Divorcing a Drunk is Hard - Just a Vent
 

I imagine that getting a divorce in the best of circumstances is still challenging, but geez, trying to work through legal matters with a drunk is soooo time consuming and expensive. We are working on a mutually agreed upon inventory and here is an example of just one of the items with which my STBXAH has taken issue: the value of my more than five year old vehicle. He wants to value my car for $6k more than I listed on the inventory. First we had three weeks of insulting round about texts and emails with no specific proposal for what the value should be. My attorney finally had enough and sent him a stern email. So today I receive an email from STBXAH proposing a value based on his "discussions and meetings with professionals". Uh-huh. So I asked him to send me documentation or have the "professionals" send me some information. He proceeds to fill out online eforms for three different car dealers, giving them my phone number and work email address. I receive three auto replies giving me their offers for a 2010 vehicle that agree to STBXAH's proposed value. The only thing is my car is a 2008! And now I'm getting phone calls and texts from all of these car salesmen. Because alcohol.

In the big scheme of things, it's not a big deal. It's just exhausting. But then I remind myself that it's more exhausting to spend a holiday weekend with a drunk spouse. My heart goes to those of you dealing with that this weekend.

Not only did he get the year wrong, but some car dealer's value is always gonna be jacked up so they can get you to come in and trade up to some more expensive car, whose price will be more than you'd pay with no trade-in. I think probably the most reliable estimate would be the Kelly Blue Book value, which takes into account all the options, condition, etc. The value to a private buyer will be higher than the trade-in value on their website and you could take the average of the two prices. It's a reasonable, objective basis for value that any court would probably accept.

What an idiot. Sorry it has to be such a painful exercise. I was lucky that the only time I had to divorce a drunk we had virtually nothing to divide.

the crap they get in their heads as IMPORTANT......oy. soooo nice of him to sic three car salesman on you. but i guess if it has to be a choice between drunkards and car salesmen, i'd take the car guys!!!

I know what you mean!
My ex suggested in an email this week that it would be "simpler" if I ignore the service he will have sent out for our court date, then he will obtain a default judgment.

I am being pleasant and polite, and will show up at absolutely every hearing.

Immersion in alcohol generally does not enhance math skills.

My ex was like that - obsessing over details, insisting he was right. At one point we were arguing how to divide a divorce-related expense and he insisted in questioning my proposal for dividing it because I rounded up rather than down at the second decimal point. Yes, that's one-tenth of one percent, or 0.1 penny on the dollar. (And full disclosure, I argued back until I eventually realized "this is completely nuts and by contributing to the craziness I am staying engaged with a crazy person", and let him have his tenth of one percent).

Thanks everyone.
Lexie - I used KBB and validated using CarMax and Autotrader, but ALCOHOL. : )
I'm working hard to keep things in perspective, but this week was a beat down. Next weekend I'll be celebrating a very big birthday and I vowed last summer that I would not be that age living with someone who verbally and emotionally abused me or who had a drinking problem they refused to address, and it looks like, knock on wood, that will be happening. For that, I am so grateful and a tiny bit proud of myself.

And so you should be. It will all be worth it in the end, trust me. :)

So frustrating that you have to even entertain drunken arithmetic.

XAH used to tell me that it just didn't MATTER if I understood why the bank books didn't balance. "There are things you just need to take on faith; it isn't necessary to understand, they just ARE!"

I wondered where he came up w/such crazy crap! After he'd been gone a while, I began to realize how much of what he used to tell me was AA philosophy twisted and applied to situations where it was never meant to apply...

Like Lexie, I always thought that the Kelly Blue Book was the authoritative resource for the value of a vehicle.

If THAT'S faith, then I am an Agnostic.
Several years ago, my finances were still all wrapped up with my ex. My salary went into a joint account, and he paid all the bills. I wanted to move from a place I was renting to another.
He INSISTED that we were paying the landlord at the end of the month, instead of the beginning, and if I moved we would owe two months' rent.
I found a few $ to negotiate the deposit on the new place and gave my 30 days notice at the old one.
My ex was AMAZED that we didn't owe the old landlord any more money! :headbange

Hugs, Westexy. Hang in there.

Interesting!
 

I noticed that about my ex-boyfriend too. Very interesting… I couldn't put my finger on it but as a grown man of 48, I couldn't understand why he was focused on something's that shouldn't of even been a priority unless you were a teenager. Especially when his life is falling apart he had nowhere to live he's losing his job he's broke and he's behind on his child support. I couldn't understand why he was focus on trips to Florida, working on his boat, or doing other stupid things that didn't matter. It's kind of like his whole life was an avoidance of everything that was real. Is this common? Is it because the alcoholic is avoiding or they have no sense of responsibility or they're just selfish and they want to do the things that are fun and then void the things that aren't fun?

I think it's sort of a combination of things. Mostly, a desire to avoid examining the things they are failing at by inflating the importance of things they are still "managing."

The bottom line for partners is to not get sucked into the insanity of the alcoholic's view of reality. Very tough in the beginning, especially since a lot of us have spent a lot of time/energy trying to deny reality, ourselves. Coming out of denial and facing painful truths is hard for everyone.

Hi Westexy,

In many countries, car dealers have a price guide which says what a used car is worth based on condition and mileage. If you do a search for "car price guide" or similar, you might find a site in your country which authoratively says what your car is worth

Hitbytrain - The commonalities are so interesting to me. Last spring my STBXAH was 49 and our family was falling apart due to his drinking. All he could talk about was our family vacation to Florida. I was about to cancel and it was SOOOOO important to him. I ultimately didn't cancel so things would be "normal" for our son. Three days into vacation, my husband had broken into the owner's closet of our vacation rental to drink the owner's alcohol. That was a turning point for me.