The call to arms is a directive, not a suggestion. What if, even if she had the means, the built-in antagonisms and financial excesses of the American divorce industrial complex leave her longing for a less corrosive option, one that might put a more reasonable punctuation mark at the end of a failed marriage than an ellipsis made of tiny grenades?
Divorce in the U. My ex and I had only debt between us, no assets, so we decided to ask a mutual friend to be our mediator, at a friends and family rate. Big mistake. Though we both had a stated desire to keep things civil, the nature of our particular dysfunction—control issues, if I may be both coy and precise—was evident within the first two sessions, torpedoing mediation as a viable alternative. Why were we in debt?
For the same boring reason so many middle-class Americans are in debt: Our basic living expenses child care, health care, student loans, rising rents, college tuition, food, clothing, etc. By the time our third and final child was born, in , those hospital fees had only increased, so I freelanced throughout the first months of his life to keep us afloat, even as my industry, magazines and publishing, contracted, buckling under the strain of free content and lost advertising. I took in boarders to stanch the flow but ultimately had to move to smaller, cheaper digs, which was itself another financial setback.
Several serious and unexpected illnesses and their resulting chaos—including losing my executive-editor job at a health magazine and suddenly having to pay exorbitant COBRA fees—were the final nail in my financial coffin. Suffice it to say, like 40 percent of Americans in a study by the U. Some weeks, there was not enough money for food.
So for two and a half years post-separation, my not-yet-ex and I did nothing on the divorce front. I felt hopeless. Paralyzed by our lack of options. But the system in place—hire lawyers, go to court—held nothing for those of us living hand to mouth but not poor enough to qualify for free representation.
I was in survival mode, trying to make it from one day to the next.
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Then I sold a TV pilot, which finally gave my kids and me access to affordable health insurance through the Writers Guild for 18 months. I put my still-husband on my plan, too, because as his still-wife, I would be still-liable for his bills were he to get sick. My ex and I thus patched together our individual post-marital lives, a continent between us.
I paid down our shared debt, tried to put money aside, and prayed for a day when we would have enough to call it quits officially. At one point, in pursuit of this goal, I had five jobs, a stress-related skin rash, and a brand-new heart condition that had me occasionally passing out at work: a direct result, some physicians suggest , of intense emotional turmoil.
Meanwhile, life was inching forward. My ex moved in with a new girlfriend.
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I was occasionally dipping my toe into the dating-app pool, with its attendant joys and degradations, when I could afford a babysitter. Maybe, I thought, my ex and I could simply officially stay married until we could afford to split up while simultaneously pursuing lives with new partners. That could work, right? I actually know a couple who did just that. But then came thousands of dollars in unexpected taxes, which I was suddenly mutually responsible for, because we were still married.
I paid it in full, wiping out all my savings. My ex returned to New York, during our third year post-separation, and found an apartment near us. Our two older children were already out of the house, at college, so we only had to work out a custody agreement for our youngest, then 9. Holidays would alternate year to year. Having easily agreed to a shared-custody schedule without rancor, maybe, I thought, we could figure out a frictionless way to get divorced in the eyes of the law, too, if only to disentangle our finances.
But how? Yet here was this highly competent lawyer standing next to the lox and bagels, telling me otherwise. You just have to do everything in a highly specific, counterintuitive order. Normally one spouse files for divorce first, then both spouses hire lawyers who begin the battle over custody, alimony, and child support.
Especially if the parties are willing to forgo maintenance a. With legal fees being what they are, more and more couples are opting to do so , but you can also do all this without ever speaking with a lawyer. In some states, courts offer nighttime seminars for those seeking pro se divorces, with the hours of the classes posted on fliers they hand out with the reams of paperwork. The fact that New York, my state, finally has no-fault divorce—the last of all 50 states to have enacted it, in California went first, in —was key.
I emailed my still-husband: Would he be game to try the lawyer-free route? He was hesitant, but Delruelle told me I did not need his consent or permission to start the process by filing for custody, just as one does not need permission to file for divorce. Filing for custody, just like filing for divorce or child support, is judicially identical to filing a lawsuit. I am embarrassed to say I did not know this. Then again, having never attended law school, why would I? I assured him, once again, that it would not cost him a penny.
Had we actually had lawyers, all those emails would have been read and processed by both lawyers, at an hourly rate. On the day of the hearing at family court, we arrived separately at the appointed hour. Then we waited. And waited. We were the only couple in family court actually sitting together on the same bench. Everyone else had lawyers and was scattered as far away from their former spouses as the space in the room allowed.
By doing it pro se, we were being forced into something resembling civility. I suddenly felt slightly smug about how well this was going. Then my ex began to lose patience as the first hour of waiting stretched into a second, and I was worried he would leave. Now I was feeling much less smug. My ex stood alone at his table, I stood alone at mine, the width of a wedding aisle between us. My heart was racing. Doubt crept in once more: representing myself in family court?
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What was I thinking? He turned to my ex and asked the same. I want 50—50 custody.
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I was confused. Suddenly, what should have been an easy day in court became anything but. I quickly Googled 50—50 custody under the table. With precise, down-to-the-hour 50—50 custody in New York State, I learned, the higher earner would be responsible for paying child support to the lower earner. This was one of the many issues that tore us apart, the inequity in our domestic responsibilities. My smugness was gone. I longed for a lawyer. The only way this custody hearing would work without representation is if we presented a united front.
He asked us to meet in his private chambers with his clerk, who would help us draft a temporary agreement.
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But for now—down came the gavel—our hearing was over. I cried in those private chambers. My great experiment in self-representation felt as if it had failed. Our new hearing was scheduled for three weeks later, exactly one week after I was scheduled to have major surgery to remove my cervix. I begged my ex, with the clerk sitting between us, to just keep the arrangement we had in place.