When my ex-husband and I split in 1994 we were both 26 years old. I had just taken the CA Bar Exam and was waiting for my results. Despite a lovely (and expensive) wedding fourteen months earlier we thought that cutting our losses, going our separate ways and chalking the whole affair up to a “starter marriage” was likely the best option. Notwithstanding some necessary and sophisticated wedding gifts (which according to Emily Post need not have been returned as we had made it past the one year mark and had already sent literally hundreds of hand written thank you notes), a financed Jeep Wrangler, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Raul and a futon that had travelled with me from Berkeley after college, we did not have much in the way of assets to divide. In terms of debt we had some credit cards to pay off and we each took one and the airline mileage plan miles that came with it and called it a day. Prior to moving out of our rented house in Laurel Canyon we each inventoried the items we wished to take with us to our new, smaller, rental residences. Having taken a community property course in law school and being the daughter of a divorce lawyer I knew a bit about the character of our belongings.
Anything one brings into the marriage (i.e.: my futon) is separate property and stays with the person who brought it. The separate property characterization also attaches to anything which is given to you alone as a gift, an inheritance or earned after the parties separate but before the division of assets or divorce is final (for example, if parties separate and one party writes a song filled with sorrow, despondence and heartbreak about the breakup that song (melodramatic or not) is separate property and if it hits the Billboard charts the person who wrote it receives the spoils as opposed to the one who inspired it simply based on the timing of when pen was put to paper. In CA, community property is defined as anything produced or procured, during the marriage with funds earned during the period. So back to the point, how to divvy it all up? In the case of my ex and I, for better or for worse, we didn’t have much. Our bank accounts were sparse and beyond the Jeep we were still paying off, we had no real assets of monetary value. Completion of the necessary court forms on which we listed the few assets we did have didn’t really take specific furniture, furnishings, appliances and personal property into account. I knew he had his eye on our dining room table and six chairs. I wanted our bed and luxurious Frette sheet set (a wedding gift from one of his parents’ European friends and nothing I was likely to be splurging for on my own anytime in the next decade). We alternated taking turns with our stuff like picking teams for a game at recess. As we chose items we tagged them with post it notes, blue for him, yellow for me so that we could keep track and make it easier for the movers who would be there later that week. Each of us kept our own clothing and jewelry/watches. I kept my mother’s china (which I have still never used) as it fell into the separate property category and we had a minor setback in the amicable division when we came to the fancy espresso machine received as a wedding gift but never used. This was resolved by a coin flip (he won) and double item pick on the next turn by me.
The general rule is that each party receives property valued at the same amount. List all of the items you are keeping on one side of a balance sheet and all of the items your spouse is keeping on the other (IOE provides our Community Property Balance Sheet as a part of the platform to make it easy) calculate the value of each party’s column and figure out how close to equally you have divided things up. If an adjustment needs to be made you can move an item or two, equalize by a cash payment or….here’s a novel idea…. let it go. Important to note is that the value of an item is what you could get for it at a garage sale or on Craig’s List not what you paid for it. I have seen couples take photo/video inventories of their household items, furniture, furnishings, appliances and art and resolve the division that way. Many insurance companies insist that you keep a list of your personal property so that is a good resource as well. Remember, it is just stuff and the vase or candle stick you are fighting for today will likely not bring you nearly as much joy as you think it will. Let it go and buy another, newer, all-your-own version to enjoy. Almost everything is replaceable and with the money you are saving by not having to pay expensive attorneys to write $100 letters regarding $75 dollar decorative pillows you will have more to buy new furnishings. For one of a kind items like memorabilia, photos and what I call “kid-art” there are amazing replication sites and services where I have seen clients reproduce full photo albums and walls of elementary school art projects. There is no need to fight over these items when you can each have your own version of Madison’s 5th Grade Still Life of Pear, Baguette, Bird and Wine Bottle. Books, DVDs and vinyl – what can I say, do these even get divided anymore in the age of downloading and streaming? If so, same premise, be cool. If you guys do this well, you can always call up and ask to borrow the Metallica, Master of Puppets album later in life. Source: https://insights.itsovereasy.com/how-to-divide-it-all-up
For years, I’ve been waiting for someone to come clean about co-parenting. Celebrities and social media would have us believe it’s easy, even enjoyable, and I’m tired of contributing to that narrative. It’s not true. As a co-parenter and frequent social media over-sharer, I’m guilty of perpetuating the notion that anyone can seamlessly transition from a couple to co-parents with grace, dignity and ease. Sure. There have been happy moments in my co-parenting journey where that felt true, but those moments are not the majority of my experience. Shared family vacations and weekly dinner dates didn’t happen without endless negotiations and blurred lines along the way. So, here we go, I’ll say the thing that no one else wants to say: Co-parenting sucks.
My son was 1 years old when I moved out of the home I shared with my husband and ever since then his father and I have tried multiple ways to co-exist.
We’ve tried mediation and meditation, and seeing each other in moderation. We’ve lived separately, together and have even tried nesting (a name for the cohabitation set-up where the child stays in one home while the parents rotate in and out). We’ve tried cooperative parenting and parallel parenting, going no-contact and going full-contact (a name for the emotional set back where you start sleeping together again against all better judgment). I could write the Kama Sutra on co-parenting. After five years, the conclusion I’ve come to is that there’s nothing natural about this. Successfully sharing the person who brings you the most joy with the person who brings you the most pain is nothing short of a miracle. I always laugh — and then scream — when people suggest getting divorced is taking the easy way out. I can’t think of anything more difficult than failing at marriage, and then having to raise a child together without having the necessary time and distance to recover from every micro and macro heartbreak that has occurred. There’s nothing easy about this easy way out. In fact, the only thing that’s easier than leaving a relationship that isn’t working is choosing to stay in it. I didn’t realize that divorce doesn’t really exist when you have children. If it does, it looks something like this: “I now pronounce you ex-husband and ex-wife, you may keep seeing each other for the rest of your lives.” That’s where I am now, the separate but together forever until death do we part. That vow doesn’t go away even after all of the other vows have been broken. When I filed for divorce in 2012, I wasn’t yet ready to let go. I still felt so much love for the man I was leaving and I was still gripping onto the idea of a perfect family. What I didn’t understand back then is that the love I have for my son and the love I had for his father would always be tangled up together in knots. I couldn’t admit this to anyone else because I was too busy pretending I knew what I’d gotten myself into, pretending for my son’s sake and for my own sanity that my divorce didn’t faze me. We tried really hard to be the world’s friendliest exes and in photos it was believable, but in reality we were actually two people desperately clinging onto the fantasy of what we thought our family could look like. A fantasy where there was one Christmas, not two, no separate mommy time and daddy time, no elaborate and colorful calendar to help us keep track of where our child would be sleeping on any given night. It would take years to face the facts of separating. No matter how much my ex-husband and I love each other, how much we’ve forgiven one another and how much we’re willing to work together, divorce means we set fire to the fantasy. And what’s left in the ashes is harder to accept than I imagined. Co-parenting means my child will grow up always missing one of his parents. When he says to me in tears, “This isn’t fair,” I tell him that he’s right, there’s nothing fair about this. When he says, “I miss daddy,” I want to cry with him and say, “I miss daddy too.” But I take a deep breath and I tell him what I know is true: “Anything less than always will feel like not enough time together.” There is nothing natural about the fact that my son will grow half his height while I’m not watching or that he’ll tuck half of his baby teeth under the pillow at a different home. He won’t get the little sibling he wants anytime soon, and if he ever does that child won’t share his father’s eyes or my lips and he’ll only spend every other Christmas with him or her.
I didn’t know back then, when I was one foot in the fantasy and one foot out, how much I would dread dropping off my son with his father. How do I describe how alone a home feels when a child has left it? Maybe you already know this feeling. Maybe you too have sat, or collapsed, on the living room floor and looked at old photos and videos of your child. Maybe you too have given in to the unexpected and overwhelming feelings of nostalgia and self-pity and regret.
A married friend once told me how much she envied me. “At least you get some time off,” she said. The comment wasn’t malicious, but it was misled. How could I explain to her that there is no such thing as time off when you’re a parent. The minute my son is gone I wonder where he is and what he’s doing. I wonder whether he’s hungry, tired or sad. I fill up my calendar so that every hour we’re apart is accounted for because if I don’t do this there’s a good chance I won’t get out of bed.
It’s in these moments that I wonder what is wrong with me. And I’m not entirely convinced that there is something wrong with me because I don’t know how other co-parents cope. We don’t talk about it. We nod and we smile and we fill our calendars on our “days off,” and for the rest of the world we put our most evolved foot forward. At least, I did. I kept up the act: I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine. But for a long time, I wasn’t fine. And now, I’m done trying to convince myself that I’m part of a secret society of mothers who stay best friends with their exes, travel together with their exes and regularly reunite for a bedtime story or bath time routine. This might be the reality for some divorced parents, but it isn’t mine — not yet, not really and maybe it never will be. Slowly, I’m beginning to accept this fact. What I know now and desperately needed to hear then is this: Let go of the family you thought you’d be and accept the family that you are. Redefine your reality. It won’t be easy and there will be days when it feels nearly impossible. You will feel guilt, but you are not guilty. You will feel shame, but you did nothing shameful. You will feel regret, but you did the right thing. There is a space that exists between the family that you were and the family that you’ll end up being. You’re not alone in that space. I’m right there with you. And my guess is that we’re not the only ones. Source: http://time.com/5183804/co-parenting-difficult-hard-jessica-henriquez/
