Originally Posted by
TheAshtar
Pick your poison. Live where wifey wants and commute to work. Or drag her to a shi++y town to live in base (away from family and support) and commute to see your kids after the divorce.
Pilot self-defense:
1) With kids, only live in a location (big base or easy commute) where YOU are at least OK with hanging out long-term in the event of big-D.
2) Ensure that local law will "anchor" the family to that location, ie shared custody occurs at that location UNLESS both parties agree otherwise.
3) If the relationship is struggling DO NOT move somewhere to make her happy unless conditions 1) and 2) are met.
I've seen this one play out many times, wife is unhappy, pilot agrees to move back to Podunk Falls to be near her family, she drops divorce papers as soon as enough government paperwork is done to establish residency (DL, lease, mail forwarding, etc). Boom, you're now anchored to almost 20 years of trains, RJ's, and automobiles to see your kids.
Many of them become vicious psychotics at divorce time, and will leverage every possibly advantage to punish you and extract as much money from you as they can. The kids becomes pawns in the game, and you end up trading away your money and QOL for their welfare, and to salvage some sort of relationship with your kids. She knows you're in checkmate if the family is anchored where she wants to be, bonus points if it's a difficult commute. You can quit the airline, but only if you have skills to make enough money for alimony and child support.
Most heart-breaking story I ever heard involved a pilot friend in the above scenario, mom was bragging to friends and family about how much she was making dad suffer with the geography, deliberately change dad visitations at the last minute, no shows, etc. His eight year old daughter observed all this, and in tears told dad that she didn't want him to see her because it was so hard on him. She promised they could resume their relationship at age 18. He didn't see her regularly for years, but the silver lining was that the state in question allowed minors to pick the custodial parent at age 14 or so. The daughter got help from a friend's parent, got a lawyer, and got her own custody switched to dad. Dad showed up soon after with a uhaul, a custody order, and a sheriff's deputy to collect his daughter.