One of the first things you have to do when you’re going through a divorce, is complete
all the forms and paperwork and provide all of your information to the court.
Personal information.
My personal information for the majority of time I have spent as an adult.
My heart burned against the man that was forcing me to sum up my personal life in a
bunch of legal paperwork for a bunch of strangers.
It felt devaluing-not just for me, but our family.
This information includes every bit of your financial information-bank accounts, debts,
assets etc.
This is part of the “Divorce Discovery Phase”.
You learn terms you never thought you would have directed at your life.
It was like an out of body experience providing all of my personal information to
strangers.
It didn’t matter that they dealt with this kind of stuff on a daily basis at the court, I was
embarrassed at how they must all be viewing me when they looked over my
paperwork.
I was a reject.
I was a failure.
I was a throwaway.
I was unable to provide any financial information as I did not have access to any of our
finances.
This is how I learned the term “Out Spouse”.
This meant that I had to rely on my husband to provide this information to the courts.
And rely on the accuracy of the information he provided.
This is very, very hard to accept when you learn the person you have to rely on for
information has been dishonest with you.
When my attorney’s office asked me for the information, I let them know that I did not
know any of it.
Not one single thing.
And I had no way to get it as I was not allowed access to it.
I was deeply ashamed to admit this to them.
I had talked to my husband about it numerous times over the years, but had not been
successful.
A year or two before my husband told me he was divorcing me, I had approached him
and asked him again if I could have online passwords to our bank etc so I could access
our information online.
I had told him multiple times that I was worried if something happened to him I would
not know how to access our information.
He would always tell me I just needed to get in touch with his brother if anything
happened to him and that his brother would help me get into the computer etc.
This never made sense to me.
Why send me through his brother to get our families financial information?
I had even told him several times over the years that I would like to help him with our
finances and budget to help take some of the stress off him doing it all himself.
He always said no.
In our final conversation that we had about him giving me online access to our finances,
he told me in aggravation that without a job I did not deserve this information.
I was shocked to hear him say the words out loud.
I had always known he did not respect my place in the family regarding finances, but
hearing these words come out of his mouth still shocked me. Especially since I wasn’t allowed access even when I had a job outside our home-so having or not having a job never changed my being given access.
I told him nobody is supposed to feel this way and it wasn’t right that he did.
Even with the argument he didn’t budge, and I wasn’t given our online information.
I did not pursue it any further at the time.
I had gotten used to these types of conversations.
It was during this “discovery” process that I learned that my husband had opened up
his own bank account in the year prior to asking me for the divorce.
He had emptied both of our savings’ accounts, emptied our Money Market account and
stopped his paycheck from going into our joint account.
He had started keeping a minimum balance in our joint account that he monitored to
make sure I had spending money for groceries and household items.
Prior to learning about the account, my attorney had told me that my husband
probably already had his own bank account.
I assured him he would not do something like this.
I’m sure my attorney must have been shaking his head on the other end of the phone,
knowing better than me what I was about to learn.
The day I found out that he did indeed have his own account, I couldn’t believe it.
I was shocked.
I cried.
It made things more real.
You read about things like this, but you don’t expect to live it.
When I asked my husband why he would do this he told me it was his right because
he paid all of the bills.
There was nothing I could do about it.
He had plotted and planned and made financial moves to his benefit while I lived in
ignorance-believing the head of our family was watching over us and taking care of us
as a family.
He told me he would continue to monitor our joint account and make sure there was
enough money in it for me to spend each month, but that we would need to keep our
spending to a minimum while going through the divorce.
I have always kept my spending to a minimum.
In the years we have been married, I have almost never spent money on myself.
The money I spend each month nearly always consists of groceries, household
purchases or things for my family.
Never really spending money on myself during our marriage made me suddenly wish
that I had splurged just a tiny bit before being plunged into divorce poverty.
Especially when I learned that keeping our spending to a minimum during this time
was only applied to me…