In addition to hiring an Attorney, I found myself spending days and days reading
everything I could about divorce.
It wasn’t that I’m not familiar with divorce.
I am the child of divorce.
My parents divorced when I was in my 30’s.
Two of my three siblings are divorced and a good amount of my friends and family.
I disliked divorce even before it came for me.
Knowing what divorce is and watching it happen around you still doesn’t prepare you
or give you the knowledge of how exactly to get through it when you’re going through
it yourself.
Because I was 52 and had been with my husband for 27 plus years, I learned terms I
had never heard of before like “Gray divorce” and “Out Spouse”.
Gray Divorce refers to people who divorce over the age of 50.
That’s me.
I’ve had gray hair since I was 21-there is just much more of it since my divorce process
began.
I am feeling every bit the poster child for a Gray Divorce.
Everything I read says that the overall divorce rate has been dropping, but for people
over 50 it is surging.
The Out Spouse refers to the spouse who is out of the loop and unaware of the marital
finances and assets.
That’s me too.
Ever since I was a young girl, I knew that one of the most important things a woman
needs to be aware of is to never, ever, ever relinquish all financial control in a
relationship.
I had once been a single career woman.
I took care of everything financially for myself and I did it well.
My husband was the computer expert in our family and once we were married we
combined our bank accounts and he took control of everything financially-our budget,
bills etc.
He took care of it all online.
It was so easy to take this route.
It made sense.
I never once felt anything but trust in him in regards to this.
I felt he was a good person.
In the first few years of our marriage we discussed everything.
Every paycheck, every purchase, every loan etc.
As the years went on these discussions got less and less until I was out of the loop
completely.
When I brought up concern when credit cards, house loans, and bills started having
just his name on them he told me it would be fine as we were married and we were
looked at together even if just his name appeared on financial documents.
I have learned this is not true.
I have approached him a few times over the years regarding my being involved
in our finances more-even if simply just to take some of the stress of doing it all
himself.
Those discussions would always go very, very bad.
Each conversation would end up being unresolved and I continued to stay out of our
financial matters.
I have learned how much of a mistake this was for me.
I was in blissful ignorance and it would come to bite me on the bum.
I had not been allowed access to any of our families financial information for quite
some time. My husband advised me that without a job I had no right to be involved in
our finances or even to access our financial information online.
I had held a job outside of our home throughout most of our marriage. It was only in
the past 5 years or so that I no longer had a job outside our home after leaving due to a
breast cancer diagnosis and a declining hearing condition.
Although he had not allowed me access to our financial information even when I held
my job-he just became more cruel about it after I no longer had the job.
There were things he was doing with our finances that he felt were none of my
business and things he was doing with our finances that he didn’t want me to know
about period.
I had trusted this man.
I would learn about hidden purchases.
I would learn about hidden loans.
I would learn about hidden financial transactions.
All hidden from me…