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<p>Quite honestly, I think this was a unreasonable request. You need to take care of you…if that means sharing what is going on with a couple of people (you can trust to be discreet) so be it. Going off alone on a road trip when you are in a bad place emotionally doesn’t sound like the best idea.</p>
<p>How are you today?</p>
<p>I’m sorry you are having to deal with this situation. But I echo a previous poster’s belief that this will be even harder on your younger brothers, whether they think so now or are pretending they are OK with it. Please try to be supportive of them, too, as you deal with this.</p>
<p>Hi, OP. I was also thinking about you… I looked at the thread again, and noticed that part of your title was, “now what?”. I am sure my kids had the same question when their dad and I told them we were getting divorced. Here are some likely upcoming things to expect:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Although your parents would likely LIKE to live apart ASAP, that may not be possible right away. Finances, and sometimes legal manuvering (for the house, not wanting to be seen as abandoning the family, etc.) can keep one of them in the house for some time. That is a pretty uncomfortable period for everyone! At some point, though, one of them will probably move out. Maybe to a rented place, maybe with a friend or relative. Whichever parent that is would probably want to have enough space for you and your sibs to live with them some of the time. They will work hard to make it comfortable for you, but it can be hard if money is tight. My advice is to cut that parent some slack, and be appreciative of their efforts.</p></li>
<li><p>Things start moving along once both of them have retained lawyers. Again, this isn’t always quick. I wanted a lawyer who was too busy to take my case on for 2 months. Turned out to be an excellent decision to wait for her, but it did delay the filing process.</p></li>
<li><p>Once someone has filed the paperwork (all this procedural stuff varies some by state), then usually the parties get down to negotiating. They may use a mediator, who helps them state their positions and try to come to an written agreement outside of court. Or more than one mediator (we had one for custody, and a different person for finanical issues). This takes several meetings. They collect a lot of paperwork in the process. The lawyers and mediators are very busy, so this can drag on for several months.
Your parents could get (more) angry with each other during that process. And sometimes they try to turn the kids against the other parent. Try to stay out of this, tell them you won’t participate in that.</p></li>
<li><p>Eventually they either reach a settlement, or they go to court and the judge makes decisions. Some things are decided by state law (like child support payments in my state are like that). Once that is done, then things like visitation for your siblings, child support payments, alimony, etc. go into effect. You are beyond the age where any of that affects you. Meaning you can live where you and your parents agree you want to/should. And there is no legal obligation for child support payments, you are beyond that age. Although there could be an impact on any contributions they were making to your college.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>If your parents have stayed married this long, it may be because they really wanted to try to stay together for the sake of you and your siblings, and they just can’t hold it together any more. Neither one probably wants to jeopardize their relationship with you and your brothers. Try to keep your relationship as postive with both of them as you can during this upcoming 12-24 months of upheaval. If you can avoid taking sides and placing blame, that is a good thing. You will be glad you did in the long run.</p>
<p>My parents divorced when I was a child, and my then-boyfriend (now husband)'s parents divorced while he was in college.</p>
<p>People who are divorcing sometimes think that this decision will have little impact on their college-age offspring, but this is not necessarily the case. It can be quite a jolt, and it certainly is an unfamiliar situation. Also, it has important practical consequences.</p>
<p>May I suggest that you give it a few days to let the strong emotions die down, and then sit down with one or both parents (the calmer one, if you do it with one of them) and say something like, “I realize that this divorce is your situation and I don’t want to add to the complexity of it, but I need to understand how this affects me.” You need to find out where you will be living when you are not at college and how their divorce will affect you financially. </p>
<p>One of the problems with divorce is that the same income that was supporting one household suddenly has to support two. People usually cope with this by downsizing (for example, from a house to an apartment), but still, there are many expenses that now have to be paid twice (two cable TV bills, two Internet bills, two phone bills, etc.). Also, it takes time to make the changes that will save money (you can’t sell a house overnight, for example). And the divorce process itself is expensive. Your college is not going to decrease its expectations of how much your parents will contribute to your education just because they are getting a divorce. So you need to understand the financial impact of the divorce (and if your parents don’t understand it themselves, they need to figure it out).</p>
<p>As for where you will live when not at college, your parents may have definite ideas about that (especially if the financial situation means that one of them will move to a small apartment, where there may not be room for you). But be prepared for the possibility that they may ask you to choose. My husband’s parents divorced while he was in college, and they asked him to choose which parent to live with (because that parent would have to get a larger apartment, so they needed to know). He said that he wanted to go with his father because the need for a larger apartment would be less of a financial burden for his father than his mother, and nobody was offended by this. But in other families, the decision might not have been as simple.</p>
<p>Sad to read about your parents, OP. My parents divorced when I was in college and I was so glad to be AWAY from what was happening. I hope you can talk to your BF or another friend with divorced parents that will listen. You might need to reach out to parents of friends; another adult perspective - much like you’ve gotten here on CC - will go a long way. It’s not fair that you are the oldest, but look out for your brothers. I’ll be thinking about you.</p>
<p>My parents divorced when I was 26, smack in the middle of my wedding planning. There’s never a good time.</p>
<p>A good book: “The Way They Were” by Brooke Lea Foster. I told my husband to leave me in our bedroom with a box of Kleenex and he gave me space… I read the whole thing cover-to-cover in a weekend, and went through the entire box of Kleenex. It helped a lot… helped with my anger (and I was FURIOUS), helped with my sadness, helped with my grieving and feeling out-of-control.</p>
<p>Talk to whoever you darned well please. You’ve got to get through this, too. This isn’t just your parents’ business. It’s your whole family’s business.</p>
<p>Take your brothers out for ice cream. Buy a cheap set of plates, a tarp, and some hammers, go out to a parking lot, and the three of you can break plates for an afternoon.</p>
<p>PM me if you want to talk. I’m only 28, so this just happened to me a couple of years ago. I’d be happy to talk through it with you, and I know what you’re going through.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be insensitive but no, you should just not take a car for days that doesn’t belong to you because you want to. Don’t you have to work over the summer? I always did, in some really terrible jobs I might add.</p>
<p>^^^^I agree with above. You have every right to your feelings, though I would caution against deciding that your pain is worse than your brothers’, regardless of how they appear on the outside. However, you have no right to take anyone’s car without permission unless it is your own.</p>