Uh, if you're not a troll, obviously see a lawyer at that income level. Why on earth would you be running around between work and chauffeuring the kids when you could probably get a settlement that allows you not to work at all. |
ok - first of all you need to get your share of the marital property. Second of all, why do you want the kids to spend 5 nights/week with him? |
I like to work and went to school for a long time to be here. I'm not letting him take that from me. |
If I stay in the home it would make it logistically very challenging for him to see them in the evenings. He'd have to pick them up on his way home from work and then drop them off again. Just seems easier for me to get them from school and have them till bedtime. |
Why can't they stay over at his place? You need to stop catering to this man. Sometimes divorce is what forces them to actually parent, and the kids are better off for it. |
I don't want to be in this house anymore. He does parent, that's why I want them to see him every day. |
Reading between the lines, are both of you no longer in love? Your kids are so little and so closely spaced...with your job, it must be your professional judgement that he can't "take responsibility"? How will that work if he has a new gf at his new house and this elaborate custody arrangement? Are you only thinking about a Year 1 solution? If he's a selfish guy, I don't think this arrangement will last a long time. Do your parents have a useful opinion (as other backup caregivers who know your family)? |
Child support is usually based on how many nights a child spends with a parent, so the OP's plan has the WFH parent doing all the work with very little child support. A 50/50 plan would increase her child support. |
PP. Oh...so...you will leave the house your kids know. And XH will be there, maybe with new gf at some point. All I can say is that did not work well for my friend. Will you have rules about new partners being around the kids? |
This is OP. My first priority is that my kids get to see both parents as much as possible. It makes sense, given his schedule, that I see them when he physically can't (during work hours) and he continues to see them for the amount he does now. We mostly divide and conquer on the weekends now. If we adopt this schedule the only thing that changes is I'm not there for bedtime on school nights and he misses one full weekend day. This seems pretty fair? |
No. No, no, no. What's changing is that you're no longer able to divide and conquer, so your weekends are becoming quite stressful unless your family helps or you get a sitter. And you're doing a ton of driving back and forth. It's a time-suck-- not so much the drive itself but the getting kids dressed and into the car. It's going to really add up. Stop protecting this man from the consequences of his CHOICE to have a non-flexible job. Stop treating his job as fixed and unchangeable. Stop thinking he's entitled to see them as much as he does now! I get that you want that for your kids, but it's not something he's entitled to ask of you for his own sake. It's okay for him to experience the consequences of his CHOICE to end his marriage. Clearly seeing his kids as much as possible is not his priority, because if it were, he wouldn't be leaving his wife and he wouldn't be giving you 75% of the weekends. You need to stop telling yourself he's such a good dad. I'm more okay with this because your financial situation is pretty good, but still-- be mindful of your child support and don't let the where-they-sleep technicality screw you out of what's truly fair. |
I don't think $250k/hour part-time is as much income as you think it's going to be, given how expensive it is to have three kids long-term.
I think you need to get a good lawyer and make sure you get the assets and child support that are rightfully yours. Don't give up money to keep the peace-- that's foolish in the long term. He's leaving you and he can pay up. |
Ok so... $250 an hour and you're available to work like 9 to 2 pm? And you need lunch and some time for administering your practice, so you're billing like 4 hours a day, assuming you have enough clients? So 20 hours a week at $250 an hour is $5000 a week, *50 weeks a year, you're grossing $250,000. But then you have your work expenses. And federal, state, and local taxes. So really, your take-home is more like $150,000 a year. Which isn't that much when you have three kids and are paying for daycare and all their activities plus retirement and college savings.
You need to see a financial pro and make sure you have a truly accurate read on your situation. |
This is OP. I am reading and reflecting on all of this advice and I'm grateful for it. I do roll over in an attempt to keep the peace and obviously that's a problem and something I need to work on to get through this. I just don't want to mess my kids up even more by making this acrimonious. It's hard. |
I plan on asking for him to fully fund health insurance for me and the kids until they're 25, their college and their activities. He's overly generous with the kids, buys them everything they want to make up for working so much I think. If anything I'm worried about him doubling down on that and me being the one who can't give them things. |