Okay, I've got a new house for the animal family and me. Now: What to do with the old one? The plan is to ready it for sale or rent. I've talked with a couple of friends to see if they might want to buy it or maybe even rent it at a reduced rate just to keep it from standing empty.
And, my soon-to-be-ex Edgar has volunteered to rent it.
Edgar tells me I have to hang onto it. "That house is the only thing you have." Well, sort of.
I like to think of things like friends and family, years of experience in the kind of work I love, even my books and music as things I "have." But he's right. The old homestead is certainly my biggest material asset, even though its value has been dropping like a stone.
"This isn't the time to be selling your house," he told me.
I didn't buy the house as an investment, per se. I bought it 11 years ago because I'd always wanted a house, and needed a nice, quiet place to keep myself and my stuff. I kept it even when strangers approached me in the yard during the real estate boom and offered me several times what I paid.
But they were offering only money. This is my home.
And though it is worth much, much less than it has been, I should still make a profit if I'm able to sell the place.
But that's a big If. I'd love to be able to rent it to Edgar and keep it. He does have a stable job, he knows the house's idiosyncrasies and might take better care of it than I have.
However, I also remember worrying, when he lived here, that he might set the place on fire during a drunken episode.
Typically, Ed is presenting himself as the solution to my problems, even though he says he can't afford the full mortgage payment. I'd have to pick up the shortfall. "But if you'd be willing to lose your house over a couple of hundred dollars a month," he said, "that's just stupid."
read more »OK, I give up. I surrender, I confess, I admit it: I cannot afford my home anymore. By my home I mean both my house and the crazy city that I love, where I've lived for the past 20 years — longer than I've lived anywhere else, nearly half of my life.
I went "back home" to North Carolina last week, to attend my 30th high school reunion (!) and spend a week with my parents. I ended up using a lot of that time looking for a place to move my remaining family, the three dogs and three cats.
And I found something, a tiny little house in a great, big fenced yard. The rent is just over half of what I'm now struggling to pay for my mortgage.
For years I'd been scrambling for work, and just getting by, with the inconsistent assistance of Ed. It occurred to me, as I gazed at the satellite image of Hurricane Ike covering the entire Gulf of Mexico, that homeowners insurance — already prohibitively expensive - will never get any cheaper in Florida.
My beautiful house, the cherished fulfillment of a long-held dream, needs work that I can't afford. Relatively speaking, it's a wealthy person's home.
Relatively speaking, I am not a wealthy person.
Also, my parents also are not getting any younger. I'll feel better being closer to them — though I will decline, at least for now, their generous offer to let me live in their basement for a modest rent. I would not feel better being that close.
Speaking of which, I'm not opposed to putting several hundred miles between myself and my soon-to-be-ex-husband.
I don't want to move, I don't want to leave, but I can't afford this life any more.
I give up. That much is certain. Now all I have to do is work out the details.
"Why is it," my mother asked, "that you can get married for $10 or $15 but it costs so much more to get un-married?"
"Because they know how badly you want it," I replied, and we shared a laugh.
Apparently, I want out of my dead marriage badly enough to actually do something about it. Nothing momentous, but this is where momentous begins. I marched myself up to the Self-Help Center at a civil courthouse and secured the packet of forms I need for my simple Florida divorce from Edgar.
"Simple" being a term of art, of course.
The packet cost $65. Filing for dissolution will be another $409. In this county it actually costs $93.50 for a marriage license, a mere $61 if you complete the premarital preparation course.
I think that's a good investment. I've often wondered if premarital counseling would have prevented the train wreck that my marriage to Ed became.
Anyway, a clerk asked a couple of questions ("Do you have children with him? Do you own property with him?") and ultimately gave me what I asked for, a manila envelope containing 18 printed sheets. I actually only have to do something with 11 of them; the rest are instructions and receipts.
Unfortunately, one of the tasks I must complete is getting my husband served. I know where he works and could deliver his papers by hand myself, but it seems I still have to have his new address.
So far he's declined to give it to me.
Once I get that straightened out, it looks like I'll have to go to the courthouse twice more: once to go over the documents at the Self-Help Center and have them stamped by the clerk, and once for a Final Hearing.
The forms say they'll mail me notice of that date "in about four to eight weeks."
Okay, I've got the papers. However, I've already headed off to see my parents for a week. So I won't be filing anything until I return.
read more »It’s been a year now since I determined I could not go on living with my husband, Ed. While he was the first one to bring up the D-word, he is also the one who does not want to get divorced.
Once I finally got him out of the house (my house, thank you very much; I bought it a few years before we married), I devoted myself to scrambling for money to keep body, soul, and animal family together.
I soon realized that divorce, with its lawyers and fees, was a luxury. And Ed, never a financial genius, said he didn’t have the funds either.
He did email me a proposed settlement agreement; I think he found a template on the Internet.
We have no kids and my lawyer tells me our pets are considered chattel (I’m sorry; anybody who looks to me for food and shelter and doesn’t work is a dependent).
I wasn’t seeking alimony and he wasn’t planning to battle over the house. Still, like any good divorcing couple, we managed to oppose each other.
I wanted to keep the health insurance he got through work, at least for a while; he would not sign a quitclaim deed formally relinquishing any interest in the house, until the divorce was final.
I was more concerned about the health insurance. I could keep that by just keeping quiet, so I did.
But after I tapped my retirement account to cover all the things I hadn’t earned earning enough to handle, I remembered that I’d also meant to get divorced.
I got out of bed in the middle of the night and emailed Ed, asking how he thought we should go forward.
Then it was his turn to keep quiet.
Weeks passed without a word from him.
I felt I’d done my part for the present, but my therapist thought I was procrastinating.
Imagine.
I said I’d get in touch with Ed, ask what he wanted to do. “Why are you giving this back to him?!” she demanded.
I thought about it briefly before replying.
“Habit.”
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