You Must Sign The Papers

Today I'm working, make good money on a project whose only flaw is that today is its last day, when I get a text from the Princess Drinkalina: I needed to sign the divorce papers today, otherwise ... it was not clear when would happen. I asked her lawyer (who emailed me a reminder) for the significance of letting it slide, and got no reply. I don't expect them to help me out, but it would have been in their client's interest to be up front. But that's not Kris' nature.
I told Kris to print it if she wanted it signed, an reminded her she'd promised to check with HR on how I could be included on her medical insurance.
When I arrived she gave me a stack of papers and showed me the last page to sign, which I did. After leaving I remembered that I should have gotten a copy but, really, what does it matter?
A while later I got another message: I needed to come back and sign another page. Well I was working; I'd get to it before going home. then I got a phone call, and I've never been good at ignoring those. She asked where I was, and I said "working". I realized that I was now separate from her, and need pay her no more notice than a stranger - a stranger who wanted me to do some thing. I briefly said I'd be by that afternoon and let the conversation lapse.
When I got to WSBA the second time, I ran into Steve Carroll in the bathroom. He looked embarrassed, and well might he; he had not only ignored my pleas for assistance when things were going badly, he volunteered to testify against me. It is well that I learned what sort of person he is before I actually needed him for something. I addressed him cheerfully, which compelled a response from him. Perhaps that was cruel of me.
I composed a set of haiku, and posted them on facebook, to express my feelings:

All actions create.

Signing divorce papers

Can create a hole.

Two had become one 

Til one subtracted oneself,

Leaving me nothing.

This signing creates

A new point of origin

To make me a whole.

Princess had the forms again with an arrow toward the thing to be signed, but this time around I would not be so trusting. I sat with the form in the conference room and went through it line-by-line. Hey, that's my profession, right?
I was disappointed but not surprised to discover several errors.

• The name of my credit union was wrong;
• My car was in the marital estate in one place and separate property in another place (and it is definitely the latter)
• The roof loan was correctly characterized as a personal loan in one place and counted as a mortgage in another.
• Grammar stuff.

I made corrections, initialed them, presented them to Kris to initial and then to make me a copy of. That was about it.
What I learned:

• Attorneys at a big law firm make as many or more errors than I do in practice
• Kris pissed away more than $7500 (according to her filing) to get the very same agreement that I had proposed a year ago.

This all was neither what I wanted nor what I had agree to. I am responsible for not noticing when things started going bad years ago, and fixing it. Kris resisted talking about it and I responded by ignoring it, and thus we are here. Since she had decided to be unfaithful years ago (even before we bought the house she was dating other men in times we were apart) I suppose there was little that could have been done by me, but who knows?

It is unknowable, and relevant now only for doing better in the future.