Reply to Former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax

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Reply to "Former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax - murder/suicide?"

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[quote=Anonymous]"Also, she was paying all the bills, including the mortgage. Maybe she didn’t have enough money to continue paying the mortgage and having another residence while she sifted through the divorce talks.

Not everyone is made of money. The house could’ve gone into foreclosure had she moved out and stopped paying.

Not everyone can get a bail out from mommy and daddy nor do they have endless funds."

Some basic facts:
In VA, judges get a ton (too much IMO) of discretion, but the default is 50/50 asset split and child custody. The higher earner has to pay the lower earner alimony to keep them at the same lifestyle they had during the marriage. At 20 years (like the Fairfax marriage), judges will often grant lifetime alimony for the lower earner. It is super common in UMC families for the court to order the higher earner (Cerina) to cover the low/no earner's living expenses (a separate apartment for themself or for the spouse) until there is a final order. Also, just because you move out doesn't mean you get to stop paying then mortgage. Doesn't everyone know someone in VA who kept paying the mortgage during their divorce while also paying for a new place to stay?! This happens all the time if there's a SAHP.

VA's divorce laws are designed for a world in which a white woman SAHM is left by her high income husband at the age of 45. She has been a "good woman" and devoted her life to caring for her children and the family home, and we don't want to see her be left destitute because her husband wants to run off with his young secretary. Her lack of recent work history/inability to get a job is considered to be no fault of her own, and that's why VA hands out alimony to a non-working spouse without asking many questions. The divorce court system here doesn't know what to do when that non-working spouse is a Black man with a law degree from Columbia who can't find a job or get clients because he got caught in a career-ending scandal. And it certainly doesn't know what to do when the high-earner who wants to get out of the marriage is a Black woman dentist who built her own successful dental practice and doesn't want to share everything with a loser husband.

Cerina was by no means down and out financially. She OWNED the dental practice and had lucrative real estate holdings. Correction: Cerina and Justin CO-owned all of that, just like they co-owned his failing law practice. ALL of that was uncontested marital property since they married so young. She insisted on paying to keep the kids in expensive private schools even after knowing they were divorcing. If she truly couldn't afford to pay for an apartment in the meantime while the divorce worked its way through the court system, she could have stopped spending her money on those expensive schools ($56K/year for both kids). Also, she was paying a ton of money to fight the VA default rules on divorce and had an expensive attorney. Meanwhile, Justin was representing himself in court even though he had no experience with that area of the law. Yes, he's a loser and a POS for destroying his family. But that doesn't mean she was broke or that she was not fighting to keep from having to give him more money in the divorce (and rightly so). In every state, if you don't fight the default, you can get in and out of divorce court quickly and without spending much money.[/quote]

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