My ex wife is suddenly requesting alimony. (State of GA)
So I have been married for just over 10 years. My wife began withholding affection from me about 2-3 years in. She insisted on engaging in swinger activities, which I begrudging agreed to. After doing this, she continued to withhold affection and began verbally/emotionally abusing me on a daily basis. This went on for about 5 years. During that five year time, I engaged in an affair that she found out about. I slept with one person exactly one time and had a handful of exploit conversations with them afterward which ultimately didn’t lead to anything else physical. She found out by going though my phone and took screenshots. I don’t if she still has the screenshots of the conversations but that’s all the evidence she has. After this she decided to stop withholding affection and I thought we had fixed the marriage. However, about a year ago I was away from home for work and she began me reason to suspect that she was either having an affair with someone else or was thinking of kidnapping my children to another country or possibly abandoning them. She stated her intention to all three things to me over the phone. In addition to this, she provided me with completely unprompted verbal permission for us to have an open marriage until I returned home. Because of this I made a dating profile and tried to engage with someone but never ended up meeting them. This person contacted her and sent screenshots but all those screenshots can prove is that I was interested in seeing them, not that I actually had seen them. I came back home and it seems nothing had changed. Our marriage was great during this time. Then suddenly in December she started acting cold towards me again. In January she asked to not engage in intimacy anymore. Then about three weeks ago I went through her phone and found a lot of evidence of her having her own affair which o found out was going on since early December. I took videos of the messages using my phone and also sent myself screenshots of contacts, Apple Maps locations, location history, and financial transactions proving the affair. I sent all of these to myself. Now I had already offered her to let me keep the house but allow me to move out and continue paying all the bills in exchange for 51/49 joint custody, which is me offering her $2,500-2,800/month. This is in addition to my agreement to continue paying for everything for the kids. My financial will indicate that I have basically nothing left at the end of the month. She makes about $4,000-4,400/month, I make roughly $5,000. She suddenly got mad about something and decided to start demanding alimony. I know she doesn’t have the money to pay that many billable hours to an attorney and I don’t either. My question is this:
1.) does she have the right to request alimony (legally)?
2.) how much money could the court realistically go up to if it’s granted to her?
3.) how likely is her attorney to advise her to take the deal because it she will be better off with my proposal than she will with alimony?
4.) is there a way for me to request to pay alimony in the form of paying specific bills on time every month?
5.) how does this entire topic affect child custody discussions?
Location: Hinesville, GA