Stumbling through the afternoon heat, out and about on the neighborhood streets. Not one of my brighter ideas eh?

Man! Speakin’ of stupid ideas: as my brain cooked, my mind wandered to my father’s ill-fated marriage to the hair-raising Helen: the woman he took up with after my mother died.

You wanna talk about mistakes? Lemme tellya MISTAKE!

Couldn’t have been much better for Helen, either: the two of them must have been magnificently miserable after they moved in together. But him? My gawd! What a dragon lady that woman was! 

He had been unendingly happy with my mother: for decades. They were deeply in love. She was a compliant and loving woman. And they tended to think along the same lines…or at least, if they didn’t, she stifled her thoughts and made herself agree with him.

Helen, au contraire, was a woman of strong will and her own opinions. No one told her what to think, and no one told her what to do. Particularly not some guy. 😀

He was utterly bereft after my mother died. The result: after he met Helen at the old-folkerie where he moved, he stupidly proposed marriage.

Guess he imagined one woman was much like another. That, as we know, is far from true. The result: several years of utter misery for my father.

He refused to divorce her, because — wailed he — “she’ll get all my money!”

I was too stupid to come up with a counter to that. I should’ve said Daddy! Your daughter is married to one of the most powerful lawyers in the Southwest. She’s not gonna get all your money…or any of it! 

But no: nary a word from me.

That, to produce an excuse for me, came after years of having had the sh!t beat out of me. True: I was kinda afraid of my father, even as an adult. So I wasn’t inclined to gainsay him. If he thought she’d get all his money, well…no doubt she’d get all his money. Right?

Big mistake. I should have advanced my dainty little foot and spoken up. But…well…I figured that even if he heard a word I said, he wouldn’t be swayed. He would do what he would do because…that was what he did.

As a practical matter, with that lawyer in the offing he probably would have listened to me. Or at least have taken an afternoon to meet with said lawyer and discussed the matter. So…because I kept my mouth shut, he lost a substantial part of his shirt. My bad, eh?

Well, anyway: after decades of prior marriage for each of them, they didn’t think of looking at new  matrimonial arrangements in any unconventional way. So…off they went to the altar in the typical manner: blending all their worldly goods as community property.

Don’t do that, folks.

What you want in a second (or later) marriage is sole and separate property. And you want to keep it that way!  Talk with a lawyer BEFORE you tie the knot; understand what you’re doing and be sure your lawyer reviews things properly.

If my father had done that — well, to be fair: if the two of them had done that — their lives would have been a lot happier and a lot calmer than they turned out to be. And they could have untied the knot fairly easily, with lots less pain.