I’m a professional 42 year old woman ending a 23 year marriage. We had had problems before in 2001 because he had a gambling addiction that I was unaware of and thus Chapter 7 had to be filed. Keep in mind he promised this would never happen again. My husband began to change his physical appearance in January by losing weight, coloring his hair, etc. We started arguing more and more. He was going out on the weekends and I was not going with him. He began borrowing my 22 yr old son’s motorcycle to go out to biker places. In July he decided he needed his own motorcycle. I begged him not to get it because we have a daughter preparing for college next fall. He got it anyway. I started doing some investigating and found he had a separate checking & savings account in his name with statements being mailed to his office address and he had changed his 401K statements to be mailed there as well. In mid July I got a phone call at work one day that someone had seen him at bar with another woman and then another person saw him being dropped off to pick up his truck near our home at 2:30 AM in the morning. Needless to say I was upset so I go home and grab the closest thing I can which is a flimsy yardstick and I proceed to beat the crap out of the bike. I did raise it at him and he told me he would send me to jail if I touched him so I did not. I asked him to leave. I later left the house and when I came back he had cleaned everything he owned out of the house and was staying with a friend of his. I consulted with an attorney and felt pretty good about things, but I needed to get the retainer fee together. 3 months later I have retained the attorney. My husband makes two and 1/2 times more than I do and I need alimony in order to keep my home for my children. He is now livid that I have retained the attorney. He’s moved into a rental house and claims that he can no longer pay the bills that he agreed to pay and that he had to take out a loan in August. He says that he has spoken with an attorney and that attorney told him that I would get nothing because I was the one that asked him to leave and that he left “in fear” of his life…wife yielding yardstick I guess…my question is what are the chances of my getting alimony in NC in this situation? He’s already sold a stock certificate from a Golf/Country Club membership he had since we split up and claims that I am not entitled to 1/2 of what he sold it for. What do you think???