonstrate that I have learned from it and I’m not repeating the same mistakes. Honoring my strengths and my values is empowering. It generates an inner happiness for me that brings with it a sense of harmony, and peace with the world.

As the question implies, self-acceptance and unconditional love is a practice. It isn’t something that you achieve and check-off the to-do list. It’s about your relationship with yourself and like all relationships, it takes maintenance and you can’t just keep doing what has worked previously …

Recently, I’ve started yoga. At first my goals were purely physical – because I wanted to work on my flexibility and balance. I have been frustrated at my pain and inability even in some of the simplest of poses – it pains me to sit crossed legged even! As I listened to my yoga teacher yesterday, I understood that my yoga would also be mental. I understood getting frustrated wouldn’t get me anywhere and would spoil my enjoyment. Pushing my joints into angles they don’t want to go could cause injury and that’s not going to help with my physical goals. I understood my yoga would be about getting more familiar with my body, what it can do, what it can’t and working out, with the help of my teacher, how to make the poses work for me. I think it’s my next phase of self-acceptance.

Interested in reading more about self-acceptance? Visit Blogher’s Life Well Lived – Getting Happy. You can also enter the current Life Well Lived Sweepstakes.

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Valentine’s Day After Divorce

2012-02-05T15:52:36Z

Valentine’s Day is approaching and while others may be excitedly shopping for the perfect gift for their loved one, it’s a festival that can throw any newly-separated or divorced person into a panic attack. The anxiety isn’t limited just to yourself but your children too. Certainly, when my kids were in elementary school, Valentine’s Day meant giving cards to every other child in the class and big class party. Sounds fun but your child may be feeling sensitive about his parents no longer being together.

So what does Valentine’s Day mean now you’re solo? Is it still relevant?

I say yes! Valentine’s Day is for families and even if your marriage is ending, you are still a family. Your family is rearranging and just looks a little different now. What I also love about Valentine’s Day is that it is so easy to show love for your family and friends without having to spend much money.

In fact, for me, it’s little acts of kindness that convey love. You can bake/buy a cake for Valentine’s Day and decorate it with a heart. I’ve never considered myself much of an artist but thankfully my kids appreciate the gesture and I know it’s genuine when they want to eat the cake for breakfast!

I’ve also been surprised that my kids don’t see the day as one simply for celebration with their friends. They make an effort to make the day special for me too. That’s much easier when it falls on a weekend but really, just about anything they do for me makes it a perfect day. Again, it’s those simple actions that speak to me.

If you just feel like ignoring the whole love celebration, it’s hard unless you can also avoid going to almost any store. You name it, grocery store, clothing store, craft store, book store … everyone wants to sell you something. If just reading this is making you tense don’t ignore that feeling. Sit with it. Why is the tension there? What is your body telling you? Is it something you’re afraid of? Is it a memory? Understanding where the tension is coming from will help you confront it and maybe even resolve the issue.

Maybe your tension is because you know your marriage is over but you haven’t had the conversation with your spouse. It sounds like the complete opposite of what Valentine’s Day is intended to symbolize, but people do break up on Valentine’s. April told me during our interview that she just couldn’t stand living the lie any longer. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I see choosing to end a marriage that is not salvageable is an act of courage and an act of self-love.

I wouldn’t advocate pretending Valentine’s Day isn’t happening. I think it’s important for us to have festivals, it’s part of what marks the changing of the seasons and it’s a way of changing up the routine. And like any other celebratory occasion after divorce, you have the opportunity to create your own tradition, your own ideal way of celebrating the day.

I’m not sure what I’ll be doing this year to mark the day. My daughter is away in college now and I know I want her to have a care package arrive on that day so I’ll have to do some advanced planning for that … maybe some socks, maybe some pink chapstick, definitely some chocolate … Haven’t decided yet what to do for my son but true to his gender, the way to his heart always seem to be food-related and that makes it easy!

How are you planning on marking the Valentine’s Day?

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As a Chicago divorce lawyer, ... by Michael c Craven

Getting Pro Bono Help

2012-02-02T01:02:24Z

Shortly after Marjorie moved into her apartment, she found a divorce lawyer to represent her. On the surface, that’s not unusual. I imagine most people going through divorce use an attorney to some degree. What is unusual though is that Marjorie had no money. Her SBTX had closed the joint accounts and she had only just found a part-time minimum wage job. When I’ve asked attorneys what clients should do in situations like this, the answer has been, find a way to come up with the money whether that’s asking for support from your family, selling some possessions or even using a credit card. Marjorie however managed to find an attorney to represent her at no charge, pro bono. Here’s how:

It was another blessing. I think a lot of cities have community legal services, and typically, if you go through them, they’re going to give you advice. They’re going to tell you how to fill out your forms.

One of the first things I realized was that if I let things stay the way they were, I wasn’t going to be able to get any temporary financial support from my husband, and I needed to file a petition…I needed to be the one filing for divorce because of everything that happened. I needed to get a move on this so I could start getting my daughter back and moving on with my life. So I filed for divorce with something called “indigent status.”

A lot of women don’t know about that, but basically you go to the courts and you tell them, “I don’t have the financial means to file my divorce papers, and I need to file it for free, or waived,” known as indigent status. Once you fill out the form, you’re basically saying you’re going through legal aid services. Then you can file your divorce papers for free. Typically to file your divorce papers, it’s maybe a couple hundred dollars, and if you’re a mother that’s been left with nothing, then even that is a lot of money.

If you’re sitting, waiting, for him to file when he’s ready, which makes him the petitioner, or he leaves you in limbo, it’s hard to go to court looking for temporary means. In Florida, they don’t have what’s called “legal separation,” so you’re either married, or you’re not, so you can’t go in and even ask for temporary alimony or child support based on a legal separation. So for me, it had to be a divorce.

I went and filed the papers by December, and because I was working with the legal services, I went and saw an attorney. A friend of mine was going through a divorce, so she said, “Why don’t you go talk to my attorney and tell him what happened.” So I spoke with him and he is a member of the board for legal services, and I asked him, “Is there any way you can help me?”

He said, “Well, just call legal services and let them know that I’ll represent you. This will count towards my pro bono hours” because every attorney needs to put in a certain amount of pro bono hours, and that’s how that happened.

So that was another blessing. And if you don’t ask, they won’t know.

It’s really about asking. When you go to an attorney, don’t be afraid to say, “Would you take my case pro bono? Would you help me?”

My lawyer clearly saw what had happened to me was just so unjust. My husband works for the city in which we lived, as an engineer and makes almost $90,000 a year, and him being the primary breadwinner, cutting me off the way he did and the turn of events, the lawyer knew that this was the setup to have a leg-up for the divorce, and so he agreed to do it. Because it is pro bono, it’s been dragging. It’s really been dragging, it really shouldn’t have taken this long, but my husband’s a difficult man, so we’re going to have to end up fighting this out in court.

I know that many of us going through divorce never face the hostility that Marjorie has faced but regardless, it is so important to know the basic divorce laws in your state and to understand your legal position. A child custody fight is not the time to decide to represent yourself, no matter how smart or intelligent you are. Getting competent legal advice is imperative.

Many divorce attorneys will offer an hour’s consultation at no charge and there are also online services like my affiliate, Total Divorce Attorneys, where you’ll find tons of information on the divorce laws in a specific state and you can ask for a consultation with an attorney to evaluate your case. They also offer a toll-free number – 877-248-2303. Another place to go for pro bono information is the bar association for your state.

And as Marjorie says, don’t be afraid to ask for pro bono help. If the attorney you asks says no, then rephrase the question to how you go about getting pro bono help.

Photo credit: m kasahara

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Praying for Help During Divorce

2012-01-31T22:29:31Z

When Marjorie could no longer stay with her friend, she was still unemployed, and being barred from the marital home, she was sure she was destined for the homeless shelter. Then, she says she put her trust in God and her life started to turn around. Here’s Marjorie:

I did believe in God before all this but I don’t think that I was co-creating with him in the way I am right now in my life.

A lot of people say that God is just more of a religious thing and it’s about what you’re not supposed to do and what you should do, but my spiritually has gone even deeper since all of this has happened, and understanding that my connection with God is so much more of a partnership.

I was in a bible study group for years, and in the past I had had a lot to do with church. My church family, who I’d been involved with for years… I never heard from them again, they basically turned their backs on me and my husband still goes to that church.

I didn’t go to church for a while, I guess I was having a bad taste in my mouth about church, so I really turned inward.

There were times I felt I was about to lose my mind. I would close myself up in the bathroom and just want to scream, but I couldn’t, so I would just scream in my mind. Missing my child was so unbearable. The things I had to endure from this man were so unbearable, thinking that I was going to end up in a shelter, not knowing…I just felt like I was losing it.

I would jump in my car, I would drive over to the beach, the beachside, just a block from where I live now, and I was sick.

I would start talking to God and I would start meditating. I had never meditated before, I had never really gone inward, everything was about an outward expression, but I went inward and just really started seeking God from within, asking him to show me in some sort of signs…just show me the path that I was to take.

I was offering up my desires because what I wanted to do was to start visualizing. Let me start visualizing what I want from my future, let me start connecting to what it is I want from my life, where I want to live, where do I see myself. That’s when things started to click and after a while I started to see that happen.

All of a sudden, the apartment I wanted to be in, I got that. I had no money, I had no money to move into this apartment, and God sent me an angel and sent me the deposit for this apartment. I had no job. I couldn’t tell the landlord that I could pay the rent, but he let me move in.

I told a friend I was going into a shelter and he said, “I’m sorry, I can’t let that happen. Find an apartment and I will send you the money.” I said, “I don’t have a job” and he said, “Don’t worry about that, the job will come.”

I did exactly what he said and I did it on faith. I looked at some dumps, places I just couldn’t bring my child. All the time, I knew I wanted to live by the beach and I saw this apartment. I had driven by it so many times and finally called. I went to see it and it was perfect. Within two weeks, the guy approved me to move in here, and the same day he approved me was the same day I got a little job. It was just a minimum wage part-time job, but I got the job.

I moved into this apartment with just the clothes on my back, not a bed, toilet paper, nothing. I remember that morning, all I had was the money order, no gas in my car, my clothes in the trunk, and I’m sitting, waiting two hours by the beach. My stomach was growling, I want coffee, I have no money at all and I’m sitting there waiting for the landlord to show up. I’m just happy I’m moving into my apartment.

I sit there and I start meditating and visualizing what I want from my life. Then before the time that I was supposed to meet with the landlord, I had $200 given to me by two family members I had spoken with that morning.

“OK, there’s something to this, there’s really something to setting my desires out there, offering it up to God, visualizing what I want, there’s something to this. And things just manifesting in my life!”

Before the end of the day, people started bringing things to me and my daughter, people we didn’t even know. “Oh I heard…someone told me.” My apartment is fully furnished, fully furnished! Bedding, towels, everything you can think of and I didn’t pay for one thing. The only thing we bought in this apartment was a toaster.

That’s when I really started thinking , “I can get through this. It’s going to be tough, but I can get through this.”

I still have to deal with him, I’m still having to deal with not having my youngest daughter with me but I can get through this.

This gives me goosebumps.

What Marjorie did here that I think is so critical, is to start visualizing her new life. Whether you do that through prayer, counseling, coaching, friends or even on your own, it seems to be a cornerstone for helping people get through this crisis. I think it is powerful because it gets you focusing on the future, on what will be, on what could be instead of being stuck regurgitating what has happened. I also think it’s powerful because it gives you a role in creating your future, you start feel that you do have some influence over your life and how it’s going to look, that you’re not at the total mercy of your ex, the lawyers or the court.

To help with this, I recommend buying a cork board and putting it up somewhere you’ll see it every morning and every evening. Maybe that’s in your closet, in your bathroom, in your bedroom or even at your workstation. Start pinning up pictures from magazines that speak to your future – could be a woman cooking in a kitchen with her kids, could be a couple in a passionate embrace, could be garden, could be someone doing your dream job, could be a singer whose song tugs at you. Don’t over think it – if it says something to you, pin it up. Don’t limit yourself to pictures – could be a poem, a quote, a job advert … Start building your vision.

What else came through here was the help Marjorie got from strangers but to get help, you have to be open to it. You have to admit, to at least one other person you need help and admitting that can make us feel vulnerable. I’ve learned that admitting you’re vulnerable, also means admitting you’re human. And one amazing human trait is, we’re wired to help others.

Photo credit: samantha celera

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Finding yourself homeless

2012-01-31T02:09:10Z

At the end of the last segment in Marjorie’s story you’ll recalled that she had been arrested for domestic violence, spent the night in jail and came out to find a judge had granted her husband an injunction barring her access to her youngest daughter. Her husband had also closed all the joint bank accounts which mean Marjorie was not only penniless, she and her oldest daughter (from a previous relationship) were now also homeless. Here’s Marjorie:

I had a couple good friends who came to the rescue. We stayed with a friend for a while, and that was going to run out after about a month and a half because she was out of work. I had no money, people were trying to send me money and help me in different ways that they could. I was just trying to wrap my mind around what I was going to do, what my next step was, and it was just hard.

I’m going through the child services, I’m trying to get food stamps so that me and my daughter can eat. I’m just trying to survive, and then I get hit with we can’t stay with my friend anymore. I’m having to go into a shelter.

I tried to get my daughter to go back to the home, because I wanted her to be there to keep an eye on her little sister but she didn’t want to leave me. She said, “Mommy, I can’t be in that house with him knowing what he did to you.”

He basically turned his back on her, too. He raised her as his daughter, and he basically told her that he was going to have her evicted anyway. Because there’s no adoption, nothing legal between the two of them, he’s not really responsible for her even though he helped raise her.

That was heartbreaking for me because then I saw not only what he’d done to me, but how he was treating my child, a child that he said was his own too.

So my oldest daughter and I had to separate and I had to ask friends of mine to let her stay with them because I didn’t want anything disrupting her last year in high school. She has been a top student in school, in the IB program, all of her high school years, and we were waiting to hear back from colleges, so I didn’t want anything interfering with that.

So I’m getting ready to prepare myself to go into a shelter, and that’s when I see God start to really work in my life. I start to see amazing things start to happen to me, to where I didn’t have to go into a shelter, and I moved into this apartment by the beach that I had been dreaming about for I don’t know how long. All these things started happening…

I try to place myself in Marjorie’s shoes and feel the emotions, the desperation she must have felt. Remember too, that Marjorie was a SAHM who had been trying to start her own business and had been looking for a part-time job to bring in some income while she got that going. I’m still having trouble comprehending how dramatically her life changed because she told her husband she wanted a divorce.

Photo Credit: Cpt. Obvious

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When the Restraining Order is Against You

2012-01-28T15:19:16Z

When Marjorie told her husband she wanted a divorce she agreed to his request to hold off filing until after the first of the year. She thought he just needed time to adjust and she was happy to give him that, if it meant they could work civilly through the divorce. With hindsight, she realized he was using the time to figure out how to manipulate her, how he could get custody of their daughter. That became apparent when she was arrested for domestic violence and then faced a restraining order. Here’s Marjorie:

It’s about 8:30 in the morning and I have to stay in jail for 24 hours.

Finally, I call my eldest daughter at the house, and she is just so upset. I said, “Look, go to school. Try to concentrate.” This is her senior year. I do not want her distracted. I said, “Call a couple of friends and I will be out in the morning. Don’t worry. Check on your sister.”

But once my daughter left for school, she never went back to the house. She said she couldn’t stomach it. I spent the night in jail…that’s a whole story within itself, but when I came out the next morning, my husband had closed all the bank accounts.

Not only that, I couldn’t go back to my home. He had filed a restraining order, not only to keep me away from him, but away from our daughter because I “was a danger to her.” He had filed this injunction that said that I had mental illness problems, that I was an alcoholic, I drank a bottle of wine a night. All the accusations were so sickening, so sickening, and for thirty days, I did not have phone or person-to-person contact with my child. Thirty days! My youngest daughter, one day her sister and her mother just disappeared, just disappeared.

When we went to court, which was the early part of December, the judge granted him the injunction because he shows up to court with pictures of injuries. I looked at my attorney and I said, “I didn’t do this!” The police asked him clearly, “Do you need a paramedic, are you injured?” and he said, “No.” And then there are injuries?

He had to self-inflict them when he was closed up in the bathroom or after everyone had left. After they’d taken me away, he had taken my daughter to school, he came back and took pictures of injuries.

Now, I’ve never been in court before, I’m sitting there without hardly any clothing, because I can’t get any of my clothing, I’m probably looking a hot mess, I’m probably looking the way he’s accusing me of looking.

This judge grants the injunction for one year. My husband asked for supervised visitation, based on the fact that he said our daughter witnessed what happened. What saved me, was that my oldest daughter was in the home, and she kept our youngest in the other part of the house and helped get her ready for school, and kept her away from it. She came on the stand and said, “No. She was nowhere near there. We heard some of the shouting, but we didn’t see anything and she was with me the entire time.”

With that, the judge didn’t grant him supervised visits, but he cut my visits down to where I see my child once on a weekday right after school until 8pm and then every other weekend. The minimal amount of time. To go from being a stay-at-home mother from the time she was born to that?

The judge also ordered that the only way my husband and I communicate is through an email system called the “Our Family” wizard.

When he said that, I was happy, because I said. “OK, what’s going to happen is this man, the way he’s been with me verbally in person is going to show on paper, I know it’s going to show on paper.” So I thought this is going to be a good thing. And I’ll be darned, if it hasn’t shown. His verbal abuse has gone on paper now. The anger, even after a year, you would think that you would come to a point where you would reason with each other, you would understand that, “We need to do what we can that’s in the best interest of the child.”

Not at all. The things that he has said, showing clearly not only his anger towards me, but the verbal abuse, the attacks, the threats and the alienation that he’s trying to do between me and my daughter, that’s exactly the thing we’re using when we go to court.

We’re finally going to court next month. We have gone to mediation twice already and he refuses to do a joint custody agreement. He wants to keep primary, major custody of our child because he knows how much this would hurt me.

On top of all of that, I was homeless.

When Marjorie was telling me this, I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have your life change dramatically, quite literally overnight. She’d been arrested for domestic violence, she’d spent a night in jail, lost custody of her child, had no money, and was homeless. No access to money means not being able to hire an attorney to defend you. Remember that Marjorie was also a stay-at-home – it isn’t easy to just go out one day and get a job. This has to be rock bottom.

Granting an injunction for a whole year seems unreasonable to me and it’s hard for me to understand why a judge would not see through this. The best I can conclude is that when you deal with these situations all day, it is hard to know the real truth and so you err on the side of ultra-caution because you don’t want to be the person accused of failing in a domestic violence situation.

Marjorie is an amazingly strong and resourceful woman and in the segments that follow she’ll be sharing how she got pro bono legal help and how the loss of her custody rights hasn’t stopped her from being actively involved in her youngest daughter’s life.

As far as getting cut off from money, Andrea and Grace were also cut-off. They were fortunate because they had financial help from their families.

I read recently a quote from a law firm that they always tell couples to go through counseling first and that the lawyer’s office is the place of last resort. While I do agree that couples should try multiple avenues to try to work through their marital issues, I also believe it is critically important to know your legal rights and I would start researching that as soon as I felt divorce was a likelihood. Knowing your rights isn’t sufficient either – Marjorie had consulted with a lawyer before she told her husband she wanted a divorce – you have to take the steps necessary to protect your rights and yes, sometimes that’s a hard emotional decision.

Photo credit: 401k

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Plus 3 more...

Arrested for Domestic Violence

2012-01-25T00:19:31Z

Yesterday, I introduced you to Marjorie who agreed to delay filing for divorce at her husband’s request. At first she thought it was so they could work out their separation with little disruption to the children. Now, with hindsight, she believes he was putting in motion everything he needed to destroy her. She played right into his hands by getting herself arrested for domestic violence. Here’s Marjorie:

On November 17, 2010, I had intended to go about my usual Wednesday, take the kids to school, drop them off, and then I had a bible study that I had been attending for several years.

Instead, my husband woke me up out of my sleep, telling me that he’s having chest pains and just going on. The argument started when I’m telling him “you need to go to a doctor. ” The name-calling started. He was holding up our wedding album. My husband was a very religious man, and he loved to use the Bible as a way to mind-control me,. He would start quoting scripture, and then out of the other side of his mouth he would be calling me a slut and a whore and all these other types of names.

So he knew what he was doing that morning, and he got me. I grabbed the wedding album and I threw it at him. He ducked, the wedding album hit the wall, pictures went flying all over the place, so the wedding album didn’t hit him. Then he says, “I’m calling the police.”

I didn’t really think anything of it. So I’m in the room picking up all the pictures off the floor and I’m crying. I hear him calling the police and giving them the address. He hangs up the phone and locks himself in the bathroom until the police got there.

The police come, we give our two sides of the story. I thought they were just going to take our statements and leave. After I’m done, I’m helping the girls get dressed, because the whole time they were in the other side of the house. They hadn’t seen anything. So we get dressed and we get ready to go out to the car.

Then, the police officer comes up to me and says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you in.” I asked why and he said, “Well, your husband is adamant about pressing charges. With any sort of domestic violence, if the one person feels fearful of the other party, then someone has to be taken away, and since you were the one that admitted to throwing the wedding album, which means it’s a threat of bodily harm, then you have to be the one that has to go down.”

I had my girls in the car and my oldest jumped out of the car and she’s like, “You are kidding me. You are kidding me!” She looks at him and she’s like, “What are you doing?”

He just had this stone cold look on his face, he didn’t want to hear anything, and they handcuffed me in front of my girls and put me in the back of the police car.

I’m telling my oldest daughter, “Calm down. I need you to go into the house, I need you to secure certain things, and just wait for me to call,” because the police officer said, “I’ll get you down there, you’ll be booked, and then I’ll have you out in a few hours.”

The police officer, he knows what’s going on, he said, “It’s a shame, I know y’all are going through a divorce and this didn’t have to happen. I asked your husband if he really wanted to do this, but my hands are tied. I’ve got to do this.” I said, “That’s fine, it’s fine.”

We get down there, they book me and I’m thinking, “I’m going to be processed and out.” Then they tell me, “Oh, I’m sorry. First appearance have already gone out, you’re going have to stay overnight.”

It’s just amazing how you can wake up one morning and your whole life as you knew it is gone and it’s not because of some natural turn of events, but it’s because of someone else’s choosing. That’s the hard pill to swallow.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t the type of incident the domestic violence laws are designed to protect against. What this segment demonstrates is how a person can take their knowledge of the law (and yes, Marjorie’s husband had consulted with an attorney two days prior to this event) and use it to their advantage and you know, this story is far from over. It. is. frightening.

As I said yesterday, once you start talking about divorce, you need to be on the alert for red flags, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Photo credit: 911 Bail Bonds Las Vegas

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