Good, you did the right thing (re. Isabella). There's a lot to be said for that.
Kyle,
Regarding your post of yesterday:
specialman said:
They've been fucking around the clock....
Sounds like your wife and her lover are trying to convince themselves that what they're doing to you is justified, because they're so passionately in love they can't help themselves.
specialman said:
.... Then today I was going to meet my friend Rob who is going to try and get me that job at his company. As I'm about to leave, I walk out of the bathroom and it's just me and Isabella [my wife's and her lover's infant daughter]. They fucking went out. ....
Confucius say: before others can use you as a doormat, you have to lie down.
specialman said:
I brought her [Isabella] with me and left her at my sisters, who thankfully was willing to watch her for the afternoon.
Good. You did the right thing, despite your feelings of anger. Fortunately, your sister did too. As you obviously appreciate, Isabella is innocent. She didn't ask to be born and has nothing to do with what's going down all around her.
There's a lot to be said for "doing the right thing."
Regarding your post of today:
specialman said:
.... I've started with divorce preparations.
I have no idea what the divorce laws are in your state (I gather you live in the U.S.), but this is something you want to do carefully. Most states now have "no fault divorce" laws — but it may be a good idea to consult a divorce attorney briefly if he/she is willing to answer a couple questions for little or no charge — say, something on the order of zero to $100. In fact, I recommend this. My impression is, a lot of attorneys who are "reasonable" won't charge you anything if they don't "do anything" other than answer a couple of simple questions. Determine this, however, before you start asking.
I suggest your first question should be: if your wife has a child by a man other than you, and you divorce her for that and related reasons, will the court system in your state hold you responsible for child support costs because — as your wife's legal husband during pregnancy and birth — the child is *presumed* to be yours, unless you prove otherwise?
An additional question, I suggest, should be: if you can avoid being held responsible for child support costs because your wife's child was not fathered by you, what will you need to do to *prove* you are not Isabella's father? Although the answer to this question seems obvious to you, it may not be a matter of simply pointing out that you and your wife are both white but Isabella is (mostly, or half) black. I say this because the court system almost certainly deals with divorces among many different flavors of interracial couples with varying differences in skin color. Thus, you may need to obtain a paternity test to prove you are not Isabella's father.
This point is important, because if you're held legally responsible for child support due to (what will seem to you to be) some technicality you overlooked, it can be a large fraction of your income for the next 18 years.
Finally, I strongly suggest resisting the urge to try to "punish" your wife in divorce court. If you do, you might gain — at most — a small amount beyond 50% of your joint assets, but there's a good chance your wife would gain the small extra amount (because she is Isabella's mother). AND, your attorney and court costs could easily be 10 or more times greater than anything you could conceivably gain by taking your wife to court. The emotional costs of protracted divorce proceedings are also extremely high. Believe me, you don't want to get involved in that. Rather, you want to put all this in your rear-view mirror (as I mentioned above).
—Custer
* The above is free legal advice you may want to consider worth the price, because I'm not an attorney. My brother, however, went through a protracted divorce a while back as a result of his ex-wife insisting on taking him to court. Resolving it took years. The financial and emotional costs to both of them were *much* higher than necessary.