My husband of 27 years (age 62) gave me (age 65) roses on Mother’s Day and 3 days later, after an argument, told me he wanted a divorce. I was blindsided.
Within 5 weeks, he had gotten a shark of a lawyer; forced me into signing a “settlement” that I very much did not agree with; packed up a few belongings; and moved from VT to NC to live in his sister’s basement. [mod edit]
I say he “forced me” into an agreement because he didn’t take quite half of everything we owned, but he took way more than he should have been entitled to, and threatened if I didn’t sign, he’d go for a full 50%—which would have made me give him at least another $500k.
VT divorces use what’s called “equitable distribution” of marital assets. My problem with this is the subjective definition of “equitable”.
When the finances throughout an entire 27-year marriage have NEVER been 50/50, why should they suddenly become 50/50 when one partner decides to walk away?
Our situation is unusual in that I, the woman, was the higher earner. We had no children together. I made on average twice his salary for the whole marriage. We both worked all throughout the marriage, although he changed jobs more often than I did for various reasons. He lost one job for smoking pot on his break—in his 40s!! One he left because he came down with severe Covid from not being vaccinated (in Covid’s early days), had to be hospitalized, and lived with an oxygen tank for a few months after that.
I did all the investing of BOTH our retirement accounts and other assets (such as in inheritance he got from his mother) and handled all our finances, because he had neither the knowledge nor the desire to do so. (He was so financially unsavvy that when I met him, when he was 35, he literally thought you could only have your checking account at the same bank upon which your paycheck was drawn or you wouldn’t be able to cash your paycheck.)
I did ask his opinion on what he wanted to invest in, so he wouldn’t feel I was “controlling” everything. When he did have an opinion, he invested in things like pot companies, when those first became a hot thing. Nearly all those investments went to zero. I on the other hand put my money in solid index funds and stocks like Nvidia.
I always contributed the maximum to my 401k throughout my career, plus at age 55 I added the catch-up amount. He never put in more than the 1 or 2% required to get the company match.
When we met, he had just bought an FHA house and was paying just the interest on the mortgage. The government was picking up the principal. Once we married, due to our combined income he no longer qualified for that mortgage. So I started making triple payments on the house and we paid it off many years early.
His kids were both addicts and were in and out of jail and rehab for many years. We gave and/or “lent” them both thousands of dollars over time, trying to help them get on their feet, and were never paid back a dime—even when his son won $50k on a lottery ticket. (I was told by him a few years ago not to mention them owing us money anymore.)
Whenever we ran a little short on bill money due to the discrepancy between our paychecks, or a big repair, etc, it never even OCCURRED to me to ask if we could take a little out of what he inherited from his mom; I thought of that as “his” money, and I had a pist-tax brokerage account I’d built up that I called my “play money”—so I always just withdrew money from that to cover any shortages or special purchases, like the occasional trip we’d both go on.
Anyway, very long story short, I was hugely responsible for improving his financial situation over the course of the marriage. But I did everything I did because I loved him and wanted to share everything with him and make his life as good as it could be.
HOWEVER, because of all the disparities I’ve listed and many more, I do NOT think it was right for him to then take half of MY brokerage account when he decided to go full-on out-and-proud extremist and walk away from the marriage!
I believe equitable would have been his own IRA (which I had built up to $605k by the time he left); his inheritance (which had nearly doubled due to my putting it into an HYSA); and the money for half the PRESENT value of our house, which is approximately $400k now. Just those things would have given him about $900k—and he came into the marriage with $2,500 in savings, which he’d made by selling pot!
This is what I mean by “equitable distribution” NOT being 50/50. Yet I was advised by my own attorney—a highly-respected divorce lawyer—not to fight him on taking half my brokerage account, because every judge would say he was entitled to all that PLUS half of *my* IRA (now over a million thanks to NVDA’s incredible performance and the fact that it had JUST that month split it’s stock 10 for 1) besides!
Now that I’ve had almost a month to think about everything more clearly since he’s now out of the house and no longer threatening me and making life unbearable, I’m sorely tempted to withdraw my agreement (which hasn’t yet been signed by a judge) and take my chances on an actual court hearing. I’d like a chance to tell all these things to a judge and make my point about how finances had NEVER bern 50/50 on our marriage, so why should they be now?
Bottom line, all I want back is the $138,500 he got from my post-tax brokerage account at this point, so I’m not left living out of my IRA, which will cost me a fortune in taxes. That’s it. But to get that, I’d invoke more in attorney fees and risk losing half my IRA (IF he decided to continue paying his lawyer $359/hour from out of state to continue fighting. I haven’t spoken to him since he left so I have no idea what his state of mind is, but it was pretty uncharacteristically vicious when he left—caused mostly, I believe, by his shark of a lawyer, and possibly his sister’s influence.)
Does anybody think I should go for that, given all I’ve laid out here? Anyone here have experience with divorcing in VT? Does my argument about what was normal throughout our marriage (ie, him contributing way less than 50% to our financial success) vs what’s equitable now make sense?
(Oh, and ps—forgot one more big thing. In the month before he asked for divorce, I also had the bathroom in our 45-yeat-old house gutted and redone, including a wkole-house water filtration system we didn’t need but that he insisted on, at a cost to ME, from my post-tax brokerage account, of $22k. He contributed nothing to that either—yet it raised the value of out home, which I then had to pay him for half of too. So he double-benefited from that. Plus the value of that well-invested brokerage account went up $70k just in the month between when he started the divorce and the day we signed the settlement—and he got half of THAT increase too! Can you see why I’m so angry?!?)
Thank you to anyone who read and digested this whole thing. Would love some intelligent opinions.
