I live in California. My STBXW cheated on me (I caught her doing it). This was about 11 months now since the incident. We’ve kind of dragged our feet on the divorce but we’ve been separated since July. She moved out and I kept the rental house. I had her served and the divorce should be final the first week of October.

I do make more than her but not by a whole lot but per state law I’d have to pay her spousal and child support even though we’d have the kids 50/50.

She was also arrested for domestic violence against me and had been physically abusing me for years before that.

Despite all of this drama we were amicable in our divorce. We hired a private mediator and she said she wanted no spousal support or child support. We’ve had our ups and downs. Mainly because I’ve given her a lot of compromise because we never see eye to eye on anything. But now she wants to force me to keep our soon to be first grader in daycare even though he’ll be in school full time. There’s just no sense for both of us to pay for that for 1-2 hours of daycare. I refuse to budge.

Now she’s going to a court mediator instead of our private mediator to force me to keep him in daycare. She feels taking him out would hurt his socialization which is just crazy. I can also see her using spousal support and child support as a tool against me.

I honestly don’t know how the law works for spousal support and child support in California but even though I make more than her, I have bigger bills with the house. I barely have enough to make it now. Paying her would overextend me and force me to move.

The kicker is I have another ex-wife with my daughter who hasn’t paid me child support in 3 years and because she moved out of the country nothing can be done about it.

It’s really freaking hard being the dad/husband in this situation.

Edit: Seriously, if your comment is going to be how dumb it was to get married and how any person should know better, you’re going to get blocked.

I couldn’t imagine having that insignificant of an existence that you’d come on a thread where someone is asking for advice and you’re this level of negative. You might think you’re clever or have the better life, but you really don’t.