Lots Of Losses Come With Splitting Up

You’ve got to hand it to Liz Taylor. Not only is she the marrying kind, she’s the divorcing kind. And there are few things in life worse than that. Almost every woman thinks she got a raw deal. Today we hear from some of them. …

Barbara: We were married for 21 years. When I decided I could no longer take the abuse I knew was coming, I left.

He promised me then, in 1992, that he would keep me in the courts until I was ruined. He almost kept that promise.

We had a three-day divorce trial followed by a two-day trial for the division of property. Now, let’s note that we had no children, owned no house and had only a few thousand dollars that I had inherited from my parents.

I basically won both trials, so he took it to the appeals court. He wanted my teacher’s pension, or a large part of it. Since he was a teacher also, and since he had his own pension and since he had lied liberally and often during the trial, he lost again.

He stole my car twice, once with my purse and keys in it. Once he kept it for two weeks. Recently he threw acid on it, causing the paint to peel in strips. I just wait for the next episode. I hope he is at least through with the lawsuits.

He never pays his lawyers and I always do. So, has he won? Well I’m close to being in serious financial trouble, but I am my own person and free of him, some of the time. So I’d say I’m the winner.

What goes around comes around, they say. I’d hate to be him if that’s true.

Annette: I was devastated when my husband requested a divorce. I was comfortable in a beautiful home, surrounded by the results of my hard work in the home and garden. Finally, things were starting to look like retirement would be good, and at 51, that was quite a consideration.

Then, suddenly, the rug was pulled out from under me. I cried for weeks, saw a therapist, got angry. Then I began to improve my life, I took martial arts classes and began to feel not only good, but wonderful. I became a vegetarian and all the other things I had given up for my marriage. I lost weight and got happy. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Joanne: When I married Steve, I owned a small business that was growing nicely. I was the mother of two beautiful children. I had a fun hobby, good friends, the respect of my community and positions in some very worthwhile organizations.

The first thing Steve did was find a new home for us in another community. Eight years later, he decided he didn’t want to be a family man and left me.

I no longer had a business. I had an underpaid job, two children crushed by his behavior and a lot of debts.

During the course of the divorce, I discovered that the bills he was supposedly paying were seriously in arrears. Our house payment, car payment and all the utility bills were within days of being 90 days past due when he moved out. On my salary, I had to catch up on those payments.

It took me five months to have things in reasonable control. That doesn’t mean the bills were paid in full, it meant I could make minimum payments if we didn’t eat much and the kids never needed new clothes. Then Steve went into bankruptcy and I ended up bankrupt, too.

By the time my divorce was final, I lost my business, home, credit rating and several friends. (He had decided I had been making extra money as a prostitute and that I had deliberately exposed him to AIDS. He made no secret of this, which caused several experiences in public places that I’m still trying to look back on and laugh.)

I did retain several outstanding bills. He moved in with his parents.