{"id":41,"date":"2020-09-23T22:09:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T22:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.0.253\/wordpress\/?page_id=41"},"modified":"2021-09-13T23:59:59","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T23:59:59","slug":"chapter-2-divorce-papers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/?page_id=41","title":{"rendered":"Chapter AB: Divorce Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The saga of my divorce begins on the last day of the 2011\/2012 school year, although I suppose things had been deteriorating for many years. We usually spent a couple of weeks in Michigan each summer visiting Rita\u2019s family and my extended family. As is typical, I had quite a few things to schedule that summer (thesis defenses, preliminary exams, research meetings, etc.), and I scheduled everything early in the summer because Rita said she wanted to stick with tradition and be in Michigan late in the summer.<\/p>\r\n

Late that evening, Rita came into the bedroom after I had gone to bed and informed me she was taking the kids to Michigan in the morning.\u00a0<\/span>I\u2019m not sure if she specifically said I wasn\u2019t invited, but it was pretty clear I was not.\u00a0<\/span>Plus, my schedule would have required me to drive back and forth multiple times.\u00a0<\/span>Feeling like she set me up–she had to have planned this long in advance because she watched two or three infants each day–I got pretty annoyed.\u00a0<\/span>This was also the first time I really thought the marriage was in serious trouble. I was an idiot in that regard.<\/p>\r\n

We got into one of the worst arguments we\u2019d ever had. It was purely verbal, as all our arguments had always been, and at first, there was no outright yelling that I recall; the kids slept through it as far as I know. I didn\u2019t want to be away from the kids, and she wouldn\u2019t tell me when she was coming back. Plus, we only had one car at the time, so I wasn\u2019t sure how I would get around. She mentioned she didn\u2019t know if <\/i>she was coming back. I was not aware of my custodial rights at the time, so this really scared me. At probably around midnight, she decided she was leaving and got the kids out of bed and dressed. We argued furiously about this because I didn\u2019t want her driving when she was tired. By that point, I had given up on talking her out of going. As she had apparently already packed the car–I think she was planning to leave before I got up in the morning to avoid an argument, and I’m not even sure why she told me besides to start the fight–she herded the kids downstairs to leave. As far as I knew, she had gotten the kids in the car when I decided to go downstairs to try to stop her by maybe preventing the garage door from opening.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"I saw this little Tiffany-style lamp (like the one shown) on a table in the hallway on the way to the stairs. It was touch-activated and always annoyed me that Rita never turned it off. On the way past, I swatted at it and knocked it off the table. In doing so, I opened a huge gash in my finger. In hindsight, maybe I should have claimed Rita cut me. I was later accused of throwing it, and I wish I had because there was no one nearby, and if I h<\/span>ad picked it up, I wouldn\u2019t have cut my finger. I got downstairs, and my finger was bleeding a lot. I decided I needed to go to the hospital to get stitches. When I got to the garage and asked Rita to take me (in our only car), she refused. I had a small 50cc scooter that I used for short trips to and from work, weather permitting. I tried to ride that to the hospital in the dark and rain. I got about a mile before deciding it was crazy for me to try to get to the hospital riding with one hand and barely able to see, so I turned around. Figuring Rita had already left, I planned to bandage my finger the best I could for the night.When I turned onto the quiet street on which we lived, I saw two or three police cars. Instead of just leaving, Rita had apparently called the police. I have no idea when she called or even why she called. I suspect she called before I left because she thought I would prevent her from leaving and then stayed for them to arrive. This was pretty much my first adversarial interaction with the police. I recall being a bit belligerent with one officer because I wanted to go upstairs to take care of my finger, which was dripping blood. He didn\u2019t want me to. I now understand better how and why the officer acted the way he did. Domestic incidents can be extremely volatile, and I\u2019m sure the thought went through his head that I might be going to get a weapon. The officer followed me upstairs and watched as I bandaged my finger. Rita was not in the house, and the garage was closed, so I had no idea if she\u2019d left. I later learned that she took the kids to the neighbor\u2019s house. I spoke to the officers, and they agreed it was a bad idea for her to leave in the middle of the night, and they apparently talked her into staying the night at the neighbor\u2019s house and waiting until the morning to leave.<\/p>\r\n

I suppose she was scared as this was probably the maddest I have ever been in the 25 years we had known each other and the only time I had ever broken something in anger. There were no weapons in the house besides kitchen knives, but it\u2019s hard to tell what she thought I might do. I have never struck another person in anger or tried to injure someone, but I suppose she didn\u2019t know what was going through my head.<\/p>\r\n

The police called an ambulance; I\u2019m not sure why they didn\u2019t just let me take the car, which was apparently still in the garage. I got a few stitches and walked the ten miles home. It was dawn by the time I got there, and I was exhausted. I had no idea if Rita had left by that time as I didn\u2019t bother to check if the car was in the garage, and she and the kids were not at the house. I went to bed, and the car was gone when I got up.<\/p>\r\n

I had always taken care of our finances, but around 2010 Rita asked if I could show her what needed to be done because she wanted to understand our financial situation better. In hindsight, I wonder if she had ulterior motives for this. When she left, I needed to start paying bills again and found about five months of unopened mail in a desk drawer. Concerned, I checked our accounts and realized that Rita had essentially stopped paying bills for at least four months. She had neglected to pay the mortgage and the home equity loan we had from the shoe store. I checked my credit score, and it had plummeted to something around 500. I still don\u2019t know why she quit paying the bills besides possibly being depressed, and I have no idea why she didn\u2019t simply ask me to take over the task.After about four weeks (and telling me for two weeks that she\u2019d be leaving in a day or two), I rented a car and drove to Michigan. When I got there, she had her entire family \u201cguarding\u201d her parent\u2019s house. I finally got her to come outside, and we got into an argument about seeing the kids. Her dad finally came out and said, \u201cYou (Rita) need to let him see his kids.\u201d They let me in, and I visited with the kids. I wound up staying at her parent\u2019s house for about three days until I couldn\u2019t take it anymore. Her mother raising her fist to hit me after telling her to shut up and stop harassing me about moving was the last straw. We drove back to State College; I followed her as I didn\u2019t trust her not to turn around.<\/p>\r\n

When we got back, she said she was thinking about filing for divorce, and after a few weeks, she decided she was going to do it. I told her I was fine with that. She pleaded with me constantly to not let things get ugly. I told her I wouldn\u2019t as long as she didn\u2019t try to keep the kids from me. She then started pleading with me to let her and the kids move to Michigan. As I had become more versed in my custodial rights, I told her I would fight that.<\/p>\r\n

I got divorce papers just before our 20th<\/sup> anniversary on August 8; I\u2019m glad I hadn\u2019t gotten her anything. My first experience with the Centre County legal system was not good when I read about the required Education Program for Separated Parents class that I needed to attend. You can read more about that in the sidebar.<\/p>\r\n

It was clear that I needed to move out, but it was a horrible time of the year to find an apartment in a small college town. I finally found something with a lease starting on January 1, 2013, about four months after she\u2019d filed for divorce. So I stayed at the house, and we slept in different rooms, which we\u2019d been doing for years anyway because of Amanda\u2019s health. We lived peacefully for the most part during this time.<\/p>\r\n

I was constantly confused about whether she wanted to try to reconcile.\u00a0 For example, she got upset when she discovered I’d made accounts on a couple of dating websites, saying that doing so proved I was never interested in making the marriage work. She told me she was lonely and I didn\u2019t pay enough attention to her. Not really wanting the divorce at the time–although in hindsight, not having to deal with her daily is good for my mental health–I tried to be more affectionate to her, and we semi-reconciled; at least that’s the impression I had. Since I\u2019d found a place and signed a lease at that point, I figure the \u201cspace\u201d might do us good.<\/p>\r\n

Later on, I was accused of making unwanted sexual advances towards her during this time and going into \u201cfits of rage\u201d when I was rebuffed. In fact, during this time, we had more sexual contact–as always, completely consensual–than at any time in the previous five years. There was something about it being \u201cbad\u201d that led to it; we actually discussed this. I recall five encounters with her initiating three of them; she was reading the Fifty Shades of Grey books. In fact, Rita said one time, \u201cIf we have sex like this more often, I might have to rethink the divorce.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

We talked a lot during this time. She kept telling me she wanted to move to Michigan to be closer to her family; I was not aware of her extra-marital affair at this time. She tried to convince me to quit my job at Penn State and find a job in Michigan. She told me her decision to get a divorce would either be the best or worst one she\u2019d ever made. I have no idea how she feels about that decision now.<\/p>\r\n

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The Scam Called the Education Program for Separated Parents<\/div>
When you are involved in a divorce in central Pennsylvania, one of the summonses you get says that you have to attend the Education Program for Separated Parents. At first, I\u2019m thinking, \u201cOkay. I can see how this would be useful for a lot of people.\u201d However, as I read more about it and saw the registration form, I started to realize the whole thing seemed more like a shake-down than anything else.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

The program is (was?) run by a retired Penn State associate professor named Jennifer Mastrofski, who developed it with a local judge while working at Penn State. The class was initially offered through Penn State but is now offered solely by a consulting company owned by Mastrofski. The program’s cost was $55, although the letter from the court said it was $50. Apparently, Mastrofski increased the price without notifying the court. The letter from the court said that anyone filing divorce or custody documents that have children under the age of 18 must register and attend the class within 60 days of filing. Thus, since I had not filed anything, I thought maybe I could get out of it. That was the first of many times the courts decided what they’d written was not really what they meant. After I complained a little bit, the person I spoke to at the courthouse acknowledges the whole thing seemed a little shady and told me that I actually had another option. This option was to take the class online at http:\/\/online.divorce-education.com. This cost $40 and was much more convenient than driving 20 miles to spend four hours in a little conference room in the middle of a weekday. I asked why they didn\u2019t mention this in the letter, and she said, \u201cThey didn\u2019t want us to.\u201d Hmm? So, in summary, Jennifer Mastrofski has convinced the courts in central Pennsylvania that nearly every person involved in a divorce must pay her $55 to, according to Rita, watch videotapes she\u2019s made of children talking about their separated parents. It would be interesting to explore the financials of Mastrofski\u2019s consulting business to see how much she makes off this.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

My take on this: it\u2019s a scam that governments and private industry around central Pennsylvania have implemented for the sake of protecting children. What if I wanted to start a competing consulting firm? Would that be allowed? Would they include it in the letter from the court? In general, I can certainly see that it would be a good idea for most parents, and it would be hard to determine which parents could safely opt out. However, advertising only one option to complete this requirement that puts money into the pocket of someone who worked to make it a court-ordered requirement is really shady. The other thing that I cannot fathom is that the courts require this but not any counseling to try to save the marriage. Isn\u2019t that what would be best for the kids, trying to save the marriage. It seems that the marriage counselors are not as savvy as Jennifer Mastrofski (who is also affiliated with the PSU business school) to realize the way to guarantee your business thrives is to force people to use it through corrupt courts and politics.<\/div><\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

During 2012 she also took quite a few \u201cme weekends,\u201d leaving the kids with me.\u00a0 I was thrilled she was taking some time for herself, but this was always extremely stressful on Amanda, who had essentially become co-dependent with Rita–Rita had convinced her that I couldn\u2019t care for her adequately.\u00a0 I recall running down the street chasing Amanda as Amanda chased her mother as she drove away. Later she claimed in court that she couldn\u2019t leave the kids with me because Amanda required her<\/em> care.\u00a0 Later I realized that these trips were mostly to see her boyfriend.
One night in late December, Amelia came to my room because she couldn\u2019t sleep.\u00a0 She usually watched movies to fall asleep on an iPad which she used as a security blanket, but it had a dead battery, and the charging cable was not long enough to reach my bed from the closest outlet.\u00a0 I took her back in with Rita and plugged the iPad in.\u00a0 She asked me to stay and hold her as Rita was sleeping.\u00a0 Amanda was asleep in her bed in the room.\u00a0 I climbed into the far side of the bed (against a wall) with Amelia.\u00a0 She eventually fell asleep.\u00a0 As I was climbing out of bed, I noticed Rita\u2019s cell phone wasn\u2019t locked, and there was a text message alert.\u00a0 Rita had been guarding her phone obsessively; in hindsight, I was so dumb not to see what was going on–so I decided to see who was texting her.\u00a0 It was her \u201cfriend\u201d Mike.\u00a0 The message and previous ones suggested they were far more than friends at the time.\u00a0 I jostled Rita to wake her to talk.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t angry at the time because I didn\u2019t know her relationship with Mike had been going on long before she filed for divorce.\u00a0 I had been testing the dating waters, so I figured she was too.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to her to see if Mike was the real reason she pushed so hard to move to Michigan.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

Jostling Rita didn\u2019t wake her.\u00a0 I then lightly slapped her hip.\u00a0 She still didn\u2019t wake up.\u00a0 I then slapped her hip a bit harder, but certainly not hard enough to leave a mark or wake the kids sleeping in the room, and she woke up.\u00a0 We went into my bedroom and argued\/talked into the night for many hours.\u00a0 Things ended peacefully, and she told me that even though she liked Mike a lot, he wasn\u2019t the reason she had grown so adamant about moving to Michigan.\u00a0 Clearly, this was a lie in hindsight.<\/p>\r\n

This incident apparently played a large role in Rita getting a protective order, as apparently, this smack on the hip got distorted into me slapping her.\u00a0 Of course, when a person tells the court someone slapped them, it is assumed that means someone slapped them in the face.\u00a0 The judge apparently never actually questioned Rita about where and how hard I “slapped” her.\u00a0 I have never\u00a0<\/em>slapped anyone in the face, and I certainly didn’t smack Rita on the hip to hurt her.\u00a0 It’s also physically impossible to smack someone very hard when you’re standing above, and they are lying in a bed with their hip at waist height.\u00a0 Plus, it was December, and I’m sure Rita had pajamas on and a blanket covering her.\u00a0 Amanda and Amelia were within feet of us and slept through the entire event.\u00a0 I’m sure it left no mark or bruise, and Rita never provided any evidence that it did.<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

On January 1, 2013, when I arrived at my apartment–basically a room in the basement of a house–it reeked from cigarette smoke.\u00a0 I told the landlord I couldn’t live in a place that smelled like that, and it had not when I saw it previously.\u00a0 He asked if I could hold off moving for a few days until he determined why it smelled.\u00a0 I figured the carpet needed to be cleaned or replaced.\u00a0 It turned out that the couple renting the main part of the house were heavy smokers and decided that when it got cold, they would ignore the lease and smoke in the house.\u00a0 Since my area shared HVAC with them, we needed to figure out what to do.\u00a0 We eventually sealed the vent to my space, and the landlord gave me a space heater.\u00a0 After airing the place out, this worked well. I suspect the smokers also stopped smoking in the house.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

During the two days the landlord worked on the cigarette smell situation, I stayed with Rita and the kids.\u00a0 Rita was working in the kitchen at a middle school and needed to be there very early.\u00a0 I was preparing the kids for and taking them to school in the mornings.\u00a0 It was easier for me to stay at the house to let the kids sleep until they needed to get ready, and if they were awake, Rita could get ready without being hassled.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

Another Move<\/div>
About two months later, I was forced to move out because the smoking renters informed the landlord, who lived in an apartment above the garage, that they were not married.\u00a0 They then informed the township that four unrelated people were living in the house.\u00a0 This was against the zoning rules for the neighborhood, and they were going to start fining the landlord until someone moved out.\u00a0 Fortunately, the landlord knew a lady, Ava Glantz, that had an extra bedroom to rent.\u00a0 I have been friends with Ava ever since.\u00a0 She has helped me so much.<\/div><\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

On January 3, 2013, I was planning to stay at the apartment which had been \u201cfixed.\u201d\u00a0 While at the apartment, the police called and asked me to come back to the house.\u00a0 They told me Rita had been issued a Protection from Abuse order and said I had 15 minutes to get whatever I needed from the house.\u00a0 I was obviously completely shocked as I really didn’t know what a Protection from Abuse order was and didn\u2019t understand how Rita could get an order protecting her from me when I\u2019d never abused her (or anyone).\u00a0 There was obviously no physical evidence, and I couldn’t believe she would have claimed any other type of abuse, nor was I aware of any allegations she might have made.\u00a0 Not realizing the seriousness of it, I said I\u2019d go back to the apartment.\u00a0 I had moved a few things but hardly had any clothes for the next few days.<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The saga of my divorce begins on the last day of the 2011\/2012 school year, although I suppose things had been deteriorating for many years. We usually spent a couple of weeks in Michigan each summer visiting Rita\u2019s family and my extended family. As is typical, I had quite a few things to schedule that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-41","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1910,"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions\/1910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unstablefocus.mynetgear.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}