Moving Ahead With Divorce

Blog # 4

After I had been living apart from my husband for a year, in what I had initially described as a “trial separation,” I knew it was time to file for divorce.

I did not see us getting back together. Everything I had learned about him and his beliefs since I had moved out in October 2018 further confirmed my realization that we were just too far apart in so many opinions and values that we could never meet in the middle. We just had too many differences. And I was happier living apart from him. I think he must have been relieved, too, not to have my nagging and anger hanging over his head anymore.

I was living with a lot of debt at the time, due to moving out on my own and having to buy all new furniture, an almost new car, and several other expenses and credit card debt. In the past year since moving to apartment life, I had not asked my husband for any additional help, because he was paying for two of our kids’ college expenses, in addition to taking care of all the house bills that I used to help with. I had originally thought I would wait until our second child graduated from college before filing for divorce, because I knew that my husband would plan to refinance the house and give me my half in the divorce settlement, and I thought he couldn’t afford to do that while paying for two college tuitions.

But first, I went on a trip for work to a conference in Salt Lake City, and then tacked on a vacation to the Grand Canyon and some other national parks, places I had never been to before, taking advantage of being out in that part of the country. I invited my father, widowed a couple years earlier from my stepmother, to fly out from his Chicago home to Salt Lake City near the end of my conference and join me there. We did some guided tours around the area, including going out to the Great Salt Lake one day and seeing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform on the next day. Then we took a quick flight to Las Vegas, where we picked up a chartered tour the next day that took us to several parks and Navajo destinations in three different states.

Dad and I had a great time together. And my one-year anniversary of moving out of my marriage and family home was spent out West doing cool things and seeing beautiful national landmarks, so I didn’t have the time or the inclination to be sad. I texted photos of the sights every day to my kids and told them how much I missed them. They were all in classes at the time.

We returned to Las Vegas, saw a fun show that night, and the next morning my father flew back to Chicago and I returned to Washington, DC. Fortunately, my company had let me adjust my flights so that the trip from Las Vegas returning home a week after the conference was okay to be substituted for the standard return that most employees did. I felt fortunate to have had such a great experience, and to spend that special time with my 78-year-old dad.

After I returned home late on Halloween night, the next day I went to pick up my little dog where he was being watched by my oldest son, who lived at home while taking classes at nearby George Mason University. To my surprise I found out that my husband had just recently put an offer on a small, fixer-upper house in Blacksburg, VA, near Virginia Tech, his alma mater. Our second son was a junior there at the time and the hope was that our daughter would go there as well after she graduated high school.

I found out that my husband had sold some investments and was planning to pay cash for this log-cabin style house in a woodsy setting. He had never told me he was planning to do that. After further investigation I learned that he planned to use it as a second home and spend more time in Blacksburg, where he liked to visit, and also to have a place for the kids to live off-campus while at school there. He was going to spend time down there (4 hours away from his house in Vienna) and work on renovating the old home, similar to what he had done with his current house.

It might have been a good idea if I was in on it. But I wasn’t happy to learn that he had gone forward with this plan, putting down a cash deposit, without mentioning anything to me. We still were married, after all.

So, I decided that if he had the money to buy a second house, then there was no need to wait longer to divorce him. I had been planning to wait out of respect for him and not wanting him (and the family) to go broke. Obviously, I didn’t know about all of the assets that he had. We had always kept our money separate throughout the marriage. But once I realized his plan to buy the Blacksburg house, I was ready to take the next step and move toward ending our marriage so I could get my house settlement and pay off my debts.

On my four-block walk to work every day in busy urban Arlington, I would go past a small brick building that had several attorneys’ signs out front. One of them promised quick divorces. I put the name of that law firm in my phone soon after returning from my business trip and then Googled it while I was at work. I checked out many reviews online and almost all of them were positive. It was a small law firm that dealt only in fast, uncomplicated divorces. What they promised was, if you had been separated for at least one year, and would be obtaining a simple, uncontested divorce, they could complete it for you within 8 weeks for one low fee, which was very reasonable. It would involve little to no in-person meetings with a lawyer during the process — everything done online as is increasingly common in today’s society — and culminate in a courtroom session at the Alexandria courthouse, in a nearby town, where the plaintiff would be represented by one of the lawyers.

That night at home, I poured over all the reviews posted on a few different websites to ensure that this company and these lawyers were on the up and up. The people who had no complications in their divorce proceedings were able to complete their divorces quickly and were not assessed any additional fees. A few people wrote about how they had trouble getting their spouse to reply to the paperwork needed or that they had some other problems come up — for them, it took longer or they had to pay additional fees, or both. Some reviewers commented that it was occasionally difficult to get a lawyer to respond to their emails or phone calls because they were so busy. But it didn’t seem to mean that the end result wasn’t achieved.

So, I decided then and there — I would do it! I would initiate and pay for this divorce myself; I was ready to get the ball rolling. Late that night, alone in my apartment with my dog by my side, I took a deep breath and filled out the intake form to begin the process. I felt a little shaky as I typed all the details of our life together, and how I wanted to end our marriage. It was sad and my emotions were mixed, of course, but I knew it was what I needed to do. I hit “send” — I was ready to do this.

In the days ahead, I corresponded back and forth with the law firm and answered their additional questions, and I paid online to start the divorce process. They asked if my spouse would be agreeable to the process, and I said yes. So far, my husband was not giving me any trouble about my decisions, and when I had told him some months earlier that I was moving from the town we had settled in together (Vienna) to relocate near my job in Arlington, he was amenable to my situation and what I wanted to do. I think he knew I wasn’t coming back to him. And even though he was not the one who wanted the separation in the first place, he was coming to terms with the fact that we were better apart than together.

So I had paid the law firm's fee for a simple divorce, I got the legal ball rolling, and now it was time to tell my husband.

Because I am much better as a writer than as a speaker — and telling him in person in the kitchen of our house that fall day over a year earlier, that I was planning to move out on my own, had been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life — I decided to write him a nice, long email for this next step.

I worked on the email from home, writing and revising and changing the wording many times. I wanted to be nice and not hostile, to thank him for not making the whole process difficult, and for working with me on keeping our separation as painless as possible for the kids. We still did holidays like Christmas and birthdays together in the house. I could walk back in whenever I needed to and do things for the kids, such as help with laundry or homework or college applications. We rarely fought anymore. He even helped watch my dog when I was going to be away. Our coming apart was not a very acrimonious thing. But now it was time to move forward with the divorce.

I wrote to tell him that I appreciated the harmony that we had managed to maintain as we split our households and started separate lives. I said I regretted nothing, because we had made a nice life together in our town for 20 years and produced and raised three great kids over 25 years of marriage. We had adopted two sets of great dogs in the past, we had traveled to some excellent places as a couple, we really had created a good life together. But over the years we had drifted away from each other, and now I felt we were better apart than together.

I mentioned that I had thought about waiting until Lucas, our middle child, had graduated from college before filing for divorce so that my husband would no longer be paying for two kids in college at the same time. But because he had planned to buy a second house with money that could have been going to me after 25 years of marriage, I was ready to move forward with the divorce now. I told him about the low-cost law firm I was working with, that it would be a quick process if he participated as needed, and that he wouldn’t have to pay for another lawyer himself unless he wanted to. He would just need to fill out some forms online and sign everything as it came to him. As it turned out, he wouldn’t even need to attend the courthouse divorce ceremony once he signed the forms. This type of divorce proceeding only required the one plaintiff and one witness to attend.

I sent the email to him on a weekday and waited for his response. I was at work when his return email arrived, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I read his reply. He understand where I was coming from. He was not going to fight me on anything. He said that he should have talked to me before looking into purchasing a second home in Blacksburg, and he would try to get out of the purchase. He said that once he did that, he would refinance the mortgage on our Vienna home and buy me out for my share in the equity of the house, as we had discussed months earlier. He wanted me to have an easier life and not be in so much debt. He would fill out the lawyer’s paperwork as it came to him, and he didn’t see a need to hire his own attorney. Because we were both in agreement, it would be a cheap and fast divorce.

I was so relieved. But also, I felt a flurry of different emotions. He went on to comment that we had had a really good marriage over the years, and how I was a good mother to Jacob, Lucas, and Rachel. He said he wanted to always stay close and have a strong relationship for the sake of the kids. He wrote that I would always be family.

I broke down in tears at the computer in my small office, overcome by emotion and also by sadness for breaking apart this bond with someone who obviously meant me very well. You might wonder why I still wanted to continue with the divorce. He was a good person. He still cared about me and our family. He wasn’t looking to lash out at me over wanting to divorce, and he was willing to agree to my terms.

Yes, I had not married a monster. He was agreeable, reasonable, and basically quite kind.

However.… I knew that he was no longer right for me, and probably never was. We could both be good people, and love those three kids more than anyone else in the world does. But it doesn’t mean that we are compatible, that we should be together, and I know that we were never soulmates.

My husband still supported President Trump and planned to vote for him again in the 2020 election. This I knew with growing, disturbing certainty, and it was not something I could tolerate in a spouse. I also had found out through the grapevine that his religious-right views were sliding even more to the right, to the extreme. He was now following the “creationist” mindset, apparently not believing in human evolution. He did not believe in or care about climate change. And since I had moved out the year before, he had become more heavily involved with his new church and its pro-life activism. I never go to church and am pro-choice.

So, there was no coming back to him; we had no place to meet in the middle. But I was comforted by the fact that he still cared about my life and would not make this difficult for me. I returned his email and thanked him for his kind words and his cooperation. We moved forward with the divorce.

Once all the paperwork was completed and signed, the law firm set me up with a court date: January 3, 2020.

As very strange luck would have it, this would be on my husband’s 57th birthday. I couldn’t change the date, as the Circuit Court of the City of Alexandria only did these divorce hearings once a week, Friday, for a large group of people, first thing in the morning. This would be the first Friday after the courts were closed for the holidays. So I agreed to that date. My husband would not have to attend — I just felt bad he would be getting a divorce as a birthday present!

I had one of my best friends, Sara, agree to go with me as my personal witness (and wonderful supporter). We drove to the courthouse together that morning and went over the list of questions that they would ask her under oath (such as attesting that I had not lived with my husband for at least a year). I met my lawyer in person for the first time in the large lobby outside an upstairs courtroom. We were surrounded by many pairs of divorce plaintiffs and witnesses milling around.

All of us were soon ushered inside the stately courtroom, where we sat down in pairs and waited as each plaintiff was called up individually by the judge and asked a series of questions, followed by the questioning of their witness. Then we sat back down and waited until everybody went through the process. At the end, they told us if we wanted to receive our divorce decree that day, we could come back in a couple of hours and pick up the official hard copies in a downstairs office when they were ready.

I went outside with Sara into the cool air, a little wobbly, and incredulous that it was all done so quickly, and after 25 years of marriage. Whoosh! Now I was divorced.

We headed to a nearby restaurant and had lunch as we talked about the experience inside the courtroom, and what it all meant. I was so grateful for Sara's support; this would have been really hard to do without a good friend close by my side. She and I had been fast friends since we met when our oldest kids were in their first year of preschool; they were now in their early twenties. We had been to each other’s children’s birthday parties, we were in the same book club, and in recent years, we had protested together at the Women’s March and other rallies against Trump and his policies. And now here she was helping me get through my divorce.

When we walked back to the courthouse, she stayed outside on a bench and called her daughter, while I went inside to pick up my official papers. In addition to the divorce decree, I was picking up a document titled “Order for Change of Name.” For an additional cost through the law firm, I was able to change my married name officially back to my maiden name (Merrill) at the same time as the divorce. Very convenient.

I headed back outside with my certified decrees, walking out to the cool sunshine and into my new life as a divorcée.

Home

Jenny and Lex

Home