A Discount Price for All Your Good Deeds

[montecristo]

Shannon's birthday was Sunday. I called to say hi to her on Saturday and wish her happy birthday. I knew that I wouldn't catch her on Sunday. She had a couple of friends over on Saturday night. I suppose that Shannon was regaling them with tales from the anime convention that she went to in Bakersfield a couple of weeks ago. According to

Comments

Money is fungible.

[montecristo]

Yes, what I spend on my daughters should be just for them. What is envisioned when law is written and courts decree is not always what actually comes to pass. If my dear ex's decisions result in her living a lower standard of living than me then my ladies will likewise have a lower standard of living in staying with her than they would have if they lived with me. It's their choice. They understand it. The courts do not care what happens to Dad's money once they've given it to Mom - unless one makes a legal fight out of it, which would only waste more money than it saves. Divorce is a real crap shoot, as I am sure you can attest: sometimes one party loses and sometimes the other party does. Law is a roulette wheel. I just do what I can for my girls when they need a little extra help. I've gotten pretty philosophical about the whole state of affairs, now that it's been five years "a done deal."

Jackie's been attempting to pay a lot of her own expenses out of money she makes working at Target. I'm pretty proud of her. I think, very soon, she's going to be confronting the hard reality that a pet is a large sometimes prohibitively large, expense. I have the sneaking suspicion that it's worse than that and she's going to end up with the dog needing to be euthanized anyway, because of the cancer progression. As Jackie is fond of saying, and has been since she was old enough to make complete sentences: "Life is hard." Heh.

Re: Money is fungible.

[homc]

You are a good father. One of the reasons I didn't and haven't gone into to family law is that usually both parties bicker over money and forget about the children. Every one in awhile, you find a fellow like yourself!

Sorry to hear about the dog. Hopefully things will work out.

Re: Money is fungible.

[montecristo]

It's easy for everyone and anyone to lose focus on things when money gets involved. It's not that people don't care, for the most part, but that money is the only objective benchmark upon which people can focus in a legal environment. It's all about hard objective numbers or it's about nebulous subjective qualities that are hard to define, much less adjudicate. Fortunately, despite our differences of opinion on quite a number of things both my ex and I have always tried to do our best for our daughters. It makes things easier to deal with.