My best friend's divorce

06/29/2013

A ring and a $585,000 house, this is where the story ends. Where it begins, who knows. Some speculate a year some even further back than that.

My best friend John and his wife Kat was your not so normal couple. They had it all. They both had great jobs, Kat a vagina nurse, as John calls it, and John working for Converse in the marketing department.
They have two young children, Holden who’s 4.5 and Grace who is 1.5. John took care of the finances and pretty much bought Kat whatever she wanted and it always had to be the biggest, the best and the shiniest.

Now it wasn’t quite a perfect relationship as they would argue and fight a lot, they both wanted it their way and John loves to joke around (except when the jokes on him…as I come to learn) and Kat didn’t like his humor some of the time but at the end of the night they would cuddle up on the couch and watch television together and everything would be ok.

Some day in February, before Valentine’s day, John had called me up to tell me that he and Kat are having marriage problems. They went to marriage therapy in December, Kat was feeling depressed, going to sleep by 8pm every night and hardly eating, leaving John to take care of the kids himself as far as the bedtime routine. Kat said she didn’t know what was bothering her. She said that she just wasn’t happy anymore and that she just felt tired. John, through going to counseling, understood that he had to make some changes. He couldn’t have it his way all the time. He worked on this, when we went for dinner, taking into consideration what others wanted instead of just driving to whatever he wanted, which was pretty much the same 5 restaurants.

Valentine’s day John took Kat to a top of the line restaurant. He bought her a nice gift too. She looked at him and said “You are not doing this cause you want to, You are doing this because you have to.” This was far from the truth. These words were like a dagger through John’s heart. From that moment, John knew that it was over. He tried all he could to save the marriage.

There was a Sunday night in February, (not sure before or after valentine’s day) that Kat was away in New York for a nursing conference. She called John when we were in the car. She was on speaker. She sounded tired, depressed. She called to ask if John wouldn’t mind if she were to stay in New York for an extra night. She said the hospital will pay. She said it was raining and would rather drive home in the morning when it wasn’t raining. John said no problem.

In early March, Kat said she needed a break. She moved in with her parents what was supposed to be for 2 weeks. They did the sharing of kids thing. Holden mentioned something to John about a guy name Nick…John didn’t say anything. John went to drop off the children in late March and he saw men’s sneakers and a I-phone by the front door and on a table in the living room. John still didn’t say anything. He was just shocked. He had no idea what to think.
He also found out that the kids were sleeping in the same room as the grandparents while Kat had turned the computer room, into her own room.
I do not recall when John confronted her or what was said about Nick.

Kat’s parents, Kat and the kids were going to go on a cruise for Kat’s birthday on May 31. John was wondering how Kat was paying for this.

By the end of March, beginning of April they decided they would get a divorce.
John and Kat sat down with Holden to explain to him that mommy and daddy are not going to live with each other anymore. At 4 years old, he understood some of it but not the magnitude of it.
They put their house up for sale.

All the while, John is finding more and more about this guy Nick. The more he finds out about him the more he wonders about when Kat met this guy because 2 years ago, Kat had a nursing conference in California.

This guy is originally from California. Was in New York before coming to the Boston area. He sells or fix’s medical machines such as Ultrasound machines. He comes from money, as his parents own a house worth 1.4 m and he sold his house in Cali for 338,000.

In early May, John finds out from Holden that Nick is going on the cruise too.

It is understood that Kat likes the biggest-best-prettiest of everything. However, John was trying to cut down on their debt before they sell the house.

When Kat moved into her parents place, she went to the container store and bought $200 worth of containers so she could put her clothes in at her parent’s house instead of going to a dollar store or a Target store and buying just plastic containers or a chest of drawers
Kat also needed to spend $75 for a new dog leash, collar, two bowls and some treats….instead of taking the one from the house.
As I have said, John works for the sneaker company Converse. He gets sneakers for 1/3 the store price. Kat decided that Holden and Grace both needed new sneakers. Kat bought Holden these sneakers that the entire top part of the sneaker lights up. These sneakers cost $100 and I’m unsure how much she paid for Grace’s sneakers.
Lastly, and Lisa told me about this…before Kat went away to New York, she had gone to a lingerie store and bought $300 worth! (why would she need lingerie for a nursing convention?)

The Saturday of the cruise, John, his friend Dave and myself went out to dinner to Wild buffalo wings. Dave was going through his facebook page cause he had not checked it in a few days. He saw a picture that he said to John, “Hey John, I think you should see this” Dave handed John his phone and on it was a picture of Kat from the cruise. On her finger was a big sparkly ring.

There was also pictures of a “gorgeous house” in the town her parents lived in.
This gorgeous house, Kat was buying with this guy. This house cost $585,000!!!
Did I mention they weren’t divorced yet? Did I mention she had debt she had to pay from selling the house as well?

Kat paid $2000 for a lawyer to prepare divorce papers. John offered to pay half but Kat said no.
When John got the papers, he was furious!

The custody would stay the same. She would get the children for 4 days and he would get them for 3 days.
She makes more than he does but he gets a very very nice annual bonus that if included, she makes only a little bit more than he makes.

She wanted him to pay her 960 a month for child support plus health insurance for not only the children but her too.

If he signed off on that, he wouldn’t be able to or barely be able to rent an apartment in Massachusetts with a car payments and food. Never mind buying things in general.
This was just the big things, and that which I remember mostly.

John wanted to split it down the middle 50-50 on paying for the children’s stuff. He said he has no problem paying 100% of the health care for his children, but not for her too.
John didn’t see why he had to pay her 960 a month when he would buy them clothes and food when they were in his care.

Much to the angriness John had, he got his own lawyer to look at the papers. The lawyer said that she had the papers filled out as if she had full custody. After his lawyer doing all the calculations as if they had shared custody, she would have to owe him $150 a month.
*side story, Kat and Nick had to put the down payment of $45,000, down on their house by the following Monday, which was this past Monday, or they would lose the $45,000. When John told the lawyer about the house that Kat is buying with Nick, since John and Kat are technically married, John can attach that $45k to what she makes (I guess) and she would have to owe him $600 a month. But John didn’t want to do that. He wanted to make this as civil as possible. John’s lawyer told him that he is a better man than himself. He would have gone after the money.

John spent 6 hours with the lawyer between Friday and Saturday. He also was moving on Saturday too back to his mother’s house while putting some things in storage.
John sent the papers back to Kat. Kat called him yelling, saying that she’s not happy about this but she’s going to sign it anyways. (…so she didn’t lose the house or the money on the house)
His Lawyer fees ended up costing him $1700. However, he saved himself the $960 a month and the difference of paying for her health insurance.

Monday morning, they went to court. John had to take a day off from work. What a way to use up one of your vacation days. John called me on the way from court to get pizza in Boston. He wanted to tell me how it went. He said that he got there at 8AM and his case wasn’t heard till 10:30.

He was happy though. Well, happy this was over-done with.
He is officially single again.

He told me that on Saturday when he dropped the kids off at her parent’s house, Nick was there. John said he wanted to “Punch him in the face”. I said, you are being nice about it. He agreed.

The most emotional painful thing I heard came from Holden a few weeks ago when we went out for dinner. Holden said to John
H: I can run faster than you.
J: no you cant
H: yes I can.
J: no you can’t beat me in a race.
H: I beat you yesterday.
J: You weren’t with me yesterday. You were over Papa’s and GG house yesterday.
H: oh.
J: Did you mean you raced Nick?
H: ya. That’s it. I beat Nick. We were racing in the back yard. He beat me too but I beat him more.

John quickly changed the topic. You could hear it in his voice. He wasn’t mad or upset, he was hurt.

So while Kat was moving on to a $585,000 house, has a ring on her finger and will be with someone. John will be back in his mother’s house, single, in the bedroom he grew up in, trying to figure out how he is going to pay off his debt and to figure out where this all went wrong.

There was a lot of side stories that I left out about the trouble John’s mother and sister (tx Lisa) was causing that eventually got them both blocked from Kat’s fb. From an outsider, they were all being immature.