To summarize the story, my wife of almost 10 years came to me saying that she is a lesbian and wants a divorce. She also claims that me working and going to school made her feel alone in the marriage for years. ALL of that came out of the blue. I'm absolutely devastated and while I am trying to work through it, I am pretty sure she isn't willing to and REALLY wants out. We have four kids aged 8,6,4 and 2.

Even though I'm dealing with an emotional shitfest myself, I'm trying to be logical about what this might mean for us financially. She is and has always been a stay at home mom. She doesn't work now and hasn't worked for almost 10 years. If I divorce now, she's going to get so much of my money. I'm worried that our kids are going to have to live in shitty apartments in the worst part of town for the rest of their childhood. In addition to child support, I don't know if I'm going to have to help pay for child care if work for her becomes a factor. I'm going to have to sell my car and get a shitty minivan because I can't afford car payments. She'll probably get the van we have now so that's not a problem for her. I feel like I won't have any money to take care of myself and do the things that I want to do or need to do to cope with this.

Then, there are the costs associated with the divorce itself. I don't know how I'm going to pay for a lawyer to defend what I can. From what I understand, courts tend to side more with the moms so I feel like I am shit out of luck with this. When I try to talk to her about it, she says that what I am doing is trying to manipulate her into staying. I'm genuinely trying to be a realist here but I can't get anywhere with her. I've also tried to tell her that in divorce, we aren't going to be friends and I am going to fight for everything that I can. She then responds with "you are going to keep the money from your children?" which seems to be the thing she is accusing me of doing.

Anyone deal with anything like this before? Am I really in a situation where I can't afford divorce? Any advice?