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Hi. I was just referred to this board and came here seeking help. I will try to be as brief as possible. I know long emails can really be frustrating.
My problem is that I am married to an EXTREMELY verbally abusive man. Before we married he was physically abusive a few times, which resulted in a charge of domestic violence on his criminal report. We married anyway. He promised me everything. He completed both undergraduate school and then graduate school, passed the teachers exam and was still unable to find a job~ mostly due to his criminal report. Thinking this degrees, the job status and other things was going to change his behavior, I stuck around as the verbal abuse began and has gotten worse. We have been married for 9 years, dated for 8 years prior to marriage and have 3 kids together. Neither of us have kids outside of our marriage {I think}. He has never had a real job. He worked for a non-profit organization based on funding; ie. meaning when there was no funding, there was no paycheck. His organization would run out of money several times per year. He also worked from home, still I paid for my kids to attend daycare, b/c he claimed to not be able to get things{funding proposals etc done} when the kids were home. I too have an advanced degree, and have worked on my present job right out of graduate school 8 years ago. I grew weary waiting for him to buy me a home, so I went out and got something I could afford with or without his income{a huge mistake}. We have lived in our home for 5 years now, he's never paid one mortgage payment. Matter of fact the only bill he pays is the 50 bucks cable bill and now the 85 dollar weekly daycare bill for our toddler {he was keeping the toddler, but would become so angry when he couldn't control me that he would leave the house and not return, knowing I needed him to keep the baby so that I could go to work. I finally gave up and put him in daycare and made him pay for it. Last year, he got his record expunged and became a teacher. He works 3 hours away and only comes home on weekends. He stays in a hotel during the week, paying more for his hotel per month than I am paying for my mortgage. That is hurting him financially, so he is refusing to pay the two bills he was paying before {he was a substitute teacher}. Currently, everytime he sees me it is whore, slut, bitch this and that. He has cursed my mother out on several ocassions. He does all of this right in front of our 3 kids. I have numerous recordings of this, which I typed out and provided to my attorney. I also have a ltter that states that within 90 days of my husband probation period as a teacher {he just started in Jan~his very first professional job}, that they decided not to renew his contract b/c he made an unwanted sexual advance at a female teacher and she made a formal complaint. He will finish out the year and then be unemployed again. He has run up my cell phone bill calling other females-namely my daughters teacher, to the point that I had to send the principal an email informing her of what was going on {he was a sub there at the time also} My problem is that I want him removed from my home. My children are older and we should not have to be exposed to his childishness or verbal abuse whenever he can't control me. Also I will state for the record, that I have never once given him a reason to doubt my love for him. I've typed all of his school papers, I paid to get the professional resume done, I paid to have the record expunged. I searched for jobs for him-getting directions and distances. I worked a 9 hour day, commuted 2 hours per day, and went home to help with homework, clean and take care of the 3 kids. I thought all of this would prove my love for him. If that wasn't enough, even though he was penniless alot of the times, I made him my beneficiary for my pension, 401K, life ins policies....Everything. Still, everytime I turned around, he was telling me I was cheating b/c I did this {came home and took a bath} and when I changed that habit, then something else would make him believe I was cheating {didn't take a bath, b/c I wasn't clean and therefore didn't want to have sex with him b/c I had been with someone else earlier that day}. I spent alot of my life changing this and that about myself in hopes that he would stop the accusations. Well the accusations gives him permission to verbally abuse me. My daughter, 13, is so withdrawn now. Whenever he's home, she stays in her room. He tells the two boys (9-autistic, and 3 year old} that their mother is a slut and a whore and not to find a woman like me. Overall, is I need him out of my home. My attorney seems to want me to provoke him, in which case, he gets a domestic violence case, I get a restraining order and he's out of the house. I don't think this route is in my or my kids best interest seeing that I need him to find another job and help me take care of his 3 kids in the form of child support. I can't do that if he can't find a job b/c he's got the dv charge on his record. The loan and deed is in both of our names. My husband won't commit to ANYTHING. He needs to be forced in order to agree to something. I think he went to Atlanta today for an interview, but even living in Atlanta and coming home maybe once per month, he will still not grant me a legal seperation or change his address. As far as proof goes, I have many recordings or his verbal attack at me. I have a copy of the letter his school gave him about the sexual advance. I have copies of his bank statements that show that he is bouncing checks every other day {35.00 fee for every charger} and between paychecks, he is oweing the bank 200 to 300 bucks. I have emails that he sent to my daughter's teachers and her replies {she was even giving him money}. And most importantly, I have witnesses, my mother, and children. Even my autistic son, says that "Daddy turns into a monster" and is scared to sleep in his own room with his father. Am I wasting my time or is there a way that I can get this man out of my home?

My last resort is to move out myself, continue to pay my mortgage, and pay rent somewhere else and then file for a legal seperartion. Remain seperated 1 year, file for divorce and then fight for my house in the divorce.

[i]I don't think this route is in my or my kids best interest seeing that I need him to find another job and help me take care of his 3 kids in the form of child support. I can't do that if he can't find a job b/c he's got the dv charge on his record.[/i]

I hate to say this, but my feeling is he's never going to get a job with decent enough wages to pay anything but minimal court ordered child support... which could be as little as $25 dollars a week with his previous history. From everything you've stated, you've been financially sufficient and pretty much independent of his income. It's as if, when it comes in at all, it's a little spare money and nothing more. He's had it made with you all these years and if not you, it would someone else he would be living off of.

Leaving the home with the kids is not an option, nor should it be. You could end up finding yourself way over your head trying to manage the mortgage and rental, plus the utilities for both. While you don't want to file false DV charges against him you have enough real and current ones to have him put out of the home.

If he accepts this position he interviewed for in and will only come home once a month, see an attorney while he's gone and have the divorce papers and/or restraining order served on him then to keep him from returning. Maybe file under "abandonment." This may be doable as he willfully made the choice to leave and failed to support his family in the past, and can be seen as doing it again. An attorney can help you understand that logic and process better.

I think in SC the abandonment ground is abandonment spanning a year so that might not be a possibility. Also, depending on what county in SC there is mandatory ADR if contested custody or visitation is involved (Florence, Horry, Lexington, Richland, Greenville, Pickens and Anderson).

I know abandonment is a tough one, but obviously the man makes deliberately poor employment choices that brought no money into the household. Besides physically abandoning a family there's also the and/"or" addendum... "failure to support the family." So I was kind of wondering if maybe the "or" part alone might work. I think it's pretty pathetic that all the man would pay for was cable and day care, then takes a job which pretty much just supported himself and later didn't want to pay even those bills.

She really needs to find a safe way out and I also realize any attorney he later gets is going to try to make this woman appear questionable... as well as accuse her of accepting reversed roles in the household... making him to be the househusband, possibly pay him alimony, assign him custodial parent, etc. I had a few friend who went through this (though one's ex was much more physically abusive, and the other's was a full fledged drug addict), that had to pay temporary alimony for a while and even leave them in the marital residence.

Within a few weeks (typically) of a divorce being filed, temporary orders are set. That determines who lives where. The judge can order him to live somewhere else for the duration of the divorce.