If you haven’t read Part 1, please read that first.
Post-Divorce.
The years after the divorce were painful. Jill sunk into a depression and her difficult doctorate program coupled with her new status as a single mom left her hopeless and in despair. A year after the divorce, Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer. It decimated her mental health even after surgery was able to remove all the cancer without signs of having spread. Her finances were in shambles due to her already low student salary being split into child support, spousal support, and daycare expenses. She was racking up tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt paying for living expenses and Dan’s tuition. Jill worked hard to get along with Dan, care for her kids half the time, and still get her research done. Two years after the divorce, Jill graduated with her PhD, and had secured a post-doc at the same school until Dan could finish his degree at which point they would all move back to Colorado.
Dan, for his part, did well in his undergraduate education and had minor jobs here and there to supplement the child and spousal support he was receiving. Dan also took out student loans to make ends meet. He made new friends at school, and He and Hannah enjoyed a wonderful honeymoon. They also went regularly to visit Hannah’s family in SC. Dan worked hard to make birthdays special for the kids and help support continuity in their lives. Dan graduated with a degree in a vocational area certain it would provide a good job in Colorado. Hannah worked at the local library to supplement their income in that household.
As per the agreement Dan and Jill both remained in Massachussetts after the divorce. They even lived in the same town and the kids remained in the same school providing continuity. After the high-conflict divorce, Dan and Jill struggled to be civil and learn to co-parent together. After all, if you couldn’t make it work when married, odds of it working after divorce seem even lower. Jill felt she had to do everything. She took kids to doctor appointments, bought them shoes, clothes, paid for daycare, went to Parent-Teacher conferences, etc. Dan was used to caring for the kids full time, but had not been used to having a job or attending school while doing it. Dan felt like it was high-time Jill learned to take more responsibility for parenting their children. Although Hannah was there and provided some help, she needed to work to make ends meet.
It worked. Not well, but it worked.
Battles.
As Dan was nearing completion of his undergraduate degree, Jill was finishing her postdoc and looking for jobs in Colorado. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going well. Colorado didn’t have a strong industry segment amenable to Jill’s expertise. So Jill applied to jobs outside her field which companies intimated she was overqualified for. Academic positions are exceedingly scarce and despite many applications to the universities in Colorado, they all fell flat. Jill sent out over 50 applications in all, getting increasingly desperate with each rejection. Jill sent exactly one application somewhere outside of Colorado. A university. Fortunately (or unfortunately as the case may be), Jill was offered the job, setting up what would likely become the most painful decision of her life.
Dan was finishing up school and seemed to have good leads on jobs in Colorado. His vocation was universally needed and he had several companies express interest. He was also interested in getting a graduate degree. His plan was to attend school full-time and work part-time to make ends meet. However, by this time, Hannah was pregnant with their first child, due about the time the couple would be moving back to Colorado.
Unfortunate timing led to more painful legal battles as deadlines neared. As Dan graduated last he had control of the timing of the move as per the agreement. Jill, unable to find a job in Colorado began trying to negotiate with Dan about how they could make custody work if Jill accepted the job outside of Colorado. But negotiation and cooperation was never their strong suit, even when it involved the kids’ well-being. Several compromise solutions were put forth by Jill but Dan was insistent that the settlement be followed. So Jill filed a motion with the court to revisit the parenting time arrangement.
If the divorce was painful to level x, the custody battle was painful to level 100x. To Jill, this is what she had to do to force a renegotiation since a job outside Colorado was the only one she could get. But Dan did not see it this way. Dan felt personally attacked that Jill had filed this motion while Hannah was pregnant. He also believed that Jill was trying to take the kids away, and, fixed on this belief, pulled out all the stops. Dan and his lawyer seemed to make sport of long legal briefings filled with vitriol and accusations rehashing conflicts from their relationship prior to the divorce and decimating the relationship all over again. New claims about neglect and controlling behavior made Jill look like a monster. Jill, inclined more toward facts, tried to rebut the claims citing evidence and past court proceedings. Jill brought up Dan’s affair, but Dan continued to deny that Hannah had been anything but a friend – which seemed to settle the matter to the court. Jill was unable to counter Dan’s claims faster than he pushed them out. If Jill was about finding solutions to the difficult situation they were in, Dan seemed fixed on punishing Jill.
Jill fought HARD for what she thought would be best for the kids. Jill and her lawyer presented solution after solution after solution that they thought would be mutually agreeable and in the kids’ best interests. She tried to find ways for the kids to still spend half their time at both houses. But this court seemed to have a different objective – picking a winner and loser. Dan and Jill were literally pitted against each other and told that one would win and one would lose – without any advocate for what was best for the children. Jill was losing. She learned it was a losing strategy to try and argue for what might be best for the kids. Dan was winning by making lists of accusations and suggesting he was a victim of Jill’s educational ambitions. To Dan, Jill owed him the kids and a large payout from her degree. Dan would share the kids with Jill when it was convenient for him. Jill’s lawyer was baffled. Baffled as to why the relationship prior to the divorce was being rehashed. Baffled as to why a major fight was being provoked with half-truths and victimhood. Baffled that the judge was entertaining all the drama! Jill’s lawyer, like Jill, seemed clinically interested in finding resolution that was in the best interests of the kids. This was a losing strategy.
Ultimately there were too many falsehoods, and the court seemed disinterested in finding the truth. Dan sowed doubt, lies, and presented himself as a victim at every turn. Eventually the court seemed to stop caring about who was right and who was wrong, and even seemed to stop caring about what was best for the children. It just wanted resolution.
Dan convincingly won. In the new custody order:
* Dan would move home to Colorado and have the kids during the school year.
* Jill would have the kids for 8 of the 12 weeks of summer, and they would rotate holidays during the school year.
* Dan would get the kids for his week-long family reunion in mid-July each summer, interrupting Jill’s time with the kids during the summer and forcing a 28 hour drive for both parties and the kids.
* Jill would be able to see the kids any time she came to Colorado if she gave enough notice.
* Jill would have video chat time with the kids three days each week at a time agreeable to the parties.
* Dan and Jill would meet halfway between the 850 miles of distance separating their new locations for the exchanges.
* As Jill was starting a new job, and Dan was matriculating in graduate school, Jill was ordered to pay $5000 of Dan’s legal fees.
* Similarly, child support was recalculated using Jill’s academic salary plus her academic startup package, and assuming two months of summer salary from extra work during the summer. As Dan would be in school full-time he would have no income. Jill’s protests to see proof of Dan having enrolled in school were dismissed. Her requests that Dan be imputed income for having a degree she paid for and subsequently unused were dismissed [1].
* Jill would pay for health insurance, and 92% of out-of-pocket health care expenses.
* Jill was NOT granted relief from her “non-modifiable” spousal support obligation despite Dan being remarried. She would finish paying all 4 years of spousal support to Dan.
[1] The burden of proof for imputing income to a spouse is high, particularly if that spouse has little history of working. It’s much easier to persuade a court to impute income to someone who quits their job.
Wheat & Tares 
I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle Part 3. Sadness.
Splitting up a committed relationship like a marriage is always going to be painful. I don’t know how a divorce can end without devastation for both parties. Every couple I know that started out wanted an amicable divorce finished up in a place very far from amicable.
While the writing style in this piece is very clinical, I agree with some commenters from Part 1 that the story seems written with slightly more empathy towards Jill, and leads to the conclusion that she is getting the raw end of the deal. It seems common that the ‘primary breadwinner,’ if there is one in a couple, will be left with heavy financial obligations and little contact with the children after a divorce. Because of the continued influence of traditional gender roles, this is frequently the man. It would be interesting to do some type of clinical A/B testing with this story, swapping the roles of Dan and Jill for different groups, to see if people react or respond differently based on which gender is in the breadwinner role, and left paying child and spousal support with very limited custody rights.
Wow. Very sad and depressing. It has been said the only people who come out ahead in a divorce action are the attorneys. (Sounds like Dan had a better prepared attorney(?)–able to flood the case with enough past crap (from Dan’s view) that it torpedoed Jill’s case).
I had a friend whose husband was able to get her to agree that the child support he would pay would be classified as “alimony,” enabling him to deduct those payments on his tax returns, but she figured out too late she would have to pay taxes on those alimony payments while should would not have owed taxes for child support.
My experience with our court system as a juror was eye-opening–not in a positive way. I would never, ever want to be in a situation where 12 strangers
and a judge were deciding my fate. I also had experiences with child protective services and family court when I was trying to assist a ward member. Again, I found the experience very negative and eye-opening.
The pressure leaders put on RMs and young adults to not to delay marriage is just wrong. According to some data I’ve seen UT does not have
the lowest divorce rate per capita in the U.S.., and it is well-established that the younger one is when married the higher the divorce rate.
Correlation is not causation.
Is there no mediation required? Nor any pressure from judges to act with the welfare of any children the priority? Buying the services of a mediator saves court time and therefore family resources wasted on divorce lawyers. Are there no no-fault divorces?
I was also under the impression that paying proper provision for ex spouses and children was a condition of temple worthiness. None of this solves the problem I know, I’m just incredulous that courts can be manipulated into enacting such vengefulness, as if their job is to judge a criminal case rather than arbitrate a family issue.
I was a divorce attorney for a bit in the Mormon Corridor. Tragic stuff. Definitely saw too many young LDS couples that got married too young or too quickly. Many of them got married because the girl got pregnant. Many divorced because one spouse had problems with drugs (usually prescription) and/or was abusive.
One of the biggest problems is that the husband is often in a better position to pay enormous attorney fees. This is especially the case with men who make $60k or $80k doing construction, plumbing, etc. He’ll pay $5k to retain an attack dog attorney; wife, if she can even afford an attorney, may pay a $1,500 or $2,000 retainer. Husband’s attorney is able to spend more time digging up dirt, and so has an easier time winning the case. If husband loses, he revisits the case two years later, forcing the wife to again come up with the money for an attorney.
“Correlation is not causation.”
True
My overall point, which I didn’t clearly articulate, is that pressure on the part of leaders for our young people to not delay marriage often results in people rushing into marriage before they a)know themselves and b) know each other. It is not an atypical pattern (in places such as BYU) for people to meet, date, get engaged, and marry all within a year. Another complicating factor can be the time between wedding and when children are born.
Sure, but do we know that a short lead-up to marriage causes divorce? Or is that just “common sense?” Ditto with having kids quickly. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just pointing out that you’re still jumping from correlation to causation.
If x correlates to y and y is undesirable, then it’s tempting to say “well, get rid of x, obviously!” But if, say, it’s really z that is causing both x and y, then getting rid of x isn’t going to cause y to change.
This is especially important when talking about statistical correlations, because even statistical predictability only works for groups, not individuals. Individual instances are always the product of their particular variables and circumstances, not generalized ones.
68% of babies born in Baltimore are black, but my youngest son who was born in Baltimore did not have a 68% chance of being born black. He had a 100% chance of being born white. Changing hospitals wouldn’t have affected that.
Also, who clicks “thumbs down” on “correlation is not causation.” WTF, people.
Because “correlation is not causation” is always the fall back position of people who refuse to see a causal connection and its always given, just like you did, as a sweeping response that is supposed to end the discussion.
If all Jill had to pay was an additional 4 years of child support, then I don’t see the financial aspect of this as being unreasonable. As the primary breadwinner she does have an obligation to him. And while he is being an a$$ (as portrayed in the story), he is also insisting on an agreement that she did agree to. If she knew she was going to be living/working in Colorado then it was up to her to do her due-diligence and make sure she was pursuing an education that would gain her employment in Colorado. It’s genuinely hard for me to understand how at a PhD level she was not aware of the limitations of her choice of educational paths.
With that though, if the portrayal is correct and Dan’s goal is to punish Jill rather than the best interest of the kids, I feel deeply sorry for those kids. And it’s sad to me that the choice of the kids was not taken into consideration (not sure what age that starts to happen…?).
Okay, but no causal connection has been established here. Only concluded.
Interesting story so far. As Anonymous Jack mentioned, there seems to be a slant towards the story.
Including one part of the OP that states: “the court seemed disinterested in finding the truth.”
I think laws are written and courts try to uphold the ideal that what is best for the kids is always the top priority…but when they get into the proceedings and calculations and details…it can appear to be lost in the battles.
Coming out of the courts and the battles, the parents will have to accept what was agreed upon and make choices on how to be good parents in their given situations. Also…mediation is a good way to go.
But this story is from someone’s perspective on what is going on. When are we going to get part 3? I need to pop some popcorn.
68% of babies born in Baltimore are black, but my youngest son who was born in Baltimore did not have a 68% chance of being born black. He had a 100% chance of being born white. Changing hospitals wouldn’t have affected that.
Age at the time of marriage is a manageable variable. Race is not, unless you changed mothers. Faulty analogy.
Early marriage per se may not be the “cause” of divorce, but many of the things that often go along with it are certainly contributors – a lack of emotional maturity, a lack of life experience, shaky finances, lack of stable employment, etc.
The truly tragic part of this situation is how it ends up jacking the kids around. Adults, especially immature ones like Dan seems to be, beat up on each other all the time (and while that immaturity tends to be age-correlated, people can be jerks at any age). But the kids get caught in the middle. Hopefully they have both the inner strength and some good teaching in resilience.
But I’m not saying that [ birthplace : race :: age of marriage : divorce ]. I’m using birthplace : race as an example of high statistical correlation but no causation.
Exactly. That’s what “correlation is not causation” means. If lack of emotional maturity is the problem, then control for that. In general emotional maturity correlates with age, but not all the time. My point is that nobody is a general person. Everyone is particular. We don’t throw dice on random event/characteristic generation tables based on statistical probabilities to determine our particular circumstances.
Let me put it another way: when my wife and I met, I was a 21-year old white dude in Knoxville Tennessee. Statistically, most 21-year old white dudes in Knoxville are Protestant. If you pick a 21-year old white dude in Knoxville at random, smart money says he’s going to be Protestant. But despite that statistical probability, there was a zero chance that I was Protestant, because I’m not a population of individuals aggregated, I am a particular person, and when I was 21 I was Mormon, not Protestant.
If you pick potential marriage partners at random, then, sure, if you pick a young one, they’re likely to be emotionally immature. But people don’t pick potential marriage partners at random, you pick from the particular set of people available. When you date a 40-year old man, he’s not more or less likely to be emotionally mature; he is exactly as emotionally mature as he is, because he’s not randomly generated. He is a particular 40-year old man. Ditto for dating a 21-year old man. I was exactly as emotionally mature as I was, and there was no probability that I was going to be different at that moment in time.
Now, we can talk about the difficulty of gauging a person’s emotional maturity, but again, as long as we are talking about particular people, statistics only give us limited help.
We certainly use age a useful proxy for all of those things you talked about (lack of emotional maturity, a lack of life experience, shaky finances, lack of stable employment), and there’s something practical about that. But a proxy is always going to be an imperfect fit, and you’re going to be shutting out marriages that would have worked out just fine, and you’ll still have emotionally immature 40-year-olds getting married.