Mediation is supposed to be the civilized way to end a marriage: cheaper, faster, and less fraught than a traditional lawyer vs. lawyer battle in front of a judge. Being, we assumed, civilized people, this is what we decided to do. That was in 2005, four years ago.
Mediation might work if you have two reasonable people who want a quick and equitable division of assets and to move on with their lives. But if you have one party who really wants a punitive divorce in the old Hollywood style---she gets the house, the cash, the car, and the husband pays to keep her in her “accustomed lifestyle” for the rest of his days, then mediation is a waste of time, and becomes a pointless exercise in one person trying to talk the other into agreeing to something that is either unfair or detrimental to their financial or physical health, probably through a process of simply wearing them down to the point of complete indifference. Ironically, we thought mediation would be less expensive than a court battle, which we were told would cost about $50,000 per person, and since one of the big sticking points between us is Julie’s refusal to share the cost of college education for our sons, spending $100,000 between us to argue about $75,000 in tuition did seem ridiculous. But now---four years later---that the cost of mediators, therapists, and lawyers vetting the mediated agreement has passed the $50,000 line (at least for me), suddenly the court battle looks more appealing, and would’ve been faster and possibly even cheaper. There will be no more divorces for me, but I wouldn’t do mediation again, and wouldn’t recommend it to anybody, at least anybody where at least one of the parties involved is vindictive and untrustworthy and unable to stick to an agreed-upon point for more than 48 hours (and often less).
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Your friends or mine?
“Friends don’t take sides in a divorce,” the marriage counsellor assured us, “you just imagine they do.” My experience suggests this is generally, but not universally, true. Some of our friends clearly took sides, at least in the sense that they stopped seeing or being friends with one or the other of us. But Julie has made a concerted effort to lobby friends to her side, to round them up like Nancy Pelosi might legislators on the eve of an important vote. Typically, Julie’s hypocrisy is in full view in this effort, even if not immediately evident to the friends she’s lobbied, including people she didn’t even really like before, but, if you’re primarily interested in votes, you don’t really need to like the people, I doubt Nancy Pelosi is really pals with half those old fogies sitting near her.
One women who took Julie’s side in an act of sisterly “solidarity” is someone Julie could never really stand: she and her husband used to visit us at our weekend house, and this then-friend felt that she was “off” on weekends since she stayed at home with the kids during the week, so never contributed to the cooking, cleaning, shopping, or housework that was going on busily around her while she read her book. This drove Julie up a wall, and she never stopped fuming about it during their entire visit (she also mocked the wife's underwear as it came out of the dryer, which she found oddly sexy for a devout Mennonite), but this seems to have been forgotten now, particularly since the husband is one of the handiest people you’ll ever meet and is always good for a minor home repair.
Other weekend guest friends, even closer, tried to stay at our summertime vacation spot in Maine, and Julie actively blacklisted them, asking the owners to tell these good friends that the camp had no vacancies should they call. These same friends often suggested renting a house together in Italy for a group vacation, and Julie said she would “kill me” if I ever agreed to that, finding the woman, an entrepreneur, too wrapped up in her business and too interested in talking about mine, and the husband, a banker, uninteresting. This hasn’t stopped Julie from making this couple, post-separation, into some of her most-often-seen friends, taking advantage of their full-time nanny for childcare and playdates, doing some freelance writing for the woman’s business (now suddenly very interesting!), and mooching untold meals (this generous couple is unwaveringly quick to pick up tabs when checks are dropped at a restaurant).
There are other examples, but mostly variations on these themes, people Julie didn’t like before but who are now convenient to have as friends, and the more she can count on her side of the aisle means the fewer on mine. Some of these “defections” sting a bit and many of these people I miss (and although I see most of them, there is always the unspoken third piece of the triangle lurking in the background), particularly since I know how Julie really felt about many of them before we separated, but even I won’t blow her cover: I assume everybody is old enough to decide who they want to spend time with, and, yes, whose side they want to take, even if it’s not said so directly.
One women who took Julie’s side in an act of sisterly “solidarity” is someone Julie could never really stand: she and her husband used to visit us at our weekend house, and this then-friend felt that she was “off” on weekends since she stayed at home with the kids during the week, so never contributed to the cooking, cleaning, shopping, or housework that was going on busily around her while she read her book. This drove Julie up a wall, and she never stopped fuming about it during their entire visit (she also mocked the wife's underwear as it came out of the dryer, which she found oddly sexy for a devout Mennonite), but this seems to have been forgotten now, particularly since the husband is one of the handiest people you’ll ever meet and is always good for a minor home repair.
Other weekend guest friends, even closer, tried to stay at our summertime vacation spot in Maine, and Julie actively blacklisted them, asking the owners to tell these good friends that the camp had no vacancies should they call. These same friends often suggested renting a house together in Italy for a group vacation, and Julie said she would “kill me” if I ever agreed to that, finding the woman, an entrepreneur, too wrapped up in her business and too interested in talking about mine, and the husband, a banker, uninteresting. This hasn’t stopped Julie from making this couple, post-separation, into some of her most-often-seen friends, taking advantage of their full-time nanny for childcare and playdates, doing some freelance writing for the woman’s business (now suddenly very interesting!), and mooching untold meals (this generous couple is unwaveringly quick to pick up tabs when checks are dropped at a restaurant).
There are other examples, but mostly variations on these themes, people Julie didn’t like before but who are now convenient to have as friends, and the more she can count on her side of the aisle means the fewer on mine. Some of these “defections” sting a bit and many of these people I miss (and although I see most of them, there is always the unspoken third piece of the triangle lurking in the background), particularly since I know how Julie really felt about many of them before we separated, but even I won’t blow her cover: I assume everybody is old enough to decide who they want to spend time with, and, yes, whose side they want to take, even if it’s not said so directly.
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