History (as told through Facebook)

WIN. (stolen from coolmaterial)

Learn from my Fail

So, just thought I would stick my head back in and mention that my divorce was final today.  I learned several important things during this process.

1. Do NOT choose your lawyer based on how UN-slimy they seem. Big mistake.
I should have chosen the lawyer who seemed likely to castrate puppies with his bare teeth and sell used clunkers to little old ladies in his spare time. Not the guy that was nice.
In addition to not being very effective, my lawyer FORGOT to tell me that the final court date was today. So I got a phone call about 2 hours before I was supposed to show up in front of the judge.  And saw the final settlement for the first time at the courthouse.

2. If one is conflict averse, and one’s spouse is conflict averse, not talking about things does not really avoid conflict in the long term.
This seems blatantly obvious after the fact, but thought I would point it out to any other clueless schmucks like me.

3.  If I had been smarter in the beginning, and asked more questions, things might have worked out better.
Or not, really–a lot of crap went wrong that was completely out of my control. I didn’t know menopause would make me nutso.  Or that my dream job would be a nightmare with a sociopath employee that went on to terrorize us with animal parts and break-ins.
But a couple of really frank conversations about how we both managed money and what assets we had BEFORE we moved in together might have made a lot of problems more manageable later on.

4. There are no do-overs or an “undo” button IRL.
This about sums it up: