I filed against my STBX 8 months ago. I finally had enough of 10 years of dealing with her anger issues, constant blame, projection, subtle manipulation, and constant victimhood.

We tried to do do mediation 2 months ago, but we got nothing solved.

Now we’re going to have our first hearing and they sent interrogatories a mile long.

We already submitted the mandatory financial disclosures, but now instead of one year of statements they want 3+. They want details on every ATM withdrawal. And on and on. Incredibly detailed and invasive — will take 40-100 hours for me to complete.

They are claiming I am hiding money (I’m not).

I own / owned multiple businesses. One went under during Covid and is a couple years behind on filing. Another is partly in my wife’s name (so she could have assets to buy a house during Covid and keep the business creditors away from her — though of course now she’s making it sound like I did it to somehow take advantage of her). They are asking for details so granular that I would need an army of accountants to organize this stuff.

So, they are going to make this as difficult and as painful as possible. It’s paralyzing, it’s affecting my ability to focus on running the businesses right now.

She cheated (doesn’t matter, no fault state). She faked financial documents after divorce (hoping we can prove this one). She extracted everything she could from me for a decade and then wants to blame me for every issue. She has spread roomers about me to anyone that will listen.

She is a fantastic “actress” - you’d think she’s the sweetest, most wonderful person who just really got taken advantage of if you weren’t me or her family. She knows when to put the mask on and people believe it. Heck, I believed it for too long!

And I made my mistakes too, but nothing detrimental. Like being sloppier with money and business during the pandemic, and paying for some porn when I couldn’t deal with her anymore.

Some questions:

How did you deal with the stress of the opposing council using discovery to drag you through the mud?

They are going to use anything they can to make me the bad guy (paying for porn, sloppy with some of the transactions, etc) — how did you deal with that kind of stuff?

What got you through it?

Were your minor mistakes used against you in any real way? Or was it all just tactics to make you submit?