BPDFamily.com

Hi all,

I am looking for advice. So my wife (BPD) would like to divorce, I would like to move to this decision as well (normally the process is legal separation first for 6 months and then finalize divorce). Just that I did like to do it in normal way, but she wants to trough her lawyer and complicate things (that can still go trough District Commissioner or taken to court).

I was given the wrong information by the third person that her lawyer has frozen my account and that the case is waiting to be held in court. Based on that I gave my own lawyer power of attorney to represent me in divorce since I thought it would be complicated. But it turned out to be false. My wife since then also got in the hospital and now for the first time have psychosis and is not connected to reality, at least for now, so her lawyer said that she is waiting for her to get better before they proceed to divorce.

So we have no children, real estate together. I have sent her half of our savings. I will just need to sell the car and split the money to half. So my question is - do I really need a lawyer that costs me a lot of money (he already send me a very high bill for doing almost nothing) if the assets itself is almost nothing. Can I represent myself when her lawyer prepares all the paper for divorce? Are there any serious downsides? Has anyone been in this situation?

Another thing is also my wife is like BPD chameleon, so it can very well be that after she will get better, she will understand what she did and do not want to divorce anymore (I would still want to get at least legal separation in this case). So it has a lot of drama element and we are paying to lawyers for a really trivial matter, to say the least. Then there is an option that she would stay in psychosis for pro-longed time, I have no idea how we can proceed then.

Maybe in your case.

Personally, I would hire a lawyer to look over settlement at the very least. You don't want anything to come back later that will bite you. If her lawyer is aggressive, they may put in things that aren't in your best interest that aren't just financial.

But for the basic paperwork, you probably are OK.

That makes a lot of sense, MeandThee29. I will ask him to step down as my representative for divorce but will keep him in case I need assistance such as to overlook final asset paper so that her lawyer doesn´t make me agree on something more I need to pay then what is according to law. That will save a lot of his hours (and my money) he would count dealing with correspondence from my wife´s lawyer, and me contacting him.

Do you know if the other lawyer is going to try to bill you as the spouse or her as his client?  We don't know what your local, state or country's laws might be, that's why it's good to have some legal resources and support since "common sense" is left at the door when you enter court.  Lots of gotcha traps and hidden pitfalls by doing it yourself without some level of legal review.

You have no children together and minimal assets.  Likely your biggest headaches will be (1) the predictable delays and (2) the mounting legal expenses.  Her lawyer is a professional but can also be an overly aggressive foe.  His legal concerns are for his client.  Next his billings.  You essentially don't matter, legally.  If he can dump his client's costs onto you, he will.  If he can dump his own bills onto you, he will.  Your task is to reduce all that to only what is your legal obligation.

I´m pretty sure her lawyer will bill her, this is according to the law of this country I live in. Also, she took a loan of approx 9000USD just a month ago (she was in kinda paranoid mania state) with having any only little income (bank was stupid most likely to grant her that), and according to my country law she will be responsible for her own loans, I was very relieved to find this out. She spent that on the rental apartment and furniture, where the landlord now want to kick her out since she understands how mentally sick she is. She always gets in that kind of troubles when leaving me. But this time I am staying out of this drama.

My wife is now in a psychiatric hospital with heavy delusions for more than two weeks, she is with Jim Carrey and completely lost sense of reality. She never has gone that far... So her lawyer is waiting for her to get better. They may/can be also accusing me of DV, but that will be the separate case and I will have a criminal lawyer provided for free. In our country, many lawyers are interested in pushing the client to do it, since there is a lot of legal money and interests behind it. My wife did this already last year, I was in the police, but after more than 6 months prosecutors dropped the case since they could not provide any single proof, and I had taken my wife back after she said how sorry she was for doing that. Not the best move, I know, but shouldn't we forgive if we see some repentance?  :(  at least from then I was extremely careful when having intimate relationships with her since I know that later she can use the child as weapon, so I always protected myself. Thanks to God, that we are child-free or I would be probably facing child-abuse accusations on top... plus custody nightmare. When she goes black, it is VERY BLACK. She destroys my reputation to so many people and has a capability of distorting reality to incredible lengths. Then she comes back and doesn't understand why she did it, she just said she was having strong emotions, but that I had done nothing wrong to her! It has happened at least 10 times already. I always forgave her, because I hope I had a good heart.

So that's where I stand now. It is a very complex situation now. I still care about her, but I had made the decision that I cannot tolerate her behaviors anymore. So I want to be at least legally separated. But that will not be possible most likely before she comes out of her psychosis. And knowing her, she can beg me to take her back after she comes out from hospital, but I am firm in the resolution I won't do it. I had reached my breaking point after 8 years of being together. We had divorced once already two years ago after her mom died, but I took her back and we got married for second time  :) Only on the second day after our second marriage, she changed completely and became very verbally abusive.

I should have been smarter, but at then I still thought that I am mostly to blame, she had tricked me into thinking that for more than 6 years, while in reality that wasn't the case, I had become a very responsible and loving husband... but I was still young back then, in my 20'ties and wanted to do best I could for my marriage so I took my guilt for most of the things. Now, this has been changed dramatically and I cannot anymore agree on all those crazy false accusations she throws at me when she dysregulates. It has become worse and worse, so that is why I need to protect myself and let her take her own responsibility for her actions instead of fixing everything for her after she makes false moves. It is scary because she is so destructive when alone, that she can become very suicidal, but I have already accepted the fact, that I cannot save her, because she will always view me as oppressor if I try to correct her and make our life more stable. I hope she will somehow find a motivation to start working hard on her issues and drop her deeply rooted victim mentality (that would be a true life miracle, I tend to believe that will never happen, at least not in long run), but I cannot be part of that at least in any near future, because I had almost lost my own health, finances, I had to quit my job, giving everything from me to combat her illness, it was way stronger than I am. It was like fighting with an elephant. Just impossible to win, so I let it go :)

That was a bit off-topic, I guess... But I just felt I will put that out for context.