Dear Queenie,
To react to a previous letter, I would like to say the following to the lady who wrote it: Forget the lawyer! Don’t accept the money he gives you. Let him go and do the shopping himself, pay the bills and do all the things he expects you to do with what he gives you.
Also, run, don’t walk, and look for a job! Whatever you can get to start with. As long as you don’t have your own income, he can and will do to you what ever he feels like. Next thing you know he will have another woman and you with no income of your own will have nowhere to go and won’t be able to do anything about the situation.
Wake up and do yourself a big favour – respect yourself and he will respect you too; if not, he will only trample on you.
I am begging you to please take notice of my advice.
Queenie, if this lady doesn’t have enough money for bare necessities how would she be able to pay for a lawyer or a counselor? None of those come cheap, especially not the lawyer. Usually I agree with all your advice, but this time I don’t, sorry.
Thank you, Queenie.—Experienced Ex-wife
Dear Experienced Ex-wife,
Of course this lady should be able to support herself. I believe I suggested in the original column that she look for a job. Also, I suspect that knowing he cannot use financial dependence to control her will encourage her husband to alter his stingy ways.
However, this lady also needs expert legal advice to learn just what are her rights and her husband’s obligations to her and how she can enforce them. If she can’t afford legal fees, she can consult the Law Clinic, but it is possible a lawyer would be able to collect fees from her husband, with the court’s help. Otherwise, she can use her salary from her new job to pay for legal advice.
The same logic applies to counselling.
I stand by my original advice.
