The next morning at 8:15, I pulled out of our driveway.
There was a paper cup of coffee in the holder.
The divorce packet lay on the passenger seat.
I had left Ben and Ellie with my sister, Mara, who was taking them to school.
I told them I had an appointment.
That was true.
I did not tell them I was afraid of discovering how little protection I had.
My attorney's office was in a modest building in Indianapolis.
A small flag stood beside the reception desk.
A woman named June gave me intake forms and pointed toward a chair beneath a framed landscape print.
I counted the ceiling tiles while I waited.
Attorney Leah Moreno met me with a legal pad and two sharpened pencils.
She was direct without being cold.
“Tell me exactly what he said,” she asked.
So I did.
I repeated the threat about the children.
I described the papers.
I told her which line I signed.
She examined every page.
Finally she looked up.
“You know this isn't final, right?”
I nodded.
“I hoped you'd confirm it.”
“You acknowledged receiving a proposal,” she said. “You didn't agree to every term. Even if you had signed a proposed settlement, a court would still have obligations where children are concerned.”
She turned the parenting plan toward me.
“He cannot decide custody by himself.”
I had held myself together all morning.
Those words made me look away.
Leah waited.
Then she asked about the house.
“Our names are both on the mortgage,” I said.
“And the deed?”
“Both, as far as I remember.”
“Then we need the recorded deed. We also need to understand how it was purchased and paid for.”
I opened the blue file box.
The first envelope held the closing statement.
The second held a copy of the deed.
The third contained a set of old account statements from the year we had bought the property.
Leah placed each document in a separate pile.
“Good organization,” she said.
“Scott calls it hoarding.”
“Today it saves us time.”
The house wasn't a secret inheritance or some magical property loophole.
It was our family home.
We had purchased it while married.
We both had legal interests that would need to be addressed.
But Scott had omitted something important from his paperwork.
He listed the consulting business at almost no value.
He also described our joint savings as nearly exhausted.
That did not match the statements I had brought.
“I used to handle vendor payments,” I told Leah.
“He stopped giving me access last year.”
“Do you have records you obtained lawfully?”
“Old statements from our joint accounts and business reports I received when I did the books.”
“Keep those. Don't guess passwords or enter accounts you aren't authorized to use. We'll use formal discovery for the rest.”
She showed me his financial disclosure.
There were no supporting statements attached.
No valuation of the business.
No accounting of certain accounts we had previously used.
“This is a starting position,” Leah said. “Not a judgment. We need evidence, and he'll have an opportunity to explain.”
She asked about the children next.
Where they slept.
Who took them to school.
Who scheduled appointments.
How much time Scott spent caring for them.
I answered without embellishment.
He had attended Ellie’s orchestra concert in May.
He had missed Ben's dentist appointment in June.
He had coached one soccer season three years ago.
He knew their birthdays.
He loved them in his own way.
And he had threatened to take them away to force me to surrender.
Leah wrote that last point in the margin.
“Do you have the threat in writing?”
“No.”
“Write down the date and exact words now. Keep communications about the children in text or email when practical.”
Before I left, we discussed immediate arrangements.
We would file a response within the applicable deadline.
We would request temporary parenting orders if Scott tried to change where the children lived.
We would also ask both parties to preserve relevant financial documents.
I paid the consultation fee with my own bank card.
It was more money than I liked spending in one morning.
Outside, I sat in the car until the windshield stopped looking blurry.
Then I called Mara.
“Are the kids okay?”
“Ben forgot his lunch and Ellie pretended not to be worried,” she said. “So, pretty much a school day.”
I laughed once.
Then I cried.
Mara stayed on the line.
That evening Scott called.
“Everybody's saying you handled this like an adult,” he said.
I was putting plates on the table.
“That's nice.”
“I'm going to have my attorney move quickly.”
“Then our attorneys can talk.”
He went silent.
“Your attorney?”
“Yes.”
“I thought we agreed.”
“We agreed I received your papers.”
He muttered something and hung up.
I served dinner.
The children argued over who had taken the last dinner roll.
For ten minutes, we were three people eating chicken at a table.
I wanted to keep giving them ten minutes like that.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: Scott Celebrated in His Downtown Apartment While the Old Blue File Box Grew Heavier
The Night Scott Put Divorce Papers Beside Our Dinner and Mistook My Signature for Surrender
Part 2 of 16
