My wife and I are separated for just over a year and trying to move through the divorce process. It’s hampered by her financial difficulties.
The problem is that she frequently requests money from me (for things for the dog, for car issues, for lack of gas money) and if I don’t give it to her, immediately starts threatening to fight the divorce and saying that she’ll sue for alimony and get a thousand dollars a month (according to her paralegal sister).
When we lived together, we rented an apartment. We had no shared property - she took her car and I took mine. I was the primary provider, but not by choice - she would have jobs for brief periods of time and always managed to get fired or laid off.
She’s already dating and is living with her boyfriend (which I’m not upset about, I’m glad she’s moving on), so to me it seems like I don’t really ‘owe’ her anything – I didn’t keep her out of work to raise our kids or anything, she just can’t hold a job!! (In fact, she’s already had and been fired from another full time job since we separated).
How realistic is her threat? Can she really take me to the cleaners basically to extort money from me now??
Edited to add: My salary is not enormous - I only make around 40k a year, so it’s not like I kicked her out of the mansion and drove off in my porsche.