I am at our annual beach week, with my immediate family.  This is our family homage to sand, alcohol, food, and loads of sleep.  And I partook of what I could.  My wobbly state and emotionally-fractured heart left me unable to do much else.   It was no vacation, but, what else was there to do?  I can’t remember any of it, really.  I took care of my kids and managed to talk about my wreck of a situation with my family.  But, what was there to say?  I wondered if this was how a recovering alcoholic must feel.  Getting out of bed, eating breakfast, taking care of the kids and merely surviving was a monumental struggle.  Each movement was a chore.  Thoughts came and went, but nothing stuck.  You feel like a zombie, except your arms are too tired to flail around to scare the mortals.  I was a crappy zombie.

And yet, I had plenty of time to think.  So much so, that I felt like a lunatic.  I’m at the beach where my biggest worry should margarita or wine, and the painfully gross reality of my situation hits me. I’m not just a person facing divorce.  I am about to go overseas to live in a foreign country by myself with my two very young children, with no family, or friends.  I am going to work at a demanding job with no support system.  I have to figure out a foreign country on my own.  I have so many questions, concerns, fears about what lie ahead.  I felt so vulnerable and alone.

And it starts to dawn on me…our money.

I realize that just before we left, we sold our house and cars, and all that cash is sitting in the bank. It also becomes clear very quickly that if he can be this cold with his family, what could he do with money?  What’s more is that my mother, a former stockbroker was extremely worried that he might rob our children and me of our savings and stocks.  As the week progresses, I come to the acute awareness that I really don’t know this person and what they’re capable of doing.  I come to recognize that if I’m not smart, and take the assets now, I could come to regret it later.

Over the course of the week, I never heard from him once.  Theoretically, he was off in the UK, but I didn’t know for sure.  After unceremoniously dumping the kids and me at the airport, he disappears.  I came to find out later that he was a busy beaver in that week.  He apparently used his time wisely, traveling to Florida to get a drivers’ license, so he could avoid paying state taxes while living in the UK.  It appears he had really thought out all of his logistics.

You might argue, and rightfully so, that most states have a 50/50 split of marital assets, so what does it matter?  If I left our money alone, and he took it, he would eventually have to return it.  Yes, that is technically absolutely true.  That also assumes the money is still there to split.  He had a long history of wanting to spend our every last dime.  In fact, money was a big problem in our marriage.  I wanted to save our money, he wanted to spend it, and fast.  He would often quote to me his favorite expression, which was “Live for the now!”  I would retort with “How about we save it for a rainy day?”  However, I managed to save far more than he spent.  Ironically when it came to splitting our assets, he wanted the savings – even though it was a constant bone of contention in our marriage.

Back to the point.  I was greatly concerned that he was now going to go after our assets.  I phoned our broker and found out what I needed to do to take that money and stocks.  And, I did it.  I visited the Merrill Lynch office in Hilton Head.  I wrote the checks, I executed the transactions.  It was surreal to be doing this in Hilton Head, the Mecca of laziness, running around like a madman.  I executed transactions, dealt with brokers, and strategized for my future.  Honestly, it was the one shred of control I thought I could exercise at this point.  And, I exercised that one little piece of control within every inch of its life.

Nicole Drapeau Gillen, Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved