Greetings guys.

Looking for thoughts.

Background: My marriage has been in a life support/denial loop for years and really started to crumble around 3 months ago when my wife found out that I secretly had a credit card for over 10 years and an addiction to spending money.

3 months in and things have only gotten worse. A couple of weeks ago I made the decision that I was going to give things a year, not to be fixed, but to get better but its increasingly looking like even making it a year is not viable.

There is a part of me that just wants to let her have whatever she wants as a way of saying I’m sorry but I also want to ensure that I don’t do anything that hurts my ability to be with my 2 kids. I would pursue 50/50 custody but if I walk away with nothing financially and I am paying out a crap ton in CS and/or alimony, I don’t see how I could afford a place that would be close enough to their school and have a spare bedroom.

I feel pretty confident that in her anger over what I did and its direct tie to finances, she is going to fight for every penny we have. We have a fair amount of equity in our home, mostly because of her pulling money out of her 401k for a 20% down payment when we moved. The housing market has also added to the equity of course but that’s not really helpful. She made more in our early marriage, later helped put me through school and was almost the soul income during that time, but since I graduated I have probably made over double what she has made (partially because she works a lot less.)

My current questions:

If this happens and we have to fight it out in court, is a judge going to penalize my “half” of everything for my spending indiscretions?

My wife uses words like abuse and trauma to talk about what I did. Is this a type of abuse that a court would hold against me with regards to custody?

My wife has already threatened to call the police once because we got into a argument and I refused to leave the house (nothing physical, I barely raised my voice at all, she was screaming and cussing) and I do believe she has it in her to do more than bluff. Should I have concerns about how this interaction is going to go? I don’t think she will lie to get me out but I’m trying to be prepared for how I will handle it if it happens again.

Tldr: I’m a PoS and rightfully deserve nothing when we inevitably split but am unwilling to give up on my kids.