Community - to let you know my situation, I'm married (M46) to my wife (F43) who is a SAHM and has only worked for about a year after we got married 17 years ago. Generally speaking, I love her and don't want a divorce from her, and even more so don't want have to watch my kids spend 50/50 time in two different worlds post-divorce and risk their emotional and educational situations taking nose dives. So, I'm doing what I can to keep the family together.

That said, when my wife throws one of her temper tantrums and chews me out for hours (about stupid stuff and just won't stop no matter what, I think due to emotional issues she doesn't deal with) she sometimes talks about preferring to get divorced or wishing she not married me. This used to occur once every couple of years, but now it seems to be once every couple of months (yes, I do think this is emotional abuse, but this is not a post to seek advice on whether or not I should stay).

I've been reading the advice here about what people wish they had done before getting divorced and I'll meet with a lawyer to get my ducks as much in a row for if she does finally pull the trigger during her tantrums, or I decide enough is enough.

My question is, post-divorce what can I do to build my wealth without incurring additional payments to her. While I'm willing to be stingy with her. I'm sure she'll get her fair compensation for being a SAHM (which I value). But, I'm sure she'll be a nightmare to be divorced from, and bully and manipulate to whatever level she possibly can to get what she wants. And, she won't be working as hard as me to improve her financial situation or provide for the kids. She has a masters degree and could at least teach school, but when she talks about getting a job she fixates on "easy, fun" jobs that pay more like $30k with no benefits. I can see her insisting on being under-employed.

She does bully and push to get what she wants in the marriage to a degree and has decided what we spend on for most of our money even though I came into the marriage with a solid stock portfolio and a rental property (solid investments from saving everything as a single enlistee with the Army Guard in college with deployment for OEF) and she came in with a car loan and I do most of work in the marriage working full time and still splitting parenting roughly 50/50 by doing most of the work in the evenings and weekends (summer brake is an exception as their is no way to make up that much time, but I know she spend most of the day on IG while the kids relax or play, they are easy kids). So, I feel justified in finding a way to fight to keep some amount of any additional efforts or work I do after a divorce to improve my circumstances. I'm sure she'll be doing the minimum/lazy path and maximizing IG surfing time.

I'm not willing to lie or do things that would be found to be illegal if I was caught. Just to be focused on trying to keep my 'above and beyond' efforts to largely benefit me and my kids.

I know I don't fully understand the cadence of alimony adjustments etc. but as I understand if I'm making a bunch more money then she'll likely go to court to get an adjustment.

The two things I can think of are in real-estate. First being to buy a junker home and fix it up while living there, sell and repeat. Second, doing the same thing, but financing and turning into a rental (BRRRR method with temporary habitation, or apply to a 4-plex ala-house hacking).

The former idea exposes me to having capital gains on a tax return that would be income my potential EW could gun for. The second seems like the passive losses would outweigh income for a long time and help shield benefits from showing up as adjusted gross income, however, it can tie up a lot more resources as it can be very difficult to break even or better with each house using the BRRRR method. In my small experience of three properties, though BRRRR is a great idea, each additional property ends up tying up some additional resources. What is the likelihood that either of these methods blows up in my face, from the alimony perspective (Not looking for real-estate advice per-se)?

I understand that if I work a full time job and then an additional job I can keep the latter, but if the split happens I want as much time as possible to raise my kids until they are grown (at least 10 years from now), and after that I don't want to work 60/weeks at a job just to be making some money I don't have to give my EW...

What other methods should I consider?

What am I blind to that I should be advised on here?