50 – Divorce By Deceit

It wasn’t until Maya shoved me outside my son’s school and announced to me that she and Maanav were getting married that I understood why Maanav had been in such a rush to divorce me.

I wasn’t aware of how serious his relationship with her was until then. When I received the divorce papers, I knew I wasn’t entirely ready to give in. Although Maanav was seeing Maya, and I was staying at Saleem’s, something in me was holding on to the idea that we were perhaps just going through a rough phase, as all relationships do, and that, maybe, somehow, we’d get through it for the sake of our families and the children, and everything would be alright in the end. What if this was just a big blip in the story of the rest of our lives?

After I received the papers though, I was hounded constantly by Maanav’s lawyer to sign and return them. In my fragile mental state, I could barely make a decision about what to eat that day, let alone make a call on something that would impact me and my children for the rest of our lives.

The relentless lawyer, though, just wouldn’t leave me alone. He repeatedly called my mobile, and if I didn’t answer, he called me at work. He’d make me cry in the office and I would have to beg him to stop calling there.

Once, when he called me, I had a breakdown right in the middle of a supermarket. I’d gone to Tesco after work to get some groceries when my phone rang yet again; of course, it was the lawyer.

I asked him for the umpteenth time to leave me alone. I asked him if he took joy in breaking up families. He told me that if I didn’t sign the papers, Maanav would file for ancillary relief. I didn’t know what that was. He told me it meant I would have to pay maintenance towards the children as they were living with Maanav.

I had already told Maanav and the family that I didn’t want a penny from them. Although they were millionaires and could easily have afforded to help me with my living arrangements so that I could have had a safe place for my children to come and stay with me; not only did they not offer me a financial settlement or help with somewhere to live, but instead, Maanav and his family were threatening to take money from me.

At the time, I’d just gotten my job taking orders over the phone at the nutritional health company. I had zero savings. I lived hand to mouth. I had just come off benefits and I was still living in the state-subsidised housing accommodation that I was offered after leaving Saleem’s place.

It was a bedroom in a the most dilapidated house on the street, sharing a kitchen and bathroom with five or six other housemates. Whenever I speak about this house to anyone, I refer to it as the ‘crack house’. That’s the state of disarray it was in. It was never clean. I never looked forward to going into the kitchen or bathroom. The carpets and curtains in my room were old and stained. I had no furniture. My clothes and all my belongings were in a suitcase. And I had no bed. I had only a single mattress I got from my parents’ house.

Yet, my husband and his lawyer were threatening me to give them money.

This was when I snapped. Right in the middle of the fruit and veg section, I screamed down the phone, “What will you take?!! I don’t have anything!!! Will you take my underwear?!!!”

I wish I had known my rights then, and had fearlessly said, fine, let’s go to court. Things would have turned out very differently. The judges would have seen the truth and called them out for exactly what they were up to. It would have ended up in my favour.

Just as it turned out a bit later in 2002, when we had the first court hearing about the children. The first time I’d ever been to court was when the people who had been my caretakers, my family and closest confidants in my life for the last few years, since I was seventeen years old— my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and my husband—summoned me there to try and take my children away from me.

In court, as you may have guessed, were all of them and their lawyers against me, myself and I. I couldn’t afford representation and I didn’t know about legal aid then.

I greeted them all in the waiting area, and then their lawyer (the same one who would harass me to sign the divorce papers), told me that if I’d had a lawyer with me, he and my lawyer would have gone into a separate room to discuss the case before going into the court room.

He told me that as I was representing myself, he and I would have to have that meeting ourselves. I believed him.

I followed him into a small meeting room where he sat tall and imposing in the chair opposite me. He squared up his shoulders before speaking and it felt as if the desk between us shrank. He told me that the family were here to file for permission to apply for permanent residency (custody) of the children and asked if I was going to oppose this or let it happen.

I told him that, of course, I was going to fight it.

He then leaned forward, closing the space between us even more, and told me that I’d better be prepared. He said that it was only permission to apply for custody, and of course, the family would get it. Then, in due course, they would apply for full custody and they’d get that too.

What did I know back then of intimidation games? If he’d actually been a good lawyer, he wouldn’t have had to resort to such nasty, low-life tactics, and with a twenty-one-year-old girl with no lawyer or anyone to support or guide her, at that.

Once we were in court, all I did was truthfully answer any questions asked by the judge.

The verdict: I won.

The judges said I was clearly an active mother in my children’s lives. They saw no reason for my rights to be taken away.

At that hearing, Maanav didn’t throw any accusations in the air regarding my behaviour or conduct, because there wasn’t anything relevant. There was nothing to say that I hadn’t been in the past and wasn’t a good mother to my children to that day.

All I had to do was sign a paper that I wouldn’t take my children and run away with them somewhere; which of course, I wouldn’t do as I wanted stability and a loving home for them. That was something I couldn’t give them. I felt safe in the thought that Jai and Veer had all the material comfort they would need and that their paternal grandparents would be there for them.

When I got the divorce papers, had I contested everything and we’d gone to court, had I had professionals and people in authority assess my case, my marriage would never have ended the way it did—by manipulation and deceit and me losing everything, including my dignity.

After his lawyer had hounded me and broken me down, my father-in-law called me to the house and told me to bring the divorce papers with me. I went alone and when I arrived, I saw that he and Maanav were there together.

The three of us stood near the dining table. There was no mention of Maya, but after a brief discussion where they were adamant about the divorce, Maanav put the papers in my hand. I re-read the first page and pointed to the grounds of divorce on it.

There were five ‘reasons’ for our divorce listed there. Each one was blaming me, making it look like I was solely at fault for the marriage breaking down.

One said that I forced my husband to sleep with prostitutes. There was proof on the bank statements that he had spent money in those establishments, but Maanav twisted it around and said that I forced him to do it.

Two of the grounds said that I had been involved with other men, one – an affair, and the other – sexual contact.

One said that I had abandoned my children.

I can’t remember the final one (I’ve written to the courts to get all our paperwork sent to me).

I pointed to them and said, “But, these aren’t true.”

Maanav, hurriedly and with a casual flick of his wrist, said something like, “Oh, don’t worry about those. I just had to make up a few things and put them on there to get the papers drawn up. I’m doing you a favour by filing for our divorce. I know you don’t have any money, so I’ll cover the cost of it.

“But it’s not true, we can’t do that,” I replied.

At that point, my father-in-law must have signalled Maanav, because all of a sudden, he excused himself and went into the kitchen saying he was getting some water. He was gone for a while.

Now, it was just me and my father-in-law in the room alone.

I broke down in tears. “Papa, I don’t want to do this.”

He looked at me reassuringly and gently said, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” and he put the papers on the table in front of me.

Still crying, I said, “But it’s not true.”

He then put the pen he was holding in my hand and said, “It’s okay, don’t worry. You just write here at the bottom that these aren’t true and sign next to it, then you sign the last page.” He guided me, pointing where to write and sign, turning the pages for me. All the while, I was crying; every tear and the pain in my heart telling me that this didn’t feel right at all.

I don’t know what I thought would happen after that. Whether I thought they would be sent back and we wouldn’t get divorced, or whether new grounds would be written that were actually true and didn’t blame me for everything.

I signed the papers and left them there as my father-in-law told me he would post them for me.

If I trusted anyone a hundred per cent at that time in my life, it was Papa. More than my own parents, I trusted him. And he knew that. He banked on that trust and knew exactly how to extract anything from me—a signature … my life … my kids.

Recently, I got some legal advice from a family lawyer. She told me that the system has changed now; the grounds of divorce have been done away with. She also said that by law, I was supposed to have put the papers in a sealed envelope and returned them myself. Nobody else should have touched them or sent them on my behalf.

Ten years later, at the final hearing, the same divorce papers I had signed were produced. But, they looked very different to when I had last seen them.

The original staple had been removed. The original front page, where I had written that the grounds were not true, had been replaced by a fresh page, looking like I agreed with the grounds of divorce. The whole thing had been re-stapled. The only thing that remained truly of mine was the signature on the last page.

To be continued…