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How does that math work out? Why didn't you get at least half of it? Did you get full ownership of the house or something?

ryandrake 8y ago
I’m surprised he ended up with anything. Divorces can be financially brutal on men. Even more so if kids are involved :(
- asdfman123 8y ago
  I hear that online, but from what I read is that you just split half of your community property. Where's the disconnect? Also, in my state you don't split assets people had before going into the marriage. Maybe that's just here though.
  - dsnuh 8y ago
    Those all applied in my case, and I simplified my original statement too much (I lost more than half because that's where I had saved funds that I had to use in the divorce to "offset" the other party's interest). My apologies. I guess the point I am trying to make is that I don't know if everyone realizes that if you are the only one in the household saving away for the future, that those savings are not "yours" if the marriage ends, even if your ex-spouse was absolutely frivolous with money, they will get half of anything you saved, and speaking from experience, that feeling absolutely sucks and was one that I am still trying to recover from years later.
    - asdfman123 8y ago
      I'm scared. I'm a big saver and it's always been my goal to retire early, but I'm constantly having to push my fiancee not to throw away money frivolously. She also makes far less than me because she wants to work in a field where she makes a difference. She could make twice as much, but she chooses not to. We're not going to have kids, and we split chores equally. It seems messed up that the relationship is going to put me in worse state financially by subsidizing my partner, and on top of that the laws are structured to give her more money (even though she's fully capable of making more herself). I love her a great deal and our relationship is otherwise healthy, but I'm scared for a hypothetical situation where things go south. Expect the best, prepare for the worst, right?
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Yikes. I did the homemaker thing. The ex was career military, we had special needs kids and I had serious health problems. It was the right thing to do, but I am still trying to get on my feet financially post divorce. We had a 1950s style marriage where he was the breadwinner. I come from a much more financially savvy and financially conservative family than he did. His idea of what to do with a pay raise: Finance more debt! I found it completely crazy making. I never want to be financially dependent on a man again. At some point, I decided the best thing I could do to make a damn difference in the world would be to leave behind my Pink Collar Ghetto aspirations and do any damn thing I want with my life instead of continuing to care about the world while the world doesn't give a flying fuck about me and my bills. I sometimes wish I could talk some sense into other women. If you need to express some need to care, get a pet. (No offense intended. I am trying to be sympathetic.)
        dsnuh 8y ago
        No offense taken! Divorce is a shit sandwich, no matter which end you are on. If I may ask, were attorneys involved on either side in your case? I suspect that is the main differentiator between my experience and others that I have talked with that were able to settle on a sane number with their ex. My ex-wife and I did the homemaker thing too. A lot of my peer group did. I don't think it works these days. No offense intended, but just like you never hope to be financially dependent on a man, I hope to never have a woman that is financially dependent on me again.
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        were attorneys involved? No, we had a DIY divorce. I'm actually a rather skilled negotiator in some sense, though I don't usually say so because I think that gives people a completely different idea than what I really mean. I mean more like diplomat or like the guy in the movie The Negotiator. [1] We kept lawyers out of it and that meant there was more pie to go around because we weren't giving tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers. That made it easier for both of us to give a little here and there. My divorce was surprisingly amicable, more so than my marriage. We agreed ahead of time that we were not going to leave either party in a shithole of financial mess. (I sometimes joke that if we hated each other and wanted to make each other miserable, we could have just stayed together. :-P) I have been to his house once post divorce and met his new wife. His life seems to be pretty okay these days. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120768/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120768/
  - tfehring 8y ago
    In the US, there's a ton of variation between states. Related reading: http://realworlddivorce.com http://realworlddivorce.com
    - dsnuh 8y ago
      Thanks for posting this, it's incredibly informative and interesting. If you look at "Scenario 1: Professional Wife and Slacker Husband" in the California section, you'll see a situation very similar to the one I am in, just that the dollar amounts involved are lower, (I earn around $125K, invested about $10K into ex-wife's part time business), the child were both from one parent, and the genders are swapped. In my case the monthly combined spousal and child support that Dissomaster spit out was $3,300.
- dsnuh 8y ago
  It's almost three years out, and I still feel hopeless about being able to salvage my life financially.
dsnuh 8y ago
Sorry, I was sort of vague here. Basically, I had to give $105,000 (half) of the 401K to my ex-wife, I had to pay her out for potential values of my stock options and RSU's (have fun valuing those!), I had Smith-Ostler riders attached to any bonus income, I had three more years of spousal support ($1800 per month), legal fees to pay, etc. I used the 401K to pay these things, so technically, I did get half, I just had to immediately use it to pay it all to my ex-wife. Yes, I kept the house, which was my separate property with a community property interest, since it was purchased in my name only before we were married. I cannot afford the house, so I am trying to play the foreclosure avoidance game and give my kids a nice place to live that provides them with some continuity. I also had $1700 in child support (this is two kids, with a 60/40 custody share) that I offered to give her more money in the settlement if she would agree to $1400 instead. She agreed to that, and then before that judgment had even been processed, had me back in court to get $1700 per month, which she did, since the court will use whatever Disso-Master spits out. She owns her own business, and of course her personal and business accounts are mingled, so there is no way to pinpoint what she actually makes, but it was at least $3,500 per month part time when we were married. But none of that matters if you earned a lot more than your spouse. Divorce is no joke, especially if you are the high earner in the relationship. A lot of people are under the assumption that if you split custody, you don't pay support or the support is a nominal amount. This is absolutely not the case. The court (in CA, at least) looks to maintain the children's standard of living DURING THE MARRIAGE until the child is 18 or emancipated. This is the case even if your divorce left you in very different circumstances. That's just child support, which is only one of the many costs associated with divorce. (I want to make it clear that I have no problem with paying _reasonable_ child support, but I'm sorry, the current child support calculations can leave you with an egregious amount of support payments)
- coldtea 8y ago
  >The court (in CA, at least) looks to maintain the children's standard of living DURING THE MARRIAGE until the child is 18 or emancipated. Why? Standard of livings can be preposterous and dependent on previous economic status (which might not be the same post divorce -- and in many cases it isn't). The court doesn't care for the millions of kids who fall on standard of living without a divorce (or even while having been had out of wedlock), or who start and end on a low standard of living to begin with. Why should it care for the "same standard of living" in the case of divorce? A decent standard of living (housing, food, etc) yes. But "maintain" the pre-divorce standard of living is BS.

ryandrake 8y ago

I’m surprised he ended up with anything. Divorces can be financially brutal on men. Even more so if kids are involved :(

asdfman123 8y ago
I hear that online, but from what I read is that you just split half of your community property. Where's the disconnect? Also, in my state you don't split assets people had before going into the marriage. Maybe that's just here though.
- dsnuh 8y ago
  Those all applied in my case, and I simplified my original statement too much (I lost more than half because that's where I had saved funds that I had to use in the divorce to "offset" the other party's interest). My apologies. I guess the point I am trying to make is that I don't know if everyone realizes that if you are the only one in the household saving away for the future, that those savings are not "yours" if the marriage ends, even if your ex-spouse was absolutely frivolous with money, they will get half of anything you saved, and speaking from experience, that feeling absolutely sucks and was one that I am still trying to recover from years later.
  - asdfman123 8y ago
    I'm scared. I'm a big saver and it's always been my goal to retire early, but I'm constantly having to push my fiancee not to throw away money frivolously. She also makes far less than me because she wants to work in a field where she makes a difference. She could make twice as much, but she chooses not to. We're not going to have kids, and we split chores equally. It seems messed up that the relationship is going to put me in worse state financially by subsidizing my partner, and on top of that the laws are structured to give her more money (even though she's fully capable of making more herself). I love her a great deal and our relationship is otherwise healthy, but I'm scared for a hypothetical situation where things go south. Expect the best, prepare for the worst, right?
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Yikes. I did the homemaker thing. The ex was career military, we had special needs kids and I had serious health problems. It was the right thing to do, but I am still trying to get on my feet financially post divorce. We had a 1950s style marriage where he was the breadwinner. I come from a much more financially savvy and financially conservative family than he did. His idea of what to do with a pay raise: Finance more debt! I found it completely crazy making. I never want to be financially dependent on a man again. At some point, I decided the best thing I could do to make a damn difference in the world would be to leave behind my Pink Collar Ghetto aspirations and do any damn thing I want with my life instead of continuing to care about the world while the world doesn't give a flying fuck about me and my bills. I sometimes wish I could talk some sense into other women. If you need to express some need to care, get a pet. (No offense intended. I am trying to be sympathetic.)
      - dsnuh 8y ago
        No offense taken! Divorce is a shit sandwich, no matter which end you are on. If I may ask, were attorneys involved on either side in your case? I suspect that is the main differentiator between my experience and others that I have talked with that were able to settle on a sane number with their ex. My ex-wife and I did the homemaker thing too. A lot of my peer group did. I don't think it works these days. No offense intended, but just like you never hope to be financially dependent on a man, I hope to never have a woman that is financially dependent on me again.
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        were attorneys involved? No, we had a DIY divorce. I'm actually a rather skilled negotiator in some sense, though I don't usually say so because I think that gives people a completely different idea than what I really mean. I mean more like diplomat or like the guy in the movie The Negotiator. [1] We kept lawyers out of it and that meant there was more pie to go around because we weren't giving tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers. That made it easier for both of us to give a little here and there. My divorce was surprisingly amicable, more so than my marriage. We agreed ahead of time that we were not going to leave either party in a shithole of financial mess. (I sometimes joke that if we hated each other and wanted to make each other miserable, we could have just stayed together. :-P) I have been to his house once post divorce and met his new wife. His life seems to be pretty okay these days. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120768/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120768/
- tfehring 8y ago
  In the US, there's a ton of variation between states. Related reading: http://realworlddivorce.com http://realworlddivorce.com
  - dsnuh 8y ago
    Thanks for posting this, it's incredibly informative and interesting. If you look at "Scenario 1: Professional Wife and Slacker Husband" in the California section, you'll see a situation very similar to the one I am in, just that the dollar amounts involved are lower, (I earn around $125K, invested about $10K into ex-wife's part time business), the child were both from one parent, and the genders are swapped. In my case the monthly combined spousal and child support that Dissomaster spit out was $3,300.
dsnuh 8y ago
It's almost three years out, and I still feel hopeless about being able to salvage my life financially.

dsnuh 8y ago

Sorry, I was sort of vague here. Basically, I had to give $105,000 (half) of the 401K to my ex-wife, I had to pay her out for potential values of my stock options and RSU's (have fun valuing those!), I had Smith-Ostler riders attached to any bonus income, I had three more years of spousal support ($1800 per month), legal fees to pay, etc. I used the 401K to pay these things, so technically, I did get half, I just had to immediately use it to pay it all to my ex-wife. Yes, I kept the house, which was my separate property with a community property interest, since it was purchased in my name only before we were married. I cannot afford the house, so I am trying to play the foreclosure avoidance game and give my kids a nice place to live that provides them with some continuity. I also had $1700 in child support (this is two kids, with a 60/40 custody share) that I offered to give her more money in the settlement if she would agree to $1400 instead. She agreed to that, and then before that judgment had even been processed, had me back in court to get $1700 per month, which she did, since the court will use whatever Disso-Master spits out. She owns her own business, and of course her personal and business accounts are mingled, so there is no way to pinpoint what she actually makes, but it was at least $3,500 per month part time when we were married. But none of that matters if you earned a lot more than your spouse. Divorce is no joke, especially if you are the high earner in the relationship. A lot of people are under the assumption that if you split custody, you don't pay support or the support is a nominal amount. This is absolutely not the case. The court (in CA, at least) looks to maintain the children's standard of living DURING THE MARRIAGE until the child is 18 or emancipated. This is the case even if your divorce left you in very different circumstances. That's just child support, which is only one of the many costs associated with divorce. (I want to make it clear that I have no problem with paying _reasonable_ child support, but I'm sorry, the current child support calculations can leave you with an egregious amount of support payments)

coldtea 8y ago
>The court (in CA, at least) looks to maintain the children's standard of living DURING THE MARRIAGE until the child is 18 or emancipated. Why? Standard of livings can be preposterous and dependent on previous economic status (which might not be the same post divorce -- and in many cases it isn't). The court doesn't care for the millions of kids who fall on standard of living without a divorce (or even while having been had out of wedlock), or who start and end on a low standard of living to begin with. Why should it care for the "same standard of living" in the case of divorce? A decent standard of living (housing, food, etc) yes. But "maintain" the pre-divorce standard of living is BS.