Chapter 7 - The Divorce War
The next six months were a legal bloodbath. Nathan hired an aggressive divorce attorney, hoping to find a loophole. He claimed the business was marital property because he had given me "advice" over the years. Denise destroyed him in depositions. She produced thousands of pages of financial records proving Nathan had never contributed a single dime or hour to my company. Instead, she proved he had siphoned marital funds to float his lifestyle. The judge was thoroughly unimpressed with him.
Meanwhile, the foreclosure on Margaret's house proceeded. They tried to sell the lake property, but the secret second mortgage Harold had taken out meant it was entirely underwater. They had no liquidity. William, the golden older brother, was asked to step in and save the family. But William's money was tied up in his wife's family trusts, and Hannah flatly refused to bail out her mother-in-law. The great Bennett family loyalty evaporated the moment money was involved.
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By April, the bank officially seized Margaret's home. I watched the public auction online. An investor bought it for cash, intending to flip it. Margaret and Harold were forced to move into a cramped, two-bedroom apartment on the opposite side of the city. There was no room for the grand dining table, and there was no room for the silver bowl. The social circle Margaret had cultivated for forty years abandoned her. In their world, losing your money was a misfortune, but losing your home to your own daughter-in-law was a scandal they couldn't associate with.
Nathan moved into a cheap rental complex and had to sell his luxury car to pay his attorney fees. In the final divorce settlement, I took primary custody of the girls. Nathan got every other weekend, but he rarely used them. He was too busy working double shifts to pay off the remaining deficiency judgment he owed my company. The girls stopped asking about him after a few months. Children trust their mothers to make the world safe, and for the first time in their lives, their world truly was. There were no more whispers, no more empty comparisons, and no more feeling like they were second-class citizens in their own family.
