I’m meeting with an attorney through legal aid in a couple weeks to discuss divorce. I make the tail end of their income limit but my spouse takes huge amounts of my paychecks leaving me with no money to even pay for an attorney consult let alone divorce legal fees.
The thing is… how do you actually file and serve them and live with them during it!?
I (almost 41 f) have been married to my husband (43 m) almost 11 years, 2 kids ages 12 and newly 9. Started dating when I was 21 so together a very long time. Increasing abuse that has become unbearable - I won’t get into it all here.
But how exactly do you file for divorce against someone like this? Give them a warning? Let him get served and find out then? Despite sending me thousands of texts and phone calls while I’m at work about how he hates me, all my perceived faults and how we need to get divorced…. I know he will fly off the handle and be totally insane. He’s home all day, I go off to work and the kids to school so if someone rang the doorbell and served him he’d be blowing me up at work acting totally unhinged and aggressive. And I can’t imagine coming home to that and the chaos he will reign down that day. So I guess I’m scared of how he’ll act in the immediate aftermath of getting served. I have a fairly respectable image and professional job… It’s so embarrassing to have someone acting this way in my own home, like I’m trashy, unhinged, and chaotic myself.
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Additional info if anyone wants to read: I think I’ll be stuck living with him through a divorce. I bought our house 14 years ago, before marriage, but 5 years ago I refinanced and like an idiot I added him to the deed after intense pressure from him. I see now it’s coercive control but didn’t see it then.
He’s on the deed but has never paid a penny towards the house, and he cannot support himself on his own at this time (he doesn’t work/barely works, and housing costs have skyrocketed in recent years here. He threatens that he’ll force me to sell the house, that he won’t leave the house since he’s on the deed, etc.
My own parents are live nearby and I would have relied on them but… my dad was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and I don’t want to bother him and stress him out with my husbands BS and chaos.
We are doing a big family group photo session soon and my husband has been ranting about how he’s not going to come, so I’m sure my family will know something is going on. I mean, I’m gonna look like a single mom in these photos AND my husband had “promised” my dad he’d come so my dad will be let down on a day he’s trying to create a special memory. My husband has actually been acting more normal and friendly around other people lately including my family (while being 10x worse at home) so I think they think he’s gotten better, not worse. So idk what to say, idk if I’m ready to openly tell them I’m planning to divorce him and open myself up to their questions, etc.
Oh he also gets our youngest child on the school bus every morning because I leave fairly early for work. Idk what I’ll do without him there. But I can also see him getting vindictive and just refusing to get our child up and on the bus for school in the morning as a way to make my life harder. Also idk what to say at work either! We’re a tight-knit dept and it’s awkward especially if his chaos starts affecting my job.
So many little things like this stress me out about leaving him/getting divorced. I don’t know how to plan for it, especially if i haven’t made this split official.