Mostly venting:

So together for 17y, married 12y (13y this June). Separated since 10'21 and I filed 2/1/22. She's a stay at home hose wife with no kids, I am a physician. I make good money, but have always worked a ton of extra shifts to support our lifestyle and travel (which is of course is biting me in the ass now). When we were together our monthly expenses were ~11k/mo. After I moved out I got my own place and set up new utils, etc. I am (of course) still paying for everything. She always paid the bills, so I was depositing $6.5k into our joint account every two weeks to cover everything. I figured that covered all the bills, life and extra for her.

She has been more and more withdrawn, lawyered up, deleted me from her social media and blocked my phone / texts. So all communication via email only, talk to the lawyer, etc.

So she contacts me a touch over a month ago and asks me to start paying the mortgage, my insurance, student loans and credit cards from MY new bank account. I say sure, that's about $5650 dollars. So I dropped it from $6500 every 2 weeks to $4000 every 2 weeks (which should actually be an extra $650 per month of spending money).

Anyway, she just sent over her financial declaration and states she needs $13k/mo going forward. That she can not work secondary to fibromyalgia and chronic pain. But also included nearly $4k/mo in lifestyle expenses (~$1500/mo for clothes?!?). So she needs $1500 more living alone then we were together, despite that I took over / out $5650 of bills :) Also asking for me to cover $10k of her legal fees.

Further, I in theory work 1wk on and then 2 wks off. BUT I normally work a ton of extra shifts. Base salary is $340k/yr, but with extra have been making ~$475k/yr. BUT she is claiming I make $515k/yr with NO extra shifts, so ~$43k/mo and she's asking for 1/3 of that made up GROSS. Hell, even if I accepted her false number, 1/3 of the net of that would be $9k/mo. And even that I would fight :)

We have a hearing date on May 12th to address all this. So I'm actually glad she is doing this. It destroys the last bit of guilt or positive feelings I might have had :) I can accept that she's the enemy and I need to fight everything tooth and nail going forward. Mediation isn't until June 13th and no guarantee that anything will be resolved then, hell given how she's moving I don't expect anything useful to come from it (which is a shame because we have no kids and pretty simple assets, dragging this out just waste time and money; both of which I have and she doesn't). We need to sell the marital home (bought at $530k now worth ~$1.4M) and I want to sell before the housing bubble pops, but that is NOT looking likely. Ultimately while that affects us both it really hurts her. In the current market we could get 5-15% more than asking, but that is not going to last forever.

Anyway, just wanted to vent mostly. Appreciate anyone that read all that. Will be writing up a response to my lawyer about her horrible math, and see what happens next.

I'm actually kind of excited going forward. No matter that what happens I'm walking away debt free and owing her nothing (using my equity in the house in lieu of support). I'd like to walk away with some cash too, but if I had to walk away with ZERO I will still be fine because I can make it all back! And as a single guy my lifestyle and expenses are cut by ~60%+. In fact, I calculate that not being with her will save me ~$160k/yr (total, that's not how much she spend, but I down graded housing; and don't have to spend anything on her for travel or life).

Got to pay the price for freedom!!