Posted on 01/28/2015 11:16:15 PM PST by grundle
When my ex-husband and I divorced my economic situation took an abrupt downturn. My son and I moved from a luxurious home in an affluent suburb to a small apartment in a blue collar neighborhood. Our new home had none of the frills and extra amenities like the home we left behind. It was elbow-cracking small, the unreliable air conditioning made it heavy with heat in the Texas summers, and the neighbors were sometimes sketchy. But it was the best my budget could afford.
My son and I went from being part of the upper class to living below the poverty level. We didn’t go out to eat or take vacations anymore. I paid cash for a car that I had to drive with my fingers crossed that it would make it to our destination. Things that used to be a regular part of our budget, like a gym membership and weekend movie outings, became luxuries. Now we could only afford most of the basics, most of the time.
I hadn’t worked full time since my marriage. After the divorce, I could have. Many people let it be clearly known that they thought I should have. My son, they said, didn’t deserve to have his standard of living change like it did. They believed I should have put him in daycare and returned to the workforce full time. But I knew that doing that would exact a price much higher than the disappointment of not going to the movie theater or the neighborhood pizza place.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Welcome to real life, Bobbi.
Your kid or your trinkets...
...you chose wisely.
Snarky comment to a deeply loving mother.
Must have been some dire marital issues.
Sounds like a hoax story to me. How can a woman be broke from a divorce when she gets 50% of her husband’s wealth upon divorce (especially with the kid).
Something just does not smell right.
Before I can crank up my sympathy generator, I want to know the reasons for the divorce. Not details, but the basics. I appreciate and applaud the decision not to put her boy in daycare. Was the well being of her son at the top of the list during the decision to divorce?
I don’t know, she might not have had any choice in the matter, but I hope she thought about him then, too.
I had the same dilemma when my daughter was little.
After looking at day cares, I’d come home in tears, thinking: “I can’t leave her there!”
Then it dawned on me...open my own day care. So I got my license and did just that. Not only did she have her days at home with me, she had playmates.
There were rules - Her own bedroom and toys there were off limits to the others and Saturdays were for just her and me - and I would do something special just for us, to always let her know she was my most special little person and I was HER mom and no one elses.
As she grew up, the one ‘career’ she always wanted was to “be a mom.”
She now has 3 wonderful daughters - all in high school - and they have NEVER known day care.
Too bad.
Although divorce will often split the assets, it doesn’t happen all the time. Some men are better at hiding what they are worth than others.
Also, taking the woman’s claim at face value, she may have thought that losing her share was worth getting full custody. Even if she did get half the net worth, her employment skills at the time may not have allowed her to seek any high paying jobs and even a substantial amount of money can go fairly quickly without having misspent it.
Divorce and support laws vary from state to state, but I too wonder how she ended up impoverished by divorce. She should have obtained some kind of support for her child at the very least. Did she have a lousy attorney or no attorney at all? Or did her ex-husband fail to make payments?
Yeah! That’s mean, you meany!
Without the love, concern and guidance this kid could have turned out bad. He might have gotten into sex or drugs or blogging.
What a wonderful idea that was. Smart mom!
She rescued her son from becoming another one of the pod-children, with cookie-cutter emotional trauma and cookie-cutter anti-values. I hope she didn’t blow it by putting him in a government child-abuse center for so-called “schooling.”
I first became conscious of daycare when I was in first grade. I thought those kids that have to come and go from there are those most pitiable poorest of the poor. And I was greatful for my home and parents.
Maybe they spent everthing and had no assets to split.
Keep it up and you will become a snark.
Or snarking.
The woman does say she got child support payments. But, still, it’s much less efficient for 2 people to live apart than together. My Mom and Dad divorced, and both of their standards of living diminished considerably.
Also, a lot of people “crash and burn” after a divorce. There’s no telling whether the father kept his (apparently) good paying job. Or, as others have indicated, he may have been able to hide much of his wealth from even a pretty good lawyer, or traded full custody for $$.
When my children were little, I couldn’t bare to put them in daycare either. I didn’t have children just to let someone else raise them or be the major influential experience on them. We lived on one income and it was tough but it’s not impossible. We only had one vehicle. We raised a garden where I put up food all summer. Other family had farms where we could buy and put up pork and beef at a reasonable price. I could sew which enabled me to make extra money doing alterations and other projects. Hubby got paid once a month and some months it was a big pot of soup that got us through the last week of the month. I went back to work after the youngest got to first grade. My children are exceptional adults. Contributing members of society. I think it makes a big difference when children can avoid daycare.
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