house of cards

i originally wrote this entry back on september 27th 2006. (3 years ago.) at the time, i was in the process of trying to sell the house for the divorce. this was after the mediation, so i’d already had the financial butt-reaming done to me. but it was still pretty fresh.
———-< original entry, sept 27, 2006 >———-
the person who’d put in an offer on the house retracted it after she decided the reconditioning would cost too much to make it worth it for her. hopefully someone else will think the house is worth what the realtor listed it at. this d4mn thing has been a thorn in my side for years due to the problems it developed and what tamara and i did to mess it up. i was always so concerned we were going to have to take a big loss on it when we sold it. which we probably would have, except the market value has gone up and i’ve been paying on it long enough (but mostly the market value going up) that we should be able to at least break even. i think.
as if that wasn’t enough to worry about all by itself, i also now have to worry about tamara and her attorney possibly trying to wrangle more money out of me by claiming i did things after the divorce to make it worth less. why would i think such a crazy thing? because they suggested that in a letter to the courts. and it matches some of the way they’ve operated throughout the divorce.
it pisses me off so much that they have done crap like that. isn’t it enough that they took half of my retirement money from the year and a half after she’d left me (and even moved to california) and told me in no uncertain terms it was over? much less her taking retirement money she’d repeatedly told me was in no way hers and she didn’t want? or her taking half of any money i had in the bank or had sunk into vehicles or whatever. while she had $0 to split back with me. it was just us splitting my assets, not us splitting our assets. so to add insult to injury, i have to sell the house and split the proceeds. granted, i get a generous 55/45 split. i didn’t even fare that well on all of the retirement money after we were separated and it was just me totally on my own. but evidently her fingers were still more than happy to stay in my pocketbook and get whatever the legal system would give her. that was a real honorable and classy move on her part. but then she wasn’t exactly making fair and honorable decisions in any number of ways at that point in her life. here’s hoping she’s managing to straighten herself out. even if what she did to me hurt like hell, and will continue to impact me financially for years to come. hopefully i’ll be able to dig myself out of the hole she put me in.
———-< end original entry >———-
i believe i never posted it because at the time tamara and her attorney(s) were being jackasses and i was worried my being honest about the situation would annoy them and make them be even bigger jackasses. which is basically what most attorneys are. they get paid to be amoral jackasses — and the more they act like jackasses and the less moral they are, the more they make for themselves (and the other lawyers). i’m not saying there are no good attorneys, but they’re few and far between. most of them, through rigorous training, have made themselves able to be amoral about any situation and just care about “winning,” not about what’s right. it’s like a game of one-up-manship. which is sort of like philosophy, except instead of being a pursuit of the intellect there is money and people’s quality of life at stake. it’s like philosophers who came down out of the ivory towers and devolved into knuckle-dragging versions of their previous selves.
although most “philosophers” (by schooling and/or profession) are far from thinkers who are trying to understand and explain themselves and the world around them. most of them are just playing mental bullying. g-d bless the few who really do love the pursuit of knowledge and are actually trying to understand and explain things. (scientists still kick their 4ss though.)
tamara and her attorney(s) were unfair to me financially. rather far from being fair. that’s really an unavoidable fact. because fair didn’t matter in the way the legal system was used in our case. i unfairly lost money from a couple of years of retirement funds. regardless of how you view the retirement money from while we were together, they took half from the 1.5+ years after she’d had the affair, left me, and moved to california. it’s not justifiable as fair. it’s simply not. plus tamara lied to me about her intent the whole way through the process. (of course, that depends on what your definition of “lie” is…perhaps in lawyer-ese it would read “by omission or vagueness allowed me to come to my own conclusions which may or may not have been contrary to their actual intent”) how did they perhaps help “justify” it to themselves? by saying i wouldn’t have to take ownership of half the debt she’d accumulated during those years. haha. yeah, a real classy bunch of folk.
i don’t see how i will ever feel at peace about tamara’s actions regarding the money. she took advantage of me with the legal system because she could. it was a classless act, and will always be so. i doubt she thinks about it. and if so, she probably justifies it because, hey, the system let her do it so it’s “legal”. plus she had expenses. and she deserved it. yeah, that’s it, she deserved it. and if she didn’t, well fsck him anyway because she’s moving on and she’s got a new life.