WISE WOMEN KNOW
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
— Albert Einstein
Many women think they can change their spouse, or that a marital counselor, therapist, or religious adviser will bring him around and get him to cease his extramarital sexual activities. Having been taught to be patient and “carry on,” women often wait for their husbands to come around. But there is a very real and present danger to waiting. The following story illustrates this point.
Rebecca’s husband, John, had lost his high-paying corporate job in finance during the 2008 financial crisis. Rebecca’s parents were wealthy, and so they loaned Rebecca and John money so that they wouldn’t lose their luxurious beachside home in Los Angeles. Rebecca’s parents also paid for their three grandchildren to go to elite private schools and for Rebecca and John to regularly vacation in Hawaii and Aspen. They paid for their membership in several country clubs and for John’s Audi and Rebecca’s Lexus. This was a great gig for John. He spent a lot of time playing tennis at the country club.
After a few years of this, Rebecca came to me because the financial crisis was over, and although John was highly qualified to obtain a job, he hadn’t gone back to work. She had also learned that John was having an affair. Under these circumstances, Rebecca’s parents were refusing to continue to pay the bills, and Rebecca wanted to know what she could do to bring John back. She and John were in counseling with the pastor of their church. John said that he wanted to “do the right thing,” but despite his promises, she knew (from accessing his text messages) that he was still carrying on the affair. I suspected that what John really wanted was for the gravy train to continue, and I recommended that Rebecca file for divorce. She didn’t. Instead, over the next six months, Rebecca nagged, cajoled, and threatened John — but nothing changed — until one night, the girlfriend came to Rebecca’s house and threatened Rebecca in an effort to extort money. It took a dramatic moment, but Rebecca finally realized that her marriage was over.
Do not be Rebecca. Don’t wait for someone to hit you over the head with bad news. If your husband is not taking active steps to change unacceptable behavior, then it’s up to you to take action. It could literally save your life.
When It’s Time to Admit the Marriage Is Over
Among the women who come through the door of my legal practice, I often observe a great deal of “magical thinking.” The woman is depleted and confused and unsure whether to get divorced. She knows something is wrong — her husband isn’t “showing up fully” and finances have become strained — but she doesn’t have a complete picture of what is happening. Often, by the time she sees me, the woman is already in marital counseling with her husband, who continues to proclaim that he wants to “do the right thing.” While at first this placated her to a certain degree, nothing has changed, and so she asks me — a divorce attorney — what she should do.
Typically, women don’t come to me already convinced that they want to untie the knot of their marriage. They want reassurance that they don’t need to do anything — yet. Sometimes, a woman will decide to file for divorce as a “wake-up call,” hoping this will bring her husband to his senses and she won’t have to follow through. Women often hope against hope to save their marriages, even when, from the outside, it’s easy to see they are already broken beyond repair. Instead, the woman dances around the truth for a while, until one day, I receive an emergency phone call — often on Saturday morning, usually very early. The woman has just learned that her husband has been carrying on a lengthy affair. She usually finds out because he is careless with his cell phone or computer or someone posts something on social media. The woman is always shocked — first by the infidelity, and then, as we unwind the tangled web of her life, by other revelations. We often learn that, in addition to his infidelity, her husband has been draining marital assets to support his “secret life.”
WISE WOMEN KNOW
“All great changes are preceded by chaos.”
— Deepak Chopra
Even in the face of duplicity and betrayal, many women still refuse to acknowledge that the marriage is over, and they wait to take action, still hoping for their husband to come to his senses. A woman will sometimes convince herself that her husband is just going through a phase and will come back around. I am here to tell you that it rarely happens, and the inability to face the truth often leads to financial and emotional ruin for the woman.
Admitting that your marriage is over and taking appropriate action is often the hardest choice to make. I know, from personal experience and from working with my clients, how hard it is. It requires tremendous courage to take the first step out of your marriage and into a new life. No one can make the decision to get a divorce for you. But if you have lost your sense of joy, life has become a struggle, and the red flags are flying, it is time to wake up and take action.
Once you’ve decided to end your marriage, take control of your life and file for divorce first. Doing so, you will set the agenda, the pace, and the tone of your divorce, and you will take charge of your future. Do not delay. Before your husband is served with papers, he can move assets and money with few repercussions — and it happens all the time. Once he is served, he can no longer move or dissipate assets. Take control of the process, hire a lawyer, and move forward.
In my work, I see many women who are taken advantage of because they are hesitant to take the first step. Whether women are in denial or clinging to hope that the marriage can be saved — delaying is a recipe for disaster. Consider Sara’s story. Sara sensed there were problems in her marriage, and she convinced her husband to attend counseling, which they did for several years. Her husband claimed that he also wanted to save their marriage, but during this time, he bought a Porsche, got plastic surgery on his face, traveled out of the country frequently “on business,” and claimed that his income from self-employment was radically reduced, despite the good economy. He eventually told Sara that he wanted a divorce and convinced her to attend mediation. After it became clear that her husband was using mediation in an attempt to minimize what he was going to pay her in spousal support, Sara hired me. After our first meeting, I discovered (through social media) that Sara’s husband was having an affair with a woman in Brazil who claimed to be his “wife” and that he was draining funds from their business to pay for his international trips to visit his girlfriend. He was also claiming these trips as business expenses. In other words, Sara’s hesitation gave her husband all the time he needed to enjoy his dalliance, drain their bank account, and subject Sara to possible tax liability for claiming business expenses illegally. He’d set things up to take full advantage of Sara.
I sometimes find it hard to believe the lengths men will go in their efforts to minimize their support obligations to their wives and children, but they can get very crafty. One such case was the story of the “soiled woman.” Catherine and Bill lived in California, had been married for twenty years, and were in marriage counseling because Bill had had multiple affairs. During counseling, Catherine admitted that she had also had a brief “fling” during the marriage. Although Catherine knew that the marriage needed to end, she was dragging her feet. She had never worked and was reluctant to file for divorce because of the financial support Bill provided, since he was a successful businessman. Meanwhile,