We tried to negotiate a divorce settlement three times. All three were spectacular failures.

The first took place at the start of the second day of Scott’s deposition. Scott and his attorney asked if we could begin by negotiating a number for the financial cost of his behavior. Based on the first deposition day, there was no doubt we had detailed and vivid evidence of Scott’s extracurricular spending. They also knew Patrick and Marianne would drag the gory details into a public courtroom to argue I should receive a greater share of the assets as payback for the money he had dissipated. I hated the legal term for what he did, “dissipation of assets.” Why not call it what it was: hooker money! Scott and his attorney didn’t like the term either. They preferred “spending outside the marital enterprise,” which to me was even worse, equating our marriage to a failed business. Terminology aside, they were anxious to negotiate the dissipation figure outside of court, expecting if we could agree to a payback amount, his antics would be off the table if the judge had to decide the rest of the case.

Going in, their negotiating tactic was, “Give us your spreadsheet- the one showing each instance of questionable spending, line item by line item. Scott will go through the detail and tell us which he considers legitimate and which aren’t.” I was bullshit, “Do you really think I am okay with letting a compulsive liar tell me what was kosher spending and what wasn’t?” Patrick and Marianne asked how Scott would even determine which expenses or withdrawals were legitimate. His answer, to the extent he even had one, was he would look at his calendar so he could jog his memory!

We pushed back with, “Why doesn’t Scott goes through all of HIS financial records and calendars like Gail did, build his own spreadsheet of what he thinks he spent and then we compare notes?” This was a non-starter for them. Scott claimed it was a waste of his time as I had already done it. He was silent when I said, “I am sure there are expenses I missed, why don’t you do the right thing and admit to them?” His silence made clear he would only take responsibility for spending I had documented. Even worse, he still thought he was in the driver’s seat and could decide what was and wasn’t extracurricular spending. It had not yet clicked with him I was no longer the meek wife trying to keep him around. It was absurd and insulting to think I would agree to his power trip.

In the end however, Patrick, Marianne and I agreed to go through a few line items to see if their process could work, just to shut them up. We immediately got stuck on two charges he made on his companion card to MY American Express Platinum card in early October of 2009. We both knew the background on the weekend. He had claimed his parents, sister and brother in-law were coming up to NYC to celebrate his mother’s birthday. Our oldest daughter had an important horse show in New Hampshire so Scott went to NYC alone to celebrate with his family. In hindsight, I never spoke directly with any of his family about the event so it was even conceivable he could have lied about the birthday party and just decided to have his own party in NYC.

Scott made two charges to the Mandarin Hotel in New York City that October weekend: $2,460 for lodging (two nights) and $3,324 for a dinner. I had never agreed to the charges, even if I swallowed his story that he had paid for everyone’s hotel and the dinner. Over $600 a plate for dinner – what were they eating, gold plated steaks and $1,000 bottles of wine? Our “negotiation” quickly disintegrated into an argument about whether I had agreed to him spending almost $6,000 at the Mandarin while I was at the Days Inn in New Hampshire being a parent to our kids. Exasperated, I threw in, “My guess is you were stashing a hooker in the $1,200 per night hotel suite, just making sure she was comfortable while you were out with your family and not in the room getting laid.” Scott lost it, got up and ran out of Patrick and Marianne’s conference room, stomped through the firm’s crowded reception room and into a smaller meeting room. In the process, he slammed the conference room door so hard he broke it. I must have really hit a nerve because the firm’s receptionist later told Marianne Scott was crying in the smaller conference room.

Not a successful negotiation! Marianne told Scott’s attorney to get him under control and we went back to the deposition.

Our second attempt was a conversation between Scott and me a few weeks after later. I called and asked him to meet and see if we could settle our divorce without going to trial. When we sat down at a local coffee shop he immediately started lecturing me about our recent status conference with the judge. Of course, his diatribe began and ended with the judge agreeing 100% with him and his “very generous” offer. This wasn’t even remotely accurate. I let Scott mouth fart for a while then told him I wanted to give him a clear picture of what I was going to do if he really decided to take this thing all the way to trial. This included investigating his time sheets and contacting his firm about his job performance, as I suspected he was misrepresenting his billable time and fudging his travel expenses to his firm and his clients. Most importantly, all of his behavior would be aired in open court, with a public transcript of all testimony and evidence.

That ended our meeting. Scott got up, saying “It is beneath you to try to blackmail me and good luck with the Jerry Springer show!!” Even he knew his antics made for sleazy talk show TV: “NEXT ON JERRY SPRINGER: A CAST OF THOUSANDS: HOW MANY OTHER WOMEN IS MY MARRIED BOYFRIEND SLEEPING WITH?”

Our third attempt was ordered by the presiding judge in our case. We had finished discovery and he ordered we try working with a professional mediator before proceeding with a trial. We agreed to a mediation session with a retired family court judge approved by both parties.

We sat with our attorneys (his one and my two) in the mediator’s conference room and the retired judge asked if either of us had anything to say. I read a pre-prepared statement about what Scott had done, how I felt about it and what I wanted. Scott then made a few comments, ending with “I am very proud we were able to continue co-parenting our children through this process.” When I replied, “I was the one doing the parenting, not you,” he lost it again and punched the table, hard enough he could have broken his hand. I didn’t react (the anti-depressants were really working!), but often wish I had climbed under the table. Wouldn’t it have been a great move? The mediator, in his most judicious tone of voice, told Scott he needed to calm down and it was clear we needed to be in separate rooms.

Separating us didn’t help. Scott characteristically bragged to the mediator he was the best negotiator at his consulting firm. His opening position was, “I’ll give you exactly what I offered in my first proposal – take it or leave it.” If inflexibility was his negotiation tactic, he was clearly delusional about his reputation as a negotiator. My attorneys and I weren’t interested and there was no way to move either of us. Even with a mediator, we were a bust!