He's Stalling Again

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-01-2004
He's Stalling Again
Mon, 10-24-2005 - 9:30pm

We've been working on selling the house for some time (since May). He had punched some holes in the walls and doors, there was a spot in the ceiling that needed to be fixed, and some other things. He's a contractor so knows how to do all this, but he's been taking his time doing it. He even took off 2 weeks to work on it (actually 3 but he won't admit to the 3rd week) about 5 weeks ago but got accomplished what could have been done in about 4 days. He decided it was more important to get drunk and high. He kept telling me all he was doing, but it was stuff he had already done.

Finally all the big stuff is done and I want to interview realtors. I told him I wanted to make a decision by this weekend and get it listed ASAP. He says there's still a lot that needs to be done. I set up for a realtor to come over on Saturday, but he calls and changes it to Sunday afternoon (without telling me). Then when I confront him he's says "Have you thought about what I'm supposed to do when we sell because I'm running my business from here?" Um, find a new house and move? The business consists of his extra wood in the garage, his files and a phone. All portable. His lawyer obviously put this idea in his head. We never did meet with the realtor.

He keeps bringing up how I asked his parents to help get him out of the house one time when he was high. I wanted him out permanently so I could go in, get the stuff done he wasn't doing and get it on the market. I won't do it while he's there, because he'll keep finding things wrong with what I do or have done or wreck it again after I finish.

And he's filing a response to the divorce petition, but won't tell me what he's asking to change. It's related to the girls, so since he won't tell me, I figure it must be pretty bad. I asked for sole custody and 2 hours a week supervised visitation because of what he did to my daughter. He doesn't know I took her to another counselor and she admitted what happened to her. I'm waiting to get served, but he promised to tell me before he filed, to "give me the courtesy I didn't give him when I filed". Obviously he decided not to (smirk).

I'm just so mad about the stalling with getting the house on the market. Has anyone else gone through this? Any legal recourse I have to get him out so I can just get it on the market? I know the next thing he's going to do is stall about accepting an offer because 'it won't be enough'. Can I have the court order that he accept the offer?

I know this is all his controlling behavior, it's just really frustrating not having anything I can do about it...