Negotiating with a Terrorist - Part III
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Continuing from Negotiating with a Terrorist - Part II…
At this point, the downhill acceleration of the emails progressed. Different from parts 1 and 2, these will show the splits between the two of us as I habitually would address each section, as if I thought it would do any good whatsoever. I was still steeply embroiled in the need to explain, re-explain, and - given my poor negotiating position, essentially beg for understanding which would never come.
PEW:
I am in $10000 of debt because of you and you want to split hairs over the van. When I was keeping the van you wanted money thrown your way, with you keeping it…..that’s it. Let’s sell the van or sell both cars. Split the difference, that seems alot more fair.
LM:
I’m not splitting hairs over the van, nor do I want to. I didn’t ask for money and the van. You did. I told you I couldn’t do that. If you really want the van, then let’s split the house 50/50 and you keep the van and we’re done - that’s what I originally said. I told you I couldn’t give you the van and that cash and 50/50. I never wanted the van and cash. In the driveway you made it clear that you needed the money more than the van and that’s when you agreed to take $5G and the car.
PEW:
I have reservations about sharing custody 50/50. You’re claiming you want what’s best for them, but seriously is it just that you’re over a barrel right this minute?? It feels like you’re manipulating me again.
LM:
It has nothing to do with “being over a barrel.” I think that the recommendation that I only get the kids 6 days per month is ridiculous. It’s not fair to me. It’s certainly not fair to them. I’m not “manipulating” you in any way. I can’t change the fact that this wasn’t done last March. All I can do is put this to an end cooperating with you now. If that’s not something you want to do, I can’t change that. I’m sorry. If you now don’t want to agree to what we discussed, it’s not like I have a choice. I’ll just go to court and try my best to show the court that I deserve to be a father to my children for more than 6 days per month.
If you want to change the agreement we made from 50/50 house, $5G, car (and we’re done) to 50/50, Van (and we’re done), let’s do it.
If you want to hold this up more, that’s your choice, but understand that when mortgage payments start getting missed, we’ll both suffer far beyond what we’ve both already suffered. I certainly don’t want that. I don’t want to go to court anymore. You said you didn’t either. I certainly don’t want that.
All we spoke of is turning things around and trying to repair everything, and now you don’t want to. Forgive me if I just don’t get it. It’s just a shame that we’re going to have to go to court over this when we finally seemed to have found some common ground. Again, I’m not mad, I’m just really, really confused over your sudden reversal.
PEW:
The 5g’s was because I did[n't] work full time for 6 years or have an opportunity to contribute to a retirement plan. It didn’t have to do with the car vs. van. To you, I was just sponging off you for the past 6 years right? That’s what you said. I didn’t contribute anything right? You don’t think I derserve alimony or derserve any of your 401k.
LM:
PEW, I never said you were “sponging” off of me, please stop doing this.
Here are the facts:
- The difference between the vehicles and retirements is approximately $5,000 going to you. (this is with you getting the van)
- [Your lawyer's] conservative estimate on pre-marital equity in the house is approximately $5,000 going to me.
Those two items are a wash. You’re not getting ripped off. I am not taking advantage of you. These are using the numbers YOUR attorney put down. What we’ve agreed to considers the retirements, the vehicles, and the house at 50/50.
That leaves the house at 50/50.
I don’t owe you alimony. You’re gainfully employed and well-educated. You have been gainfully employed, full time, for a large portion of the last 6 years. You were PT for a few years after the birth of S1 and for a short period after the birth of S2.
I can’t be any more clear and I don’t know what there is to think about. If you don’t want to do it, just tell me so and we’ll go to court. I won’t be mad, I will be confused, I will be frustrated, but this is your choice. For months you’ve spoken of settling matters fairly and trying to continue amicably, as friends, co-parenting and what-not. We’ve both made some mistakes along this miserable experience and want to change things. Forgive me if I’m astounded that you think what amounts to what will likely be in excess of $50,000 is somehow “taking advantage of you.”
PEW:
We don’t have to hold up the sale of the house LM. Sell it. We’ll split the proceeds. That much we agree on. To say that you would start missing payments is ridiculous.
LM:
It’s not ridiculous. I have to make payments on the house. You want alimony yet, you’ve been benefitting not only from the appreciation in the house, but the significant principle that has been paid down since the beginning of the year. Think about that. That figure that you’re not considering is in excess of $10,000… an amount equal to your legal bill. I have legal fees, too.
Tell me again how I have taken advantage of you?
I don’t have the money to make the mortgage payments. This is not a lie. This is not forcing you to do anything. I’m giving you fair warning that things are tight and I cannot continue to make payments on this house. The longer you “think about it” - the more it costs us BOTH… and we’re at a point where we need to come to terms with our future without wrecking our chances to provide for these two boys.
PEW:
I’m asking for some more time. The last 8 months of my life have been horrible. I was a little overwhelmed by your niceness the other day. It’s been about a year since you spoke to me so kindly. As is my history, people take advantage of me. I can’t let that happen here.
LM:
I am not taking advantage of you. You have the facts and figures, PEW. I think it’s unfair to say that it has been a year since I’ve spoken to you kindly. With only a few exceptions, we’ve spoken nicely on the phone when we call to talk to the children. We’ve spoken nicely when we’ve done the child-exchanges. We’ve gone to school events for the boys and been nice to one another.
Can’t we go into the holidays with our eyes on the end of the combativeness and looking to the future?
The choice is yours here, PEW. You can’t accuse me of holding things up or making things difficult for you. The agreements we made the other night are MORE than fair to the both of us. If we can agree… the house is up for sale, the cars are signed over, the consent for divorce is signed… and we’re on our way to getting the children settled in their new homes and new schools and we have nothing more to fight about. Seriously.
Difficult discussions, yes. As you can see, there isn’t much to hassle over. It’s pretty straightforward what we have to split, and using the rather favorable figures offered by her attorney, the above is precisely how it should be split. I explained it clearly (I think). But… as has always been the case with every story I’ve read from anyone trying to settle almost any matter with someone suffering from or suspected of having Borderline Personality Disorder - it’s just never that cut and dry… no matter how cut and dry things actually are.
She’ll complain about the length of time, energy, and money she’s spent while in the same breath making overtures of extending each of those categories almost indefinitely.
Coming soon, Negotiating with a Terrorist Part IV…
December 6th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Oh, and for the record, the real rule regarding the pre-marital equity in the house meant that I was supposed to take $25,000 off the top of the equitable distribution… not the %5,000 her attorney came up with.
So do understand that she was offered and received far more than she was “entitled” to.
I’m so unfair and a total rip-off.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
After about 3 years of this sort of nonsense I realized that negotiation was useless over a time horizon. Her emotions are too unstable and her lack of logic and follow through is directly related to this. Nothing got decided unless we were at court with attorneys in the little sweat box rooms. She could not be reasoned with but she could be bullied by her attorney and “the master” who constantly talked about how the judge was going to be “mad” if she did not agree. This is why she did so bad with the custody evaluator over time — she would agree, feel differently the next day, and then change her mind — that frustrated the therapist.
In hindsight in terms of negotiating it seems like there are three possibilities and they all capitalize on suing the time element to avoid the inevitable emotional rollercoaster (i.e. sign when you agree).
1) Keep it out of court by forcing something to be signed when we talked — bring the laptop and printer and go to the notary together - her emotions are real at the time, the problem is that they change. This is a one time offer and is more than even your attorney said — sign now. This reminds me of the used car dealers who use it cause it works.
2) Don’t bother negotiating anything prior to court and rely on the lawyers, judge, etc to pressure her — see the courts have figured this out — that is why you have to go back into the judge and put it “on the record” the same day. Up until ED at year 4 this was pretty much the only way we made any progress.
3) Just literally give her everything and focus on the custody — between the lawyers fees and the emotional toll over years it just is not worth the money. “You are getting all the cash, all the equity in the house, any possessions you want, 80% of the investment and retirement accounts and alimony for two years — all I am asking for is for 50% custody with the kids.”
If I went back and did a calculation on the difference between this scenario and what I ended up giving her and the attorney’s, evaluators, forensic accountants, etc etc the net result is probably in this range — not even counting the emotional toll.
Probably knowing what I know now I would focus on a combination of 1 and 3. But hindsight is 20/20 of course…and in the middle of all this I certainly wasn’t seeing 20/20.
December 6th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Knowing what I know now, I would not even talk to her about agreements. I would get my attorney to get this to court as quickly as the system would allow. 3/4 of my legal fees was working with her on one of the numerous “agreements” we had prior to court date- of course she changed her mind between the time she agreed and the time they were presented for signing.
I even have a fantasy that if I had kept saying “wait till we get to court”, then her fear of losing control of the negotiation process would kick in and she would actually submit a workable plan that she would agree to.
It took a judge’s authority to get her to come to agreement in the court room. And now, months later, she claims she doesn’t agree with it and it is not binding, so she won’t abide by it. (She’s wrong, but that never stopped her before.)
So if no agreement ever is good (even after court), then why spend any more money that required to get there? You are going to have tons of legal time anyway, don’t add to it by trying to inject logic into the situation.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I think that the money stuff is easier to enforce if she changes her mind. If the agreement is written even marginally well it should be pretty cut and dried.
Custody is of course a whole other matter — from the most extreme of ignoring the agreement and not turning over the kids….through even the most idiotic stipulations that are completely unenforceable like no overnights with the opposite sex while the kids are there….and including of course the millions of situations that no one anticipates. The only thing you can do is don’t give in, keep a log, get witnesses and when you have enough evidence file contempt and after that doesn’t change her behavior file for change in custody (assuming you don’t already have primary everything). After a couple of contempt tries the judge will use financial penalties so if they are living near the edge it can be somewhat of a motivator.
Just like the system can be beaten by committed deadbeats, if they want to abuse the kids, short of leaving a mark on them leading to supervised, once you have primary there isn’t much left.
December 8th, 2008 at 5:24 am
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December 8th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Once again, I see a lot of myself in this exchange. I remember trying to be reasonable, too: I’d throw out numbers, I’d ensure that everything was equitable, I’d use reason, I’d consider what was best for the kids, I’d refute lies with facts, on and on and on. All it got me in the end was a migraine because the bottom-line is that there is JUST NO REASONING with a BPD. Period.
The only thing that ever brought a decent resolution was to go to court and to make her account for herself before a judge. Agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on if you’re not willing to haul her butt into court every time she violates one.
Over time, I’ve learned that the best way to negotiate an agreement is to wait for HER to ask YOU for something. Just recently, my PEW came to me and asked if she could keep the kids for one weekday because her grandparents were coming up to visit. She offered me another weekday in return. Instead, I took the opportunity to resolve the kids’ Christmas schedules (PEW has recently converted her religion, so they don’t celebrate Christmas anymore, but she didn’t want to give up the holiday custody time). I made it clear to her that I didn’t want the weekday she offered–I wanted Christmas, and she could either draft up an agreement giving me Christmas in exchange for the Wednesday she wanted, or there would be no deal. In the end, she went for it because I didn’t leave her much choice.
That’s how you have to negotiate. Use small requests that are important to her to resolve larger issues that are important to you. Once you have the piece of paper with her signature on it, you have grounds to go before a judge on contempt charges if she refuses to abide by them. In my experience, judges don’t like it when one party takes it upon themselves to “reinterpret” agreements and orders. This last time the judge threatened to throw PEW in jail if she didn’t immediately come into compliance.