What happens when a spouse dies in the middle of a divorce?

There's no shortage of books, blogs and websites with advice for grieving widows. But if you're part of a smaller club of people widowed while getting divorced, you're pretty much on your own.

I know because this happened to me.

Two years after my husband and I separated – but before we reached a divorce settlement – he died of a heart attack at age 57. Overnight I went from almost-ex to widow. We had each moved on: He was living with his girlfriend, and I was happily dating. Nearly six years later, I still feel as if I was widowed on a technicality. A real widow doesn't have a divorce lawyer and a Match profile. A real widow is pining for her spouse, inconsolable.

"That's the only model of widowhood people have," said Rachel Bart, 51, an attorney and former New Yorker living in Gan Yavne, Israel, who was divorcing her husband when he died six years ago. When someone suggested she join a widows support group, initially she baulked. "Why would I go?" she said. "We were separated."

Sometimes she calls herself a "partial widow". To make her point, she mentioned a friend whose fiance died three weeks before their wedding. "She doesn't get to call herself a widow and I do?" Bart said. "That's ridiculous."

"It's called disenfranchised grief," said Michelle Palmer, a clinical social worker and executive director of the Wendt Centre for Loss and Healing in Washington. "It's also referred to as the grief that has no voice, because it's a grief that our society typically does not recognise."

It occurs in situations that fall outside the norm and might also include, for example, mourning the death of a former spouse or an extramarital lover. A widow who was about to be divorced has no defined place in society, so we often don't know what we're supposed to do.

Even responding to condolences can be awkward. "There's an element of not wanting to accept sympathy for something that is a misconception on their part," said Bailey Poland, 27, a graduate student in Findlay, Ohio, whose husband died unexpectedly two months after they split up. "They feel for me in a way that doesn't feel accurate to my experience. It's a different kind of pain than they're assuming."

Finding precise language is a struggle. Is he a late husband? A late-soon-to-be-ex? "There is really no right word," Poland said.

Lauren Krulik, a 51-year-old homemaker in Northport, New York, avoided the word "widow" altogether. She and her husband had been living apart for three years and each was in a new committed relationship when he died. "I didn't feel like I was his wife," she said. "So why would I feel like I was his widow?"

These partial widows, or whatever they decide to call themselves, often end up creating their own protocol for coping with their loss. At the funeral for my husband, my kids and I grieved with his family, with whom I'm still close, and his girlfriend and I each gave a eulogy. Next to Krulik at her husband's funeral, along with her kids and his family, was her boyfriend of two years, who helped handle the arrangements. She no longer felt married; but not everyone saw it that way, including the rabbi. "He insisted that I was the wife, and that was the end of that," Krulik said. She had to persuade him to mention her husband's girlfriend in his eulogy.

Sometimes a separation pulls families apart. A week after Bart's husband's death, his sister, with whom she'd been close, said that as far as they were concerned, Bart and her husband were already divorced, so she was no longer part of their family. "I not only lost him, but suddenly I lost his whole family, too," Bart said.

When Poland's husband died, she and her in-laws drew close and put aside the separation. But because her husband had spread nasty rumours about her during their split, some people refused to shake her hand or speak with her at his funeral last year. "I became the villain," she said. Her father-in-law came to her defence, but she said that even today some of those friendships have not been repaired.

Sometimes there are uncomfortable emotions, such as a sense of relief, especially if the estranged spouse suffered from mental illness or substance abuse. But it doesn't mean you don't mourn the person. "The hardest part is trying to be appropriate and authentic at the same time," said Pam Gillette, 56, a former Florida school principal. Because of her husband's betrayals and addiction, she moved away with her kids to Greensboro, North Carolina; he died the following year. "You don't want to admit that you miss the person who hurt you so badly."

Both Gillette and Krulik have had people remark on how "lucky" they are to have avoided a potentially bitter divorce. I've had it said to me, too. But this gallows humour isn't necessarily welcome. "It's a terrible thing to say," Krulik said. "My children lost a wonderful father. That is not lucky at all."

Then there's the headstone inscription, which can require the skills of a diplomat. Do I write "Beloved Husband" about a man I was divorcing? Do I acknowledge his new relationship and if so, how? I decided to put "loving father" up top, followed by "caring husband", and on the last line "beloved companion". Krulik omitted any mention of husband or companion, a decision she feels was appropriate.

Dating, too, raises questions, such as when to 'fess up about your unusual single status, especially if potential partners assume "widow" meant a happy marriage, not one ending in separation. Do you put it on your Match profile, as I did initially? Or wait till you meet?

Ayelet Prizant, 45, an editor and writer in Brooklyn, says it depends. When a guy she just met expressed sympathy upon learning she was widowed, she felt it was too soon to reveal details of her separation from a man she had still loved. So she replied simply that they weren't on the best terms when he died. "I want them to know that it was a little bit different, a little bit atypical," she said.

It's about what you and your date can tolerate, Palmer explained. "Do you sit down at a first date and say 'hi, so here's my super-complicated story'?" she said. "Probably not.

Atypical widows might feel uneasy if the end of a promising new relationship is harder to handle than the death of a spouse. When Bart and her boyfriend broke up last year, she admitted to being more devastated than when her husband died, and then feeling guilty about it. Likewise, my heartache at the breakup of my first serious post-widowhood relationship was a glimpse into what a "real" widow might endure.

Krulik said that her husband's desire to leave their marriage was far more traumatic than his death. "They say divorce is like a death, and it really is," she said of their separation, which felt to her like "the real death". It seemed wrong to call him her late husband and getting engaged three months after his death only magnified her discomfort. Now happily remarried, she's found a solution. "Lately I've been calling him my first husband," she said. "That makes it easier!"

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/what-happens-when-a-spouse-dies-in-the-middle-of-a-divorce-20170524-gwbv4g.html

Man set home on fire so wife wouldn't get it in divorce, court hears

A man who burnt down his home so his ex-wife wouldn't get it in their divorce says the house was still legally his, and therefore his to destroy.

Police found Krste Kovacevski in the granny flat of his home in Coniston, a suburb of Wollongong, in the early hours of August 4 last year. He was with his dog, wearing a cardigan and was calmly watching his home go up in flames.

"He did not appear fazed that the house was burning down only metres away from him," reported a police officer, who tried to move him on.

"I'm just watching it," was Kovacevski's reply. 

Hours earlier, Kovacevski's lawyer had lodged signed legal documents on his behalf, transferring ownership of the home to his ex-wife, in line with terms set by the Federal Circuit Court in a July 22 decision. 

Kovacevski is now defending himself against a criminal charge stemming from the night, contending the home was still legally his, for at least another day. 

The 75-year-old was arrested after he admitted he had started the blaze. When questioned by firefighters, he pointed to a folder of divorce paperwork and said, "that's where it started".

At Wollongong Police station he explained he had been unable to sleep for the past four or five days. He became emotional and "nervous" after receiving a legal notice on August 3, giving him 40 hours to vacate his home.

"I got nowhere to go," he told police. "So now I start packing ... things in a car. My pressure went up."

"Where I can take it and where I gonna stay?

"I was in the garage. I looked around. I see the kerosene, grab it and light it up. That was it.

"I lost everything so I've got nothing to worry [about]."

Kovacevski packed minimal belongings in his car – a quilt, some blankets, some shirts and coats – before setting the home alight. He told police he poured kerosene through the hallway, outside the bathroom and in the loungeroom before setting a piece of paper alight and dropping it in the fuel.

The fire caused the roof of the house to cave in and threatened neighbouring properties, which were evacuated. 

Kovacevski told police he had separated from his wife in 1991 and "she got everything" then, leaving him with "just [the] clothes on me". 

He said he had spent money renovating the house – his only property, owned outright - since moving in, in 1991, but had not insured the home or its contents. 

Magistrate Mark Douglass considered the case at a hearing last month and was due to hand down a decision on Monday, however the matter was adjourned. 

Kovacevski stands accused of damaging property by fire.

His solicitor told the court the case hinged entirely on the question of who owned the property at the time of the fire. 

"And if he owned it, he has a right to burn his own property?" Magistrate Douglass asked police prosecutor Sean Thackray. 

"Part of being the owner of property is doing what you like with it, I suppose," Sergeant Thackray replied, adding the prosecution would be arguing the home was joint-owned.

The magistrate is to consider family court documents and aspects of property law before returning a decision. The matter returns to court next month.

http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/man-set-home-on-fire-so-wife-wouldnt-get-it-in-divorce-court-hears-20170530-gwgoam.html

Court rules life’s a lottery when a divorced couple divides assets

The Family Court has ruled that a husband can keep the fortune he won playing TattsLotto during the first year of a decade-long relationship on the grounds he chose the numbers, purchased the ticket and, most importantly, cashed the cheque into his personal bank account.

The case came before three judges of the Full Court after the wife, who cannot be named but is known in court records as Mrs ­Elford, complained she had received just $51,000 in a divorce settlement from her husband, despite him having more than $1 million in the bank. Most of that money was TattsLotto winnings.

The court heard Mrs Elford, then 35, and her husband, then 57, started living together in 2003 and married in 2007. Both had been married previously.

Mr Elford owned his own home outright, and had $110,000 in superannuation. Mrs Elford’s position was more precarious: she had three dependent children, then aged 3, 6 and 9, a mortgage and a credit card debt.

They decided to keep their fin­ances separate, and never opened a joint bank account.

Twelve months into the marriage, Mr Elford, using numbers in his family at least since 1995, won $620,000 in the lottery. He put the money in a term deposit in his name, along with savings, and an inheritance from his mother.

That term deposit is now worth more than $1m.

The couple kept their finances mostly separate from the outset, with Mrs Elford in charge of buying food and clothes, and covering costs associated with her three kids, and Mr Elford, in his words, “keeping a roof over our heads”.

In 2011, Mr Elford had a stroke that left him almost blind, and unable to drive or read. He now requires kidney dialysis three times a week, and paid carers assist him with various household tasks.

Mrs Elford left about a year after the stroke, apparently ­expecting she’d get a fair slice of the Lotto money.

According to documents, she wanted $320,000 but when the case came before a lower court, her husband was ordered to pay $51,000.

Three senior judges — Diana Bryant, Peter Murphy and Paul Cronin — agreed to hear the wife’s appeal.

Mrs Elford’s counsel argued the TattsLotto money should be treated as a “joint contribution” by the parties because “the marriage was almost 10 years duration. They did things jointly. There was a common togetherness, there was a common joint venture that they were in a marriage. That’s what their relationship was about … a common use of the property.”

The evidence, however, suggested the couple kept their assets and finances separate, and did not ever have joint bank accounts.

Asked about this, Mrs Elford said: “That was always his request. What accounts he had were his. He never wanted a joint account.”

In denying Mrs Elford’s appeal, the court conceded that while she had “clearly made non-financial contributions to the relationship (such as) cooking, cleaning and gardening”, Mr Elford had helped by picking up her children after school when she was working. The court also noted the husband had no obligation to provide for the children since they were not his.