Bad advice for the soon-to-be-divorced

I sort of promised myself I wouldn't do this, but the level of insanity that surrounds me at this time has reached newer, higher peaks that I never dreamed would be possible.

In the spirit of satire and sarcasm, I offer the following bad advice to those who have become involved in a divorce, their own, and can't think or act rationally about it:

Revenge: How to accomplish it in several easy steps.

Say you've been married for a really long time and your spouse decides one day he's has enough of your emotional and financial abuse that you've been dumping on him since the day he first asked you out, and it's been getting worse for the last few years as his health declined, he lost his job and can't afford to support himself, let alone you, even though he's taking care of your aging mother for you (you can't be tied down with responsibilities like that, but he can).

Forget about the facts that you've been spending his money as if he were still making four times as much as unemployment pays, overdrafting checks and exceeding your debit card limits (you already maxed out all his credit cards and can't get any more), forget that your house that you've "owned" for years costs more than half of what his unemployment brings in, forget that your COBRA insurance is about to expire (and costs more than the rest of what his unemployment could pay), or that your son has lent most of his college funds to you and his father to help keep the family afloat, or that your daughter's college education costs more than you and he (actually just him – you don't work, remember?) are making. Never mind about the fact that you refuse to get any kind of job, even though there are plenty available, because you have professional licenses (that you haven't used for more than two decades) and couldn't get work in your former fields anyway, and forget that any kind of job would help keep the family afloat, even one for minimum wage. This isn't about helping out the family finances – that's his responsibility!

That rat bastard needs to pay, and pay, and suffer while you're at it.

Here's what you do:

As soon as you get the summons and petition for divorce in your hands and can breathe again, rush off to your nearest women's shelter and set him up for some really bad times ahead. You can get your friends involved later, but first you need to get that family car smog-checked (by him, so you can take it away without having to come up with some money to pay for it yourself). Meanwhile, you can arrange to fake some low resolution photos that look like they show you with bruises in a sensitive area – some place most people don't see even at the beach. Be sure you do this with someone you can trust not to turn you in – say another family member who hates the guy as much as you do now. It doesn't matter if the photos are way old, or grainy, or black and white and of which it's really hard to determine the veracity. After all, he's not an attorney, he won't know how to challenge them properly if you can act convincing enough when it comes to court, and at this stage, the judge will buy it because he doesn't know either of you.

Then file a domestic violence complaint against him – not with the police, because that would be a false police report and they take too long to respond, but with the divorce court so you can get an immediate hearing and, while you're at it, prejudice the judge against him. It's not hard to do this in Orange County, California – this is the home of domestic violence intolerance, thanks to Mr. & Mrs. Brown, Nicole Simpson's parents, who live here (and that part is a really good thing, even if you're just using it to get back at the guy who dumped you). Even if it weren't, the standard for a restraining order is pretty much the exact opposite needed for a criminal conviction, especially in domestic violence cases – any reasonable doubt that the accused isn't 100% clean as a whistle will do. If they're wrong, that can be fixed later.

Next, call up the local adult protective services agency and accuse him of abusing your mother. (You can have a friend do this if you're concerned about the repercussions.) Yes, that's right, the mother you couldn't be bothered to take of yourself because you hate dealing with doctors, the elderly ill or anything that remotely smacks of death and you'd rather run off to your daughter's college hundreds of miles away to visit her than take care of your mother, the mother you also emotionally abused for decades whenever you needed money she had and that bastard refused to pay out of those huge stashes of money he has hidden around somewhere (even if that money doesn't really exist, either).

If that doesn't work, which it won't because any reasonable person might see that she's in reasonably good shape for her age and he's taking care of her pretty well without your help (and you wouldn't move in with her to help out, so he had to) and he cooperates with them 100% and more, then come over to visit her to try and force him out onto the street whenever you feel like dropping by to harass him. After all, you have a (temporary) restraining order against him.

Now, he may resist by calling the police because your restraining order specifically excludes your mother or her house from being "protected" against him (he lives there with her permission, remember?), and you can't force him out of the place where he lives. Don't worry, you can take care of that soon enough. The police will take care of him, right?

That might not work. After the police have seen you get hysterical because you couldn't get your way, and he stays calm and controlled, not easy given how little trouble you've had pushing his buttons all these years and getting him to lose control, his voice and all sense of gentility when you goaded him, it's time to try that police report. After all, if you can get him arrested before the hearing on your restraining order, you'll win.

It helps to tell the truth when you do things like this because the police tend to investigate complaints like this. Unlike the divorce judge who granted your restraining order, they have to meet the criminal burden of proof – guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If he denies your story and has a credible witness, they won't move forward because that's instant reasonable doubt, especially when that witness is telling the truth – that your complaint is invalid on its face (i.e., a total lie). Chances are pretty good that the police won't go after you for filing a false complaint – they're too busy trying to catch real criminals anyway.

As long as you're at it, make use of your auto club road service a few times on the bastard's dime. So what if you've already used up your four free calls for the year – the jerk has some money hidden away somewhere, you just know this, and he gets stuck with the bill anyway – it's his membership! (And if he can't afford to pay the charges because of the financial situation, so much the better. He deserves to be stranded in the middle of the night when his car breaks down and they refuse the call without payment. You can get a little taste of revenge this way, too, even if you don't know about it.)

Arrange to bring an attorney to the hearing, one who knows almost nothing about family law, but you can get him for free through that women's shelter. Since your bastard filed for divorce without one, chances are pretty good he won't bring one to court, either. Remember, he's broke, just like you. You attorney can rattle his witnesses (they've never been in court before), and the judge will go along with the slightest possibility that you might be in danger.

As soon as you get that order, take your friends and treat your mother to an afternoon out. That way, you can bribe her with some hot cocoa while you coerce her into giving you an unrestricted durable power of attorney and you can have even more ammunition against the bastard. Technically, you might have to pay for someone else to take care of your mother, but you can use this to move against him even further.

While you're at it, accuse your demon of having broken your mother's dentures, starved her, dehydrated her, stolen her credit cards and ID. That'll help. Forget that you knew about her broken dentures for more than a year, and that your mother was the one who broke them, quite by accident. Never mind that you already have her medical ID and you know she lost her wallet some time late last year, the one that contained her state-issued ID, long before the bastard filed to divorce you. Insist that he stole the credit cards even though you and other witnesses (who aren't as much on your side as they should be) know that he left them all behind, along with all originals of her financial records, just the way she kept them.

Then, just when he finds out that you've cut off his means of affording your mother's care (because he was using her money for that, with her permission, unlike you), and during the recess when Congress refused to fund extended unemployment, call the police on him again. When that doesn't work, because they can see your mother's fine and the bastard just brought her home from her doctor, who also didn't think she was in any danger from him, call adult protective services again and have your friends do so, too. With enough calls, they'll come back out. After they take her away, at his request because he knows she's better off in a nursing home now that you've taken over all her money, you can harass him out of her house and into the street where he belongs.

Now it's time to get a real attorney ('cuz that first one didn't want to be involved in your case, even though he did make some promises to the court to be a go-between) so you can go after your demon for spousal support. So what if you could easily find a job that pays more than he's getting (minimum wage would be good enough), you shouldn't have to work. You never really did and he's got all that hidden cash around somewhere, remember, the cash that doesn't exist?

Before it's altogether too late, make sure you go to a doctor who can check you over for anything serious before the insurance runs out. If he finds anything, you can always blame that on the bastard, too. Once the insurance expires, you can claim he canceled it. He can't respond – you have a restraining order.

You know enough about the courts to know that you can get a quickie hearing for motions if you file for them ex parte (literally meaning one-sided, but in legal briefs, an emergency application for a motion, usually restricted to life-or-death situations). That's how you got the temporary restraining order in the first place, the one that is now good for years. This time you can use it to get some money out of the wretch. But wait, the court does not agree – this isn't an emergency.

That's okay (well, not really, but you get to stew on that more later). So what if your attorney quit. You can get that first one to file a phony elder abuse charge, again in family court because you couldn't prove that one in criminal court, either, and that'll get him thrown out of your mother's house once and for all. You can allege that he starved her, dehydrated her, stole all her money (that's the money you browbeat her out of plus the money she willingly loaned or gave the both of you to help support you and the kids, even though they are now adults and could theoretically pull their own weight) and that he's the only reason she can't come home again. Don't bother to sweat the little details, like who would have to take care of her when she came home, or how much that would cost because you wouldn't do it even if you could. (And who cares if it's now a year later and she still can't come home because she can't take care of herself anyway and you won't.)

If he happens to get really lucky and find a place to live, you can start using an old tactic you used to use to get at people who bothered you or disagreed with you – take to the Internet. Remember how you used to write nasty articles about other people under assumed names, all over the web? You can do that again, except this time you can do some of that under your real name – almost. It doesn't really matter, except now if you use your real name, or part of it, you can really smear him. Just use the same scattergun approach you've been so successful with before – throw every conceivable act of domestic violence you can work into one article at him, especially if you can dig them up from real DV cases. So what if he never did those things. No one will believe him after you've shredded him enough, and if anyone defends him, just write about that on the web, too, but turn the situation upside down so it sounds like you're the aggrieved party. If any webizen stands up for him, accuse them of being him under an assumed alias (like you used to use a lot, before).

Remember, he can't contact you or harass you because of your restraining order. You, on the other hand, can harass him to death. You can call him anything you want because he can't respond. You can accuse him of anything you like, and everyone will just believe everything you say.

If one article doesn't work, do more. If you can go into groups where he used to be a member and smear him there, do that, too. Why not? He can't show up if you're there, and you can alienate his friends that way, double-sticking it to him in the process. You might be able to convince another sucker or two to buy into your fantasy world. After all, you believe it, don't you? Who wouldn't? Then you can get your new acolytes to post the same smears that you've come up with in your vendetta. It doesn't matter if any of it is true, as long as it escalates to new, higher, more inflammatory charges. Anyone who sides with him is also fair game, so don't hold back and don't worry about the truth. This stuff will live on the web long after you're all gone. Maybe.

That's how to get revenge if your spouse dares to break the chains you have him wrapped in. Go for it!

(Just remember, this is satire, even if the situation is real, and this is BAD advice.)