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It seems like an impossible task!  She hasn't lived in the house for the last 6 months (mental health hospital, then had to live elsewhere due to children's aid society, and then there was a no-contact order due to assault) so she made a claim for some stuff, I edited the list, she wanted more, then I said ok, not this can be finalized.  She came back with: "No, I need you to put a dollar value for every item and then we make sure everything is separated evenly.  We can finalize this when I can come back home.  In the mean time, I will borrow this table, and the couch and bring them back once divorce is official".  I see no end and I don't want the house to turn into a pawn-shop. She doesn't seem to realize that she is NOT to come back at the house.  She refuses to agree to anything final in case she forgot something and will be discussing this with her lawyer.  She'll then need to rent the truck another time and find new people to pick up the stuff, all this for used stuff.

She was even asking for 1/2 the remaining toilet paper, cleaning supplies,  and in her assets list she had something like 450 items which included "mini-spatula" and other trivial items.  When we split a few things (before the no-contact), she argued that the box of crystal glasses was worth a lot and I would owe her money for it even though she did not want the glasses.

Are they are like this?  Or did I just get "lucky"?   You'd think that each of us would get what we want / need but noo... gotta make that complicated.   

I guess I had to vent a bit..  sadly I don't feel better!   :cursing:

It seems that she wants to keep the " door" open for herself and you have to make a decision whether it is in your interest. If you enjoy her game do it if not no reason not to put your foot down.
Experts say once you made the decision to leave ( her ) shut down all access, i have not done this but makes sense to me.
Must be very hard in reality. Especially the details of it. I read that these people may give you years of trouble when you try to separate from them, because despite calling you all the bad names in the book they really cling in many cases.
I am still with an abusive hb and did not make a final decision.
Ihope someone with experience will turn up for you.
Best to You!

Divorce in general is like this. I have a relative who spent three months just dividing what they owned; things went down like he got three dining room chairs and she got three. He got the dining room table (with only three chairs, LOL), and she got the kitchen table. Then she had a bunch of things that he was supposed to come by and get. When I moved into my own place, she gave them to me. It had been over a decade, and he never came back.

Selling used items is another sticking point. Rarely do you get what they hoped, and then you're the reason it worked out that way.

Is this happening through lawyers, mart555?

In my divorce, we (I) created a spreadsheet with major items like furniture and electronics. Then items were assigned values based on Craigslist prices. Ex was told to claim certain items, I was to claim others.

When we both wanted the same thing, lawyers looked at the $ value and that came out of the finances. Meaning, if we were both to get $10,000, I would get $9,550 if I wanted an item that was valued at $450.

Problem solving and finding solutions/negotiating/compromising is hard for someone with emotion regulation issues and she is probably at peak dysregulation right now. Anything you can do to minimize the number of decisions she has to make, the better for you.

My L hinted at (but did not advise me to) remove anything from the home that belonged to me. So I did. I went into the marital home and removed my belongings as well as most of our son's things.

There was zero punishment for doing that. Zero. In fact, I think the judge and lawyers are relieved when parties are proactive so that this kind of itemized nonsense doesn't clog up the courts.

What does your lawyer say?

My ex claimed we had 1.2 million in assets. She wrote out four pages with the valuations. The problem she had was that she claimed I was in possession of those things and I had rock solid evidence that was not true. We were in equitable distribution conference when my attorney showed some of the evidence proving her client had the items. We settled in about 15 minutes after that. The best thing was I agreed with her valuation, since I had proof she was in possession of it all. I simply asked for my half in cash. That did not happen but it was kind of amusing when her attorney saw my proposal.
I found that the courts drag things out and it was very frustrating in the beginning. I learned to use that time to gather evidence and have more patience. Also, my ex tended to give me more evidence the longer things took. My ex filed for divorce and it took over three years to finalize because of her attorneys legal maneuvering. I am certain it was at my ex's requests.

I live in a community property state; things may be different in other states.

My non-BPDex included on his inventory the cost of the pork chops that were in the freezer when he left (he took pictures of every item in the freezer).  By the time he filed for divorce, two months later, the children and I had already eaten them.  It was a big argument.

We had enough assets that the mediator told us we weren't even going to worry about household goods.  (We had already managed to split the furniture, we'd each marked what was our separate property [gifts], and I'd already sent him boxes of his personal stuff or things I didn't use.)  Our mediation was about 6 months after we separated, and by then he'd already bought the stuff that he needed to set up his apartment.  So we just assumed that the price of what was still in the house was equivalent to the amount he'd taken out of the bank account to buy replacements. 

She bypassed the lawyer for that step and went to our son directly.. which is a breach of her release condition.  Putting values on items we both want would be fine, but the problem is:
- she wants me to buy from her the items that she doesn't want.. even if I don't really want them.
- she wants to include the $2 items...
- there is no consistency with regards to personal items.  I'd have to give her money for my snowboard gear.. because "it was more expensive than her hockey gear". 

I had agreed to her list of requests, she'd get lots of smaller expensive stuff while I'd get more furniture but in the end she refused because she was afraid of forgetting an item or me getting a total value higher than hers. 

Anyways, her friends came with a truck today and we loaded it with a bunch of stuff:  furniture for which there was something worth the same (ie: bedroom sets) or stuff that we had multiple of each.  She didn't get what she wanted but I sure cleared my house of a bunch of stuff. She must be super pissed but hey, thanks to no contact, I don't have to deal with that !   I really wish she had agreed on making the assets separation final but hey, it was her choice.  She may regret it now.  He friends couldn't believe it.



As for the other replies: it looks like BPD isn't the culprit for this mess I have to deal with. It seems like it happens even when mental illness isn't in the mix!

Hey mart, this reminded me of when my BIL divorced my dBPD sister.  My niece and her husband helped BIL load truckloads of stuff and take it to a 10x20 storage unit.  It was stacked floor to ceiling.  My niece stood on the tailgate of the pickup and took pictures. In court, my dBPD sis whined that she got "nothing".  BIL's lawyer just showed the pics and pointed out that they came from a 12 by 70 mobile home. Even sis's lawyer rolled his eyes!

Oh and a nephew divorced a probably PD'd woman. She argued with him over a $2 pair of rose clippers. There is no reasoning with someone with a PD.

And 30 years after my own divorce (not a pwBPD) and 15 years after my husband's divorce ( ex with NPD/BPD)...

You know what? The discussions and posturing over property and items really made no difference whatsoever in getting on with our lives.

It 's more a step in the process of moving apart -- who gets what and whether it was equitable won't matter in later years.

well, this is actually me, not him. i was required to itemize and place a value on what i wanted. kinda pissed me off because i felt like i was doing my STBX and STBX-FIL work for them.

the reason i listed everything individually was so the STBX and STBX-FIL would have to wade through everything, and everything would then be up for mediation. truth is, i don't want them to know what i really want. this way it's a mishmash.

i doubt your STBX is doing it for the reason i did it. and i don't know how you get around it. this stuff is such a mess. please keep us posted.
TMD

Maybe what threw me off is the fact that it was so close to agreeing on the full division of household assets.  I added some furniture and pretty much whatever she wished on the list but she refused to sign on it as "final" in case what she ended up getting was worth less than what I was keeping.  It wasn't even a question of "did you get what you want?". It's "did we get the same value".  So yeah, she must have been pissed when she saw that her wishlist wasn't granted when the last truckload was emptied.    Then again, I shouldn't feel guilty because when she still had access to the house she took all my motorcycle gear and grabbed whatever she wanted from the kitchen and hasn't mentioned any of this or offered my stuff back. 

I'll table the list and I'm hoping that she'll sign off on it and make it final so I can send her a final truck load.  Then again, it doesn't matter what I do, she'd be pissed anyways since I don't bother putting values on items:  how much is an 18 years old leather couch that she's been whining to replace for the last 5 years worth? Not much! She doesn't want it but she wants me to pay her for it.   I just want to move on with my life and she is making it difficult.   Her feeling of entitlement is really powerful.   She's supposed to whine to her lawyer this week. 

On the bright side, the no contact order means that she cannot come back to the house for a while. I'm hoping that this divorce gets finalized before the order expires!