We are almost done! Iowa has made deeps cuts in spending for judges and I was pretty sure we would not go to court this week. Most cases are getting bumped for 6 months. However, in spite a another visit (with lawyers) to a mediator, and several attempts to settle, we did go to court on Tuesday.
Long story short, the judge pushed us to settle and we managed to do that after a day and a half of trial. The high point of the trial for me was the look of shock on my ex-husband's face when my lawyer asked him about his hiding the voice-activated tape recorder in my car. (I was surprised that his lawyer didn't prepare him for that. He was certainly aware of it.) And even better, he invoked the 5th Amendment on that and also on the question about his hiding a baby monitor in my bedroom. It was priceless.
The attorneys are writing up the settlement agreement, everyone will sign, and then the judge will sign off on it next week. And we'll be final. I'm so relieved it's over. Not completely happy with the settlement but I am confident that this is as good as it would get. We were fighting over shared care for our high-school-aged son. Compromised on a four-month trial period, with a firm evaluation date. If I had lost that one, we would have been stuck with shared care and it would be hard to change.
My attorney said something to me that I thought was useful: "If both parties feel a little bitter, then it was a reasonable compromise." No one is completely ecstatic but we both got some things that were important to us.
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