Delaney James was wearing Chanel the night her husband told her he didn't love her anymore.
In an instant, her picture-perfect Manhattan life-complete with a brownstone on the Upper East Side, a blossoming career as a fashion journalist, and a devas...
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I'm at my desk, paperwork spread across every available inch of surface. My divorce packet sits open beside a legal pad covered in notes, highlighted sections, and questions I've scribbled in the margins to ask my lawyer later.
On my laptop, at least a dozen tabs compete for space across the top of the screen – property rights, health insurance options, budgeting plans, credit reports, and enough articles about New York divorce law to make my head hurt.
Will never wanted me to have my own accounts.
At the time, I didn't think much of it. He handled the finances, paid the bills, managed the investments, and every time I offered to help, he brushed me off and told me not to worry about it. We were married. I trusted him.
Now, after weeks of sorting through papers and filling out applications for accounts that should have existed years ago, I'm discovering exactly how much damage that trust did. My credit score is embarrassing, and every new document seems to reveal another piece of my life that existed entirely under Will's control without me fully realizing it.
I flip through another section of the packet and rub at the tension building between my eyes.
My lawyer hates that I'm researching everything myself. Every time I send him another email with a list of questions, he politely reminds me that's what I'm paying him for.
Maybe he's right, but I spent too many years taking Will's word for things I didn't understand, and I have no intention of walking blindly through another life-changing decision because someone else told me not to worry about it.
Nico's father referred me to one of the top divorce attorneys in New York. My parents scraped together ten thousand dollars for the retainer with the understanding that I'll pay them back, and every time I look at that number, I'm reminded of how much they've already sacrificed to help me start over.
My lawyer is sharp, thorough, and the kind of man who always seems three steps ahead of everyone else in the room, but I still can't decide whether he's a minnow or a shark.
Considering Will appears to be determined to make this as difficult as possible, I'm hoping for a great white.
The deeper I get into this process, the more complicated everything becomes, but for the first time I'm not immediately looking for someone else to explain it to me. Half the legal stuff still reads like a foreign language, yet I keep reading anyway, highlighting paragraphs, taking notes, and forcing myself to understand what Will spent years telling me not to worry about.
What I do know is that my lawyer isn't taking Will's behavior lightly. According to him, judges generally don't look kindly on husbands who empty joint bank accounts, remove their wives from the health insurance before the divorce is even finalized, and move another woman into the marital home while leaving their spouse to figure out how she's supposed to support herself.
