OT Marriage Problem

Larry

Maybe she saw that movie with them two...cowboys that preferred to wear leopard skin leotards and pink slippers that I heard mentioned on the news, and figures will lose you to of male bonding of an unnatural kind some night with some hired hand named Tinkerbell.

You're in a bad way pal, all the way around. There is no advice that I can give you.

Mark

And if is going to be a divorce, make it a female attorney. No one knows how to cut a woman's throat during a divorce like a female attorney. Vicious.

And if you decide to make the move to the ranch, and she goes with you (sudden change of heart), have the parents will be a "living trust" so it never leaves the family if she has another sudden change of heart and decides 1/2 of everything is hers during procedings. An attorney can help you there.

Good luck, protect your parents, children, and yourself.

Mark

Secondarily, your parents also need to do some estate planning so that your wife will not inherit part of your family farm if you end up getting divorced.

You have to ask yourself do you really want to stay married to her? Is her telling you to get out really because of moving to the ranch or is it because of other underlying problems? Does she really wants out of the marriage anyway?

If she cares about you and truly wants to stay married, I would try to compromise with her. I love living in the country and my wife does not.

If she has a good job and would be happy in letting you quit your job to pursue your dream of running the family ranch, I would think about staying where you are and commuting to work every day.

There is no money in the cattle business in the climate that I am in and where land values are high. I would really evaluate whether you could show a net profit in that business before you quit your job, especially if you have to pour your wife's income into the business to stay afloat. With the size tract you have and if there is no debt, you might make it okay.

I love my wife dearly, but sometimes I don't think she has every spent a happy day in her life. I don't think she can help it because her mother is miserable.

Life is tough and I empathize with you in the decisions you have to make.

After hearing everyone's advice, it is ultimately your decision and you have to do what is best for you and your children.

She apparently doesn't want anything to do with you or the ranch, but I'll bet she would be dammed glad to take you for half of what it's worth.

Move to an apartment, get the divorce, then go ranching.

Good Luck and god bless.

Life is nothing more than trippin' thru a minefield one step and one day at a time. It's just a question of where we put our feet down. :>)

You come from good stock; your people have been planted on the same place since the 1800s, which is admirable by anyone’s definition.

I'll just bet that you already know where you're headed and take note: Many of us here envy you even tho things look kinda black to you. No matter how bad, things always happen for a reason. :>)

Allan

I also wonder what kinda problems the government is going to give you down the road when your dad passes ? Isn't it expensive and full of red tape to inherit something that large ?

However, if she is having an affair, and her partner can be documented, naming him (or...) in a civil lawsuit and suing his (or...) pants off for "alienation of affection" is a distinct posiblity, even if he (or...) is/was an unwitting participant. Happened on behalf of an old neighbor's son. His wife thought that she found greener pastures in the arms of another man, and told her unsuspecting husband, and both of their children. He granted her the divorce she asked for, based upon "irreconcilable differences" since "adultery" in itself wasn't grounds for a divorce, and after their divorce was finalized, he dropped the boom on her greener pasture, leaving her greener pasture a dust bowl.

Mark

My suspicion, based on some personal experience with a family member, is that if you concede now, there's going to be more trouble down the road.

Also, if you pass this opportunity up, are you going to bitter about it in years to come? Or can you just let it go? I know I would find it hard to forget that I gave up a ranch that had been in the family for 100 years just because my wife didn't like the commute.

A couple of other things to consider:

Do you have any siblings? You don't mention any, but if you do they probably feel they have a stake in the ranch; this could be an even bigger problem than your current one if it isn't straightened out now.

What is it that your wife really wants to do with the ranch? If she says "sell it and take the cash", then you need to think seriously about whether you want to spend the rest of your life with a person who cares so little about the future and the past.

You mentioned that you have siblings that have no interest in the ranch. Maybe that is the case, but a chunk of property that large has to be worth a fair amount of money no matter where it is. Will your siblings be content with your inheriting the farm, or will they demand their "fair share" even if they have done nothing to earn it since they were kids. A similar problem almost tore a huge hole in my family when my Dad wanted to SELL me the farm at a price I could manage and my siblings were sure it was worth a lot more. I ended up walking away from the deal and saved my relationship with my siblings. I built a much better house on a chunk of the farm I received earlier and went on with my life. It was a good decision for me. It might not make any difference in your family, but money has a way of complicating things.

I would look at the potential income from operating the ranch. Can you make it? Is your Dad doing OK financially? If you decide to take over the ranch, I would suggest having a formal, written contract with your Dad about what you are supposed to do and what you are supposed to get for doing it. Some time, just like everyone else, your Dad will die, and it might be super important to have things written down beforehand. I don't know what kind of a relationship you have with your Dad, or if he plans to continue living on the ranch and being the boss. It might not be too fun to be a "hey boy" for very long, if he is at all that way.

Another question to ask yourself is how bad do you want to do this, long term? I grew up on a farm/ranch and spent my whole childhood working very hard. Would I have wanted to try to make my living as a farmer? I thought so for awhile, but the opportunity never really presented itself. Our place was too small and rocky to have any chance of supporting even one person without working another job. In high school I went with the daughter of one of the biggest farmers in the area, but that didn't end up with a marriage. I found a job that paid pretty well, was reasonably interesting most of the time and was a heck of a lot easier than farming. Can a person make a decent living on that ranch? It has seemed to me that the costs of doing the business of farming just keep skyrocketing, but the prices paid to the producers for commodities doesn't seem to go up much at all. A lot of my friends who farm have advised their sons to figure out something else to do, since there was no money, and perhaps no future in farming.

Women are strange critters. They don't think like you or I do and you probably don't understand what is going on in her head. I would wonder how your relationship with your wife has been doing for awhile, considering her reaction. Will she agree to counselling? Believe me, it is often worth the money and effort to deal with counselling, but both parties have to want it to work. Or is she on the move, and this is an excuse to split? If she is a city girl, is she afraid of being out in the country?

Is there a compromise? Could you operate the ranch while living where you do now? A 40 mile commute is not a ridiculous idea, if you use a vehicle that gets good mileage most of the time, but it does take a lot of time. Of course there would be times that you would have to stay at the ranch. Maybe you could come to an agreement that after a certain amount of time, she would move to the ranch if your operating it is working out OK.

In one respect, I envy you the incredible opportunity you seem to be getting. But in other respects, I sure would hate to have to make the decisions you will be making in the near future. Whatever you decide, if you are anything like me, you will sometimes second guess yourself and wish you made the other choice.

Good luck, and I hope what you decide will be the best for you and your family. There probably is no totally perfect answer.

Good luck to you and take one piece of advice. Find a quiet place with fresh air and a light breeze. Sit and contemplate what is truely important to you. It is amazing the clarity a small payer can bring you.

Marriage is supposed to be 50/50, and give-and-take. The "MY way or the highway" thing is NOT how healthy relationships work. Sounds like you carry the bigger load in caring for the kids...BTDT. You make sure she can sleep because of her work shift, you get the kids to school and pick 'em up...did you marry a princess? Is she a queen? Being considerate of her needs and the needs of the kids is one thing. When you turn into the doormat for daring to have a dream of carrying on a family tradition, and one that doesn't concern perversion, drunkenness, drug usage, or crime, then it's time to take inventory of that marriage.

If she's THAT eager to put the "don't let the door hit ya" line out there, it sounds like the marriage is already running on fumes, 'cause the tank's almost empty. Ask yourself, "would I be better off with her or without her?" And then ask yourself, "how will the kids be affected?" Look deep inside your heart and your soul for the answers to these questions. Obviously, she's convinced that she'd have no trouble with life minus you. So is the loss of a family tradition, a ranch that's been handed down over the years, worth spending the rest of your life knowing that your wife doesn't value you as much as she values her job? Or is the ranch worth more than your marriage? Only you can make that call. While the romantic in all of us admires the person who gives up material things for love, the realist knows that seldom does that happen without regret moving into the attic or the spare bedroom. And regret often grows up to become resentment. And resentment can strangle a marriage that's already on life support; it's even killed some that were perfectly healthy before resentment came along.

I can't tell you which to choose. I can only advise you of some factors to consider when making your choice. But if it was easy, we'd all be living in a castle eating ice cream and cotton candy and all our wishes would come true. Life's hard, and some choices are harder. You have to decide what's right for you, and your family is BOTH your dad and your kids. You have an obligation to both, according to the way I read the scriptures. But YOU have to live with the results. Once history is written, you can't unwrite it. You can't unsay things. You can't erase things. You can't change the past. You can't live in the future. But you CAN change how TODAY plays out. That's ALL the control you have.

Pray for guidance, and pray for wisdom. And then follow your heart. If your heart is in the marriage, the ranch is just material goods. But if your heart is in the ranch, that's where you need to be. No man can serve two masters, the Good Book says. So figure out where your treasure lies, and there is where your heart is. Then follow it.

Why the sudden change of heart on her part? If she was at least considering it before, what changed?

To be blunt, if you keep doin' what you been doin' you're gonna keep gettin' what you got. If it comes to divorce, you'll have to have a place to go anyway.

Sorry, more questions than answers I suppose, but those are my thoughts.

Hope it has a happy ending.

Anthony

This thread is like reading a soap ophrea, until all the facts are in you don't know what to suggest.

This post tells your "wife's" side the story of a very valid reason for not wanting to share "your" dream and she maybe used the "D" word to get your head out of your a$$. Sometimes it takes a ton of bricks to get our attention.

Some people can't wait to "make it" on there own. Your wife has done that with a good job, two lovely kids and a husband. She's seeing moving back to mommy and daddy as a reversel of everything you've both worked for. This is a natural concern for alot of people in your age bracket. Had this problem arose in another 10yrs then you might have got a different response from your wife, maybe not.

I suggest you compermise. Commute to work at the farm as if it's your main job. Live where your at now and use that 2hr drive each day to relax and plan out your next days work and resolve problems just like you do now.

Were 30yrs to your senior and had I purposed to my wife the option you gave yours, I'd would have gotten the same response you did, don't let the door knob hit me in the A$$. Why? She has never got along with my family 100% just as I have never got along with hers. We married each other, not our family's.

Another thing she's looking at is who's going to take care of mom and dad when the time comes? I wouldn't wish that upon any person again. My wife went thru pure HeII just to be kicked in the face once again.

I suggest you keep everything seperate just like it is now if you want your dream job. Dreams are always hard work!

I would say very few of "todays" women would do what your asking your wife to do. I watched my mom and dad go thru approx the same thing your planning on doing, (cash no land), with poor results, the big "D", and both will have died very unhappy people.

T_Bone

Only you can answer the questions. Talk is cheap, really talk, and then listen to what she says. Is this an excuse she is looking for to end a marriage that has already imploded? Or is it some (rational or irrational fear that she has about the ranch). My thoughts are with you.

When a person comes out and says something like that in anger, write it down because the thought has been there brewing for awhile and there are probably storm clouds on the not-too-distant horizon anyway.

Dunno ol' Pard, but someone who can't see the value in an 8,000 acre ranch just ain't thinkin' right. Further, holdin' that "double salary" over your head must seem a little more important to her. Sounds like a classic power struggle to me. :>(

Hope you and your mrs get this straightened out for the kids sake. They are the important ones.

Allan

If it's inevitable anyway (sounds like it is), get out now or she'll get 1/2 the dad's ranch. Then your trouble will really start.

Life's too short to live in misery.

Just my .02

Only one woman in a hundred is worth a damn. The rest are all just glittery junk.

Shouldn't admit this, but I've been thru a stadium full of 'em and can tell you it takes more use of your big head than your little head to find the good one.

If it were I, this hot shot would have been out in the street a long time ago.

Allan