Woe is me
As much as I hate my ex husband, and as much as I hate this bullshit situation we’re in right now, I do realize that I am lucky. I have a job that pays for half of the bills. I have a wonderful husband who has a job that pays the other half of the bills. My kids are, overall, happy, healthy and ok. I have a place to live that I love. I have a car that is paid for. We have a fridge with food in it. My savings account only has 15 dollars in it – but hey, I have a savings account!
Despite understanding how lucky I am, right now, in this moment, I am feeling irritated and frustrated.
We gave our lawyer $1500.00 in February. Today I got a statement from her saying, not only have we some how used up that $1500.00, we actually OWE her an additional $75.00. This doesn’t include her presence at the status conference we have tomorrow at 9:30 am.
Now. I know. I am very fortunate to have had the ability to give a lawyer any money at all. We scraped together what we could, and went to the bank for the rest. We were very lucky that with our super shitty credit scores, we were able to get a loan. For this I am grateful. However, I am feeling very frustrated. What did I get for my $1500.00?
She wrote a letter to X telling him what my “Concerns” are when he pretended he didn’t have any idea.
She wrote a strongly worded letter to him about not keeping A longer than the order states. (He keeps A as long as he wants. Her threats of filing an injunction were apparently hollow.)
She received and printed and filed a zillion emails from X and I. She told me she needed to see all of them.
She spent time talking to, in person and on the phone with X.
She had 2 meetings with me and my husband. She and I also had two brief phone calls.
She filed a paper with the court requesting this status conference so she could ask for more than 2 hours for our trial.
And now, here we are. We are no closer to a resolution with X. We still have to deal with his crazy on a daily / weekly basis. By asking for a longer trial, we are pushing the trial date even further out then we’d previously hoped. We are making loan payments to the bank on money that hasn’t gained us anything. We are out $1575.00, plus how ever much time the status conference takes tomorrow x 185.00 per hour.
Sigh.
Husband keeps telling me that this will pay off in court. When we are in front of a judge, that is when having this lawyer will suddenly be worth the money. We are in agreement that we mistakenly believed she could do things that we could not. Perhaps this was a $1500.00 mistake?
Husband suggests we borrow money from my place of employment. I have no doubt they’d give it to me, with very lax repayment terms, and without much questioning. However. I am SICK of borrowing money. We cannot afford to take on another payment of any kind. Do I need to get a second job? Perhaps I should just give in? I suppose that would be easier if I had any idea what it is that X wants here…other than to make me suffer, make me worry, stress me out, make me feel incompetent, and defeated…probably nothing.
Sure, we’ll ask for lawyer and court costs to be added into the mix of things we’re asking the court to award us…but what does that really get us? Right now – nothing. Long term – still probably nothing.
Would it be crazy to say, thanks anyway lawyer lady – we’ll take it from here?
Its hard to remember that I am lucky to be in this position.
Looking Forward 