Family Forum / Parenting / Step Parents / October 2004

I just got off the phone with my ex.  I'm HUGELY pissed off and need
to vent.

Background:  When our divorce was final in 9/98, part of the written
agreement was that I'd receive a $7K settlement as my portion of the
house that I signed over to him.  The house, at the time, needed a lot
of work because of an addition that he wanted to put on, and never
finished.  He's the carpenter, I'm not, so I let him have the house
because I couldn't afford to hire someone to do the work, and I
couldn't do it myself.  He finished the work, and has been renting it
out since then.  During the course of the 7 or 8 years he was putting
the addition on to the house (while we were still married) I put $10K
in cash into it that my parents had given me, plus all the money I put
in from my pay just because we were married and in this together.  The
house now (presumedly) is worth more than in '98, but he's refinanced
and now tells me that his tenant had a fire that was underinsured and
he's trying to fix.  That was the first I heard of that problem.

OK, I was supposed to get the $7K after the 7th year after our
divorce.  That makes it next September.  I thought it was time to
remind him, so I did--a year in advance.  He's totally *outraged* at
my "pathetic money grabbing attempt", and is accusing me of all kinds of
unfair treatment towards him.  He said he doesn't have it, and won't
give it to me.  After all, he says, come January he won't be working so
much because he'll be raising a new kid.  Just an aside, here, when we
had our son, I did all the child care plus worked full time because he
was too busy to do child care.  Pisses me off.

He went on to say how much he's put into raising our son, how he buys
him clothes and shoes, pays tuition and never missed a support
payment.  Well, I've bought clothes and shoes too, and all his tuition
has come out of the support payments.  There was *never* any extra
after tuition for anything else.  I handled all that, and never asked
him to split it.  I took about $75/week less than the state formula
for child support called for, and $50/week less that the reduced
amount we legally agreed on in the divorce.

All he could say was that he was screwed over royally in the divorce
and not a judge in the country would make him pay that money after 7
years.  And that he's finally getting along better with our son, and
he's not going to let me screw it up with my money grab.  His
relationship with our son is his own fault.  He didn't have to verbally
torment him for years, then hit him several times recently.  That has
nothing to do with our divorce settlement on the house.

This is a man who goes to the Philippines twice a year, owns 2 houses,
2 cars and obviously feels he can support another child.  He said that
I must have a shitload of money in the bank because he's been paying
so much for our son all these years.  

I *know* he's not rolling in money, and that he works hard.  That's
not the issue.  I've bent over backwards to be fair to him, and all I
got was the same old abuse I got when I was married to him.  I've been
working up my courage for months on how to approach him with this, and
now I don't know what to do.  I don't have the stomach for an ugly
fight over money, which is why I took so much less to begin with.

OK, that's all I have now.  I have to process all this.  I'm really,
really, really upset right now.

Deb R.