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Building A Secret Escape Plan

January 27, 2014 By Mandy Walker

The decision to end a marriage is rarely an easy one and can it often take a long time to find the clarity that you’re making the right decision. When you have that clarity, the next step isn’t starting the legal process, it’s preparing for divorce and that can often take a long time.

In my interview with “Jeff,”  he shared that his wife has bipolar disorder. While his marriage has been over for some time, and he has now told his wife he wants to divorce, they are still living together. He’s trying to help her prepare for living solo. Nevertheless, because of her mental disorder, he says he has to be prepared to leave at any time and to do whatever is necessary to protect himself and their two sons. Here’s what Jeff says about building his ‘escape plan’.

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The things that are important to me are obviously my sons and myself.

So, I needed financial resources. I needed the ability to conduct business. I needed to be able to protect some of my keepsakes and assets that might be damaged. Building A Secret Escape PlanSo, my particular escape plan comprised of a separate bank account.

I adjusted my withholdings in my paycheck. You can only imagine the math major I had to be to do those because I had to keep the amount that was going into our joint account the same so my wife wouldn’t notice a change. So, I had to adjust my withholdings to increase my dependents and then split my direct deposit. I was able to skim off like $500 a month by claiming three extra dependents in my federal withholding.

I also had some of my own assets thankfully, that I was able to move into a separate bank account.

When starting the bank account, you need a post office box to send things to. The bank made some mistakes and actually had some stuff go to the house and it did create a pretty big mess. 

When you go to get a post office box, you need to show your I.D. and they have to assign it to your own address. So, you need a trusted friend to open up the P.O. Box for you and put their primary address on it. You can’t receive mail on it unless you’re there too and you show your I.D. But then your name becomes secondary and you can receive mail for it.

If you have your own bank account, get your own credit card, then do the autorenew for your storage unit and your P.O. Box, so that goes to that credit card that’s on your own bank account. That way you won’t forget to do it and have all your stuff closed, locked up or whatever.

Mail yourself a few pieces of mail beforehand with your return address to your work address or somewhere else, just to make sure it works. I did that and the Post Office screwed up and was returning all of my mail, including checks and credit cards.  You’ve got to account for mistakes.

Be careful when you change addresses of sensitive things, because as a security measure companies will put mail to your house saying, “We changed your address from this to this post office box,” and you will get caught that way. If you want to convert things like your own retirement accounts or things like that, what you can do is go to paperless and change your email maybe. You’ve got to be careful about what actually shows up at the house. I don’t know if switching to paperless would show up at your house. It depends on different providers.

The bank that I chose is still sending mail to my home address, even though I’ve changed my address four and five times. They’re a big company and they make lots of mistakes. So, when you do go to a bank, don’t give them your I.D. and let them start typing in your information. You need to give your address and your trusted friend’s address as the home address and don’t even let them know what your other address is.

They won’t accept an obvious P.O. Box, because you need something on legal records. You need a real street address. If you really want to be crafty about it, you can do Mail Boxes, Etc. place that has a real street address and a box number. You can use Mail Boxes, Etc. and it looks like a real street address too. That’s another way to do it.

I tried registering my storage unit. They said, “Oh, we need a real address, not a P.O. Box.” I said, “Crap.” I gave them my work address and of course they sent mail to it about insurance for the storage unit and advertisements. So, you need that trusted friend.

I know that I can go on Paypal right now and say, “Transfer $400 from my checking account to my Paypal account,” and then all it shows up on the bank statement is “Paypal Transfer for $400.” Then, from that Paypal account, you can go anyway you want with that money and it only stays in Paypal for the naming and everything, because that transaction with the bank is over.

If you are really desperate and you need money and it’s a hard time getting it, you can do stuff on eBay and sell it and have the funds go into your Paypal account. You can build it up that way by trying to sell stuff or get rid of stuff or do craft stuff or Etsy or whatever.

I also have a suitcase packed under my desk at work with clothes for the boys and me. The post office box has a letter I mailed to myself with cash and checks and other things that if I had to just up and disappear in the wind, I could.

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Jeff’s experience underscores how complicated this can be especially if you’re not ready to talk to your spouse about divorce and you’re trying to keep your preparations secret. So it’s important to understand how transactions will get processed BEFORE you initiate them. Jeff’s guideline not to trust any statement made by a service rep that was conditioned with, “I think that’s what we do …”

Incidentally, I have a P.O. Box for my business and it also comes with a regular street address so I can use that for services like Federal Express which won’t normally deliver to a P.O. Box. Other than companies in my local town, other businesses would have no idea it’s a P.O. Box.

Are you building an escape plan? What actions have you taken? What obstacles have you run into?

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Tagged With: bank account, escape plan, Jeff, P.O. Box, trusted friend

When Your Child Doesn’t Want To Visit

January 14, 2014 By Mandy Walker

Many divorced parents have to handle their child not wanting to visit either with them or their other parent.

I’m not talking about a one-off occurrence here but rather a repeated pattern and it can happen for a number of reasons. Learn those reasons and what you can do with this short video.

P.S. If you found this helpful,  you might also like my self-paced, online divorce coaching program. Each module in the program is support with video, audio and written content so you can absorb it in whatever format works for you. Plus, the modules come with helpful worksheets and other resources.

Tagged With: adapting to change, custody, developmental factors, environmental faactors, parenting time, visiting other parent

Choosing A Marriage Counselor

January 7, 2014 By Mandy Walker

Marriage counselling is a common recommendation for anyone facing marital difficulties. However, it’s not as simple as just finding a therapist and you both going for three sessions and problem solved.

For many of the people I’ve interviewed marriage counselling didn’t work. It may have worked superficially but it didn’t get to the fundamental, underlying issues and ultimately the marriage ended.

If marriage counselling is to stand any chance of working, it has to start with choosing the right counselor.

Recently a participant in one of my teleseminars shared that he had been married for ten years and is currently preparing for divorce. It’s been a long process for ‘Jeff’ since his wife has bipolar and ADHD. In a separate interview Jeff shared what he’d learned about choosing a marriage counselor. Here’s Jeff:

Finding the right marriage counselor is criticalWe went through a few counselors and one of the key things I’d recommend is to get a marriage counselor that is familiar with the neurological problems that you’re dealing with in your marriage.

We had normal counselors who were just trying to spread the blame equally and all roads led back to her behavior and her issues.

We finally got to a marriage counselor that understood her issues—a Ph.D., a real one, like the high class, high level marriage counselor. We had a together meeting during one of my wife’s crises to initiate it. I talked to the counselor beforehand to give her a list of all of the medications and to describe the situation and she seemed to be very familiar with it. She’s been very helpful.

My spouse had an individual meeting with the marriage counselor for the second meeting. The third meeting was individual with me. That’s when she advised me to build an escape plan, because I confirmed that I was in an abusive relationship. My wife was not under control and it was worsening. I need to be able to take care of me and my kids should she really go off.

I have to maintain a relationship with my marriage counselor such that my wife doesn’t feel like she’s being biased. For example, my wife told me, “How come the counselor answers your emails but doesn’t answer mine?” I thought, “Because I send her emails asking specific questions and they are no more than six sentences long and you write six or seven paragraphs and at the end I don’t even know what in the heck asked, let alone what’s going on,” but I didn’t say that to her. 

I wasn’t going to criticize her. Instead I sent a message to my counselor telling her that my wife felt that she was being biased and I asked the counselor to raise it for discussions if my wife didn’t say anything and she did.

You have to have your own relationship with your marriage counselor. I did ask her if her ethics and her requirements allowed her to keep things from my spouse. As a marriage counselor she has certain responsibilities to both of us and would it be running afoul of her ethics and her responsibility if she knew that I was trying to leave?

She assured me that she can.

Another recommendation I have is even if your spouse is completely un-supportive and thinks it’s just talking and a waste of time, get your own support, get your own counselor who can give you guidance and help you with your resolve. You need someone you can confide in.

***

For anyone who’s struggling trying to decide if it’s time to end their marriage, I would recommend starting with individual counseling or coaching rather than marriage counseling. I think the individual sessions will help to get to the fundamental issues in your marriage and once these have been clearly identified, then you can move on to marriage counseling.

How effective has counseling been for you? Do you have any tips on choosing the right counselor?

Photo Credit: 2014© www.clipart.com

Tagged With: ADHD, bipolar, Jeff, marriage counsellor

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2014 By Mandy Walker

Happy New Year
Welcome to the new year! Wherever you are in your divorce journey, it will be a year of change.

I wish you strength and courage

… to change your life

… to take one step after another

… to believe in yourself

… to discover who you are

… to laugh and smile, again

… to make your needs a priority

… to follow your intuition

… to disregard judgments from others

… to forgive yourself and others

With love,

Mandy

Tagged With: courage, new year, strength

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Mandy Walker Hi, I’m Mandy Walker, founder of Since My Divorce, one of the top divorce support blogs in the country. I am also a contributor to the Huffington Post, Your Tango and DivorcedMoms.com. More.
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Mandy Walker
Walker Business Ventures, LLC
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Phone: (303) 775-2729

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