Victim #113: A Victim of an Online Affair

In 2005, After being married for 7 years I discovered that my wife was having an "on line" affair with a (married) guy that worked at another division of the company she worked for. Not only that but, they were planning a "wild sexual" rendezvous at the upcoming week long conference in Florida. I confronted her about it the day before the conference and told her she needed to find another place to live when she got back from the conference. I also called the other guys wife and told her what was going on and supplied her with copies of all the juicy e-mails. To this day I still think this guy has to sleep in the car a couple of nights a week when his wife brings it up.

Now on to the legal proceedings....

By the time she got back from the conference, I had rented an apartment and had started moving. She did the same. We disposed of our house in which we had no equity. It was my plan for me to file for the divorce. After about 3 or 4 months after the separation, my company didn't renew my contract and I was out of a job. No fault of my own.

After about 2-3 months interviewing for a new job, the wife calls and says she's going to get the divorce so she can get along with her life. Fine no problem. I even agreed to pay for half. It was to be a simple divorce and she didn't want anything from me but to be free. A few days before the divorce, I had to be out of town for an interview in another city and was not able to be at the divorce hearing. I figured no problem I'll just get the final divorce notice in the mail and that will be the end of it.

In about 10 days or so, I got the final decree and the judge granted the divorce along with $200.00 per week in transitional alimony for 2 years. Looking through the decree, I saw my income reported as "$0.00 and unemployed". I saw her income as employed and at $32,000. Prior to being laid off I was at $73K.

Neither one of us owe any serious money and she has more income now that when we got married. She also said she didn't ask for the alimony but the judge JUST GAVE it to her. I didn't have money at the time for a lawyer to appeal within the 30 day period and was unemployed for about 9 months.

She has since filed a contempt order asking for the back alimony. I have to be in court the 18th of this month. I don't know if I should bring up the fact that she verbally told me she would not ask for alimony, or maybe verify that I have been unemployed during most of this time, or challenge the fact that she has a college degree and was working during ALL of this time and actually her "life style has in fact has improved continuously since we got married in the first place. BTW, my new income is now at $60K. a $13K decrease.