Laurie, while you think everything will work out the way you're both planning.. you should plan for it not. Things happen, I don't like that there is no child support figured out.. what if at some point you & your ex are not so cordial and you have to go back to court? Any clue how expensive it will be to change it? I can tell you it usually costs me $1,000 or more (usual is $2k-$3K) every time we have to go to court. You also should do something in writing about medical for your child. If he ends up fracturing something or falls down the steps like my girl did; you could be left with high medical bills. In the last few years, I've paid over $15,000+ in uncovered medical expenses. He is supposed to reimburse me 75% after the 1st $250 but he does not. Also, he's screwed me with the deductible he picked which is very high - $800 alone just for my daughter. He's also lowered the tier on dental. Please protect yourself/child. Who gets to claim your child on income tax? What we did was my ex claimed her, I would claim head of household. I don't know if that will apply to you. When I remarried we alternated the deduction - odd years me, even years him. Even though your name was not on the deed, it sounds like you lived there for your whole marriage - in NJ the house would be 1/2 yours regardless. The way they figured it out was they went back to when you would have moved in to find a value; then they would figure out how much the house was worth when you moved out, plus deduct what he had already paid on the house before you moved in IIRC. There was a formula used. From things you are writing, it sounds like you are not getting the correct credit. Are you sure your attorney is looking out for your best interests? I'm glad you guys can be so civil right now but make sure you do research to make sure you are getting what you really deserve. I have one more question. I hate to sound naive, but I was a stay-at-home mom for 16 years, so I didn't start earning a paycheck until December, 2007. My husband has always done our taxes. Piece of advice - get copies of all the income taxes that have been filed. You also want a copy of the marriage license and any other documents. Make sure you have his social security number on file.

I got this from a newsletter which I highly recommend written by John Mauldin although I just read it for curiousity not investment advice It seems to illustrate Bear Sterns is just the begining and if interest rates go up more we will be in a pickle. Altough he seems to indicate at the end that interest rates will eventually go down in response to a slow down This Week in Outside the Box we Join Bill Gross of Pimco in his July 2007 Investment Outlook as he strives to address the implications of the Bear Stearns hedge fund debacle, the toxic waste that is Wall Streets' innovative derivative products and their respective valuation, rather, lack thereof. If Dear reader you have not been party to the excess of the Wall Street you may have not heard of the two Bear Stearns hedge Funds focusing on the subprime market that were subsequently liquidated on account of their inability to meet margin calls, thus wiping out investors. Mr. Gross believes that while significant, we ought not to look to Wall Street to see the repercussions of our excess but to the heart lands of America and the real estate there financed via subprime loans to witness the true folly of our capitalist ways. John Mauldin, Editor Looking for Contagion in All the Wrong Places Investment Outlook Bill Gross : July 2007 Whew, that was a close one! Ugly for a few days I guess, but it could have been much worse! No, I refer not to Paris Hilton upon her initial release from the LA County pokey after serving three days of hard time, but to the Bear Stearns/subprime crisis. Shame on you Mr. Stearns, or whoever you were, for scaring us investors like that and moving the Blackstone IPO to the second page of the WSJ. We should have had a week of revelry and celebration of levered risk taking. Instead you forced us to remember Long Term Capital Management and acknowledge once again (although infrequently) that genius, when combined with borrowed money, can fail. But (as the Street would have you believe), this was just a close one. Sure Bear itself had to come up with a $3 billion bailout, but folks, most of these assets are worth 100 cents on the dollar. At least that's how they have 'em marked! Didn't wanna sell any so that someone would think otherwise...no need to yell "fire" in a crowded theater 'ya know. After all, hasn't Ben Bernanke repeated in endless drones that financial derivatives are a healthy influence on the financial markets and the economy? And aren't these assets well...financial derivatives? Besides, I direct you to the investment grade, nay, in many cases AAA ratings of these RMBS (Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities) and CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and defy you to tell me that these architects were not prudent men. (Sorry ladies, they are still mostly men!) Well prudence and rating agency standards change with the times, I suppose. What was chaste and AAA years ago may no longer be the case today. Our prim remembrance of Gidget going to Hawaii and hanging out with the beach boys seems to have been replaced in this case with an image of Heidi Fleiss setting up a floating brothel in Beverly Hills. AAA? You were wooed Mr. Moody's and Mr. Poor's by the makeup, those six-inch hooker heels, and a "tramp stamp." Many of these good looking girls are not high-class assets worth 100 cents on the dollar. And sorry Ben, but derivatives are a two-edged sword. Yes, they diversify risk and direct it away from the banking system into the eventual hands of unknown buyers, but they multiply leverage like the Andromeda strain. When interest rates go up, the Petri dish turns from a benign experiment in financial engineering to a destructive virus because the cost of that leverage ultimately reduces the price of assets. Houses anyone? Oh, I kid the Fed Chairman - and I should stop because this is no laughing matter, and somehow I have a suspicion that this "close one," this Paris Hilton charade of a crisis, is really so much more than just a 3 or 27 day lockup in the LA County jail. Those that point to a crisis averted and a return to normalcy are really looking for contagion in all the wrong places. Because the problem lies not in a Bear Stearns hedge fund that can be papered over with 100 cents on the dollar marks. The flaw resides in the Summerlin suburbs of Las Vegas, Nevada, in the extended city limits of Chicago headed west towards Rockford, and yes, the naked (and empty) rows of multistoried condos in Miami, Florida. The flaw, dear readers, lies in the homes that were financed with cheap and in some cases gratuitous money in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Because while the Bear hedge funds are now primarily history, those millions and millions of homes are not. They're not going anywhere...except for their mortgages that is. Mortgage payments are going up, up, and up...and so are delinquencies and defaults. A recent research piece by Bank of America estimates that approximately $500 billion of adjustable rate mortgages are scheduled to reset skyward in 2007 by an average of over 200 basis points. 2008 holds even more surprises with nearly $700 billion ARMS subject to reset, nearly ¾ of which are subprimes. It was not supposed to be this way. 1% teasers or 3% 2/28's were supposed to be rolled with no points into something resembling...well...1% teasers and 3% 2/28's. Instead today we have nearly 7% fixed rate mortgages and not a teaser to be found. Congress, regulators, even Fed officials are stepping in and warning mortgage originators (even mortgage buyers!) that they'd better be careful and only make good loans. Those nasty capitalists! They must have gotten carried away a few years ago. Somehow all those BMWs in the New Century parking lot in Irvine, California didn't attract much notice in 2006. Now, well, there's nary a Prius to be found there, but lots of outraged politicians in Washington, that's for sure. The right places to look for contagion are therefore not in the white-washed Bear Stearns hedge funds, but in the subprime resets to come and the ultimate effect they will have on the prices of homes - the collateral that's so critical in this asset-backed, and therefore interest-sensitive financed-based economy of 2007 and beyond. If delinquencies lead to defaults and then to lower home prices, then we have problems and the potential for an extended - not a 27-day Paris Hilton sentence. Take a look at Chart 1, which graphically points out the deterioration in subprime ARM delinquencies. Escalating delinquencies of course ultimately lead to escalating defaults. Currently 7% of subprime loans are in default. The percentage will grow and grow like a weed in your backyard tomato patch. Now I, the curmudgeon of credit, am as sure of this as I am that the sun will set in the west. The uncertain part is by how much. But look at it this way: using the current default rate of 7% (3-4% total losses), the holders of some BBB investment grade subprime-based CDOs will lose all of their moolah because of the significant leverage. No need to worry about fictitious 100 cents on the dollar marks here. One hundred percent of nothing equals nothing. If subprime total losses hit 10% then even some single-A tranches face the grim reaper. AAA's? Folks the point is that there are hundreds of billions of dollars of this toxic waste and whether or not they're in CDOs or Bear Stearns hedge funds matters only to the extent of the timing of the unwind. To death and taxes you can add this to your list of inevitabilities: the subprime crisis is not an isolated event and it won't be contained by a few days of headlines in The New York Times. And it will not remain confined to a neat little Petri dish in some mad financial derivative scientist's laboratory. Ultimately through capital market arbitrage it will affect risk spreads in markets completely divorced from U.S. housing. What has the Brazilian Real to do with U.S. subprimes? Nothing except many of the same bets are held in hedge funds that by prudence or necessity will reduce their risk budgets to stay afloat. And the U.S. economy? Of course it will be affected. Consumption will be reduced to say nothing of new home construction over the next 12-18 months. After all, attractive subprime pricing has been key to the housing market's success in recent years. Now that has disappeared. Importantly, as well, and this point is neglected by most pundits, the willingness to extend credit in other areas - high yield, bank loans, and even certain segments of the AAA asset-backed commercial paper market should feel the cooling Arctic winds of a liquidity constriction. If not taken too far - and there is no hint yet of a true "crisis" - these developments may be just what the Fed has been looking for: easy credit becoming less easy; excessive liquidity returning to more rational levels. Still, PIMCO looks for the Fed to issue an insurance policy in the form of lower Fed Funds at some point over the next 6 months. And what happened to our glass half-full secular thesis of last month? We still believe in strong global growth, but...as we also suggested...that the U.S. housing downturn will affect growth and short-term yields over the next year or so. We remain consistent and resolute. Contagion? Maybe, but you won't be finding it at "99.9%" pure Bear Stearns. Look for it instead, in the subprimely financed homes of Las Vegas, Rockford, Illinois, and Miami, Florida. This problem - aided and abetted by Wall Street - ultimately resides in America's heartland, with millions and millions of overpriced homes and asset-backed collateral with a different address - Main Street. William H. Gross Managing Director

We're happy to be near that vast reservoir, Lake Michigan. Cools us in the summer and moderates our weather most of the year. Our city has its own pumping station providing plenty of good drinking water. No tornados, hurricanes, and until the New Madrid Fault wakes up -- no quakes to mention. We have an acre of quiet, but are 3 mins. to town shops and RR to Chicago. Pretty much content. In the dead of winter...Maui. (O'Hare is 45 mins. away.) I hear you California people. Friends and former neighbors live near San Francisco, despite their son's warning that The Big One is overdue, and that's his business: Risk Management. Ha-ha, he lives there too!

Sorry vala55, but enrolling in Medicare Part D is not a whenever you need it or want it program. The Annual Election Period is the time of year in which you can join, drop, or switch Part D plans. The 2010 Annual Election Period begins on November 15 and ends on December 31, 2010. If you do not enroll/switch by December 31, 2010, you may not be eligible until the next Annual Election Period in 2011, which will be October 15 through December 7, 2011. From the Medicare.com website: "If you don't join a Medicare drug plan when you were first eligible for Medicare, and you didn?t have other creditable prescription drug coverage, or you didn't have Medicare prescription drug coverage or other creditable prescription drug coverage for 63 days or more in a row, you will receive a late enrollment penalty. If you do not enroll in a Medicare Part D plan during your initial enrollment period, and then decide to enroll later, the Medicare Part D program may add a 1% per month increase in your Part D premium. For example, it you decide to enroll 7 months after your initial enrollment period, then your premium could increase by 7 percent."