Money

I knew there would be a monkey wrench somewhere.

For the third time I had given my wife the written settlement contract that we had negotiated and renegotiated. The lawyer charges me a small fortune every time we have it printed. And of course, for the third time there was a problem.

For the First Time, her lawyer objects and wants to see financial documentation to support the numbers we agreed to long ago. Oh.. my.. God.

You see, rather than go the whole route of nickel and dime-ing each other's debts and assets, we decided early on to estimate a few things. We estimated and then agreed on values for property, bank accounts, jewelry, her retirement, etc. But for my retirement savings I used Actual Numbers from the statements and did some calculations to figure the marital portion. It was all very scientific and looked official in Excel. And it should be fairly accurate, based on market return rates over the last 8 years. It can never be absolutely perfect, because it is too difficult to track what fund the money was in on each day. So I did a lot of math and we agreed.

We agreed. We had an agreement. Generally that means that we are both satisfied and the "I'm-not-sure-about-this" period is over. The papers were drawn up. NOW she wants to see the statements for 8 years.

At each step, her lawyer comes up with a new objection, and I am pretty sure she does it this way so that she can charge my wife more. Why didn't she raise this issue a few months ago, before we agreed to it verbally??

I could probably download the statements and give them to her along with my calculations, but I feel that she is just being greedy again. The statements would support my numbers, of course, but if they are going to argue my assets, then I should be arguing about her hidden bank accounts and jewelry. In fact, I could easily go into Quicken and print out a report of all the gold and diamonds I have bought her over the years. But I don't. Let's just take a good guess and get the hell out of here.

We exchanged emails, back and forth, a few times today. She insisted that I prove my numbers, and me telling her I will if she wants to go down that road, but then we analyze everything. And if we analyze everything, she will get less money. But the lawyers will get more money.

I think I am through retreating. We'll see if she continues on this front.

...And when I got home, she was in the basement going through my file cabinet.