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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU re my brother's divorce?

29 replies

Slilou · 16/01/2012 17:55

My brother is in the middle of a very messy divorce. 2 or 3 times a week he sends me emails/ texts that he forwards to me from his soon- to -be ex wife. They are always very distressing to read as her tone is very hostile and angry.

I find it really hard to receive these texts while I am at work. It is very upsetting and distracting to check my phone at lunch time (in case of contact from dcs' school etc) to find one of these acerbic messages.

I give my brother lots of support, and we talk for hours on the phone.

AIBU to ask him to stop forwarding these messages? I do realise that however they make me feel, its a thousand times worse for him. But... AIBU to ask him to stop communicating with me in this particular way?

OP posts:
JustHecate · 16/01/2012 18:11

Why is he doing it?

mumblechum1 · 16/01/2012 18:13

Tell him to send them to his solicitor. As a family lawyer, I consider part of my job being to absorb this sort of crap on behalf of the client. Tell him not to even bother opening them, just cc everything to the lawyer who can decide whether to bother answering them or not. More likely than not, his lawyer will tell her lawyer to tell her to stop it.

TidyDancer · 16/01/2012 18:13

Yeah, why is he doing it? Can't judge properly until then.

Personally, I would let him vent to me if I were you.

IslaValargeone · 16/01/2012 18:13

Can you not just open his e-mails/texts after work or at a time more suitable for you?

Callisto · 16/01/2012 18:14

Poor bloke, he must be v upset about it all. I guess he is forwarding the texts so that you can see how awful she is being? I don't envy you and I think that he will be fine if you say either you can't cope with seeing them at all, or ask him to send them in the evenings only.

Well done for being so supportive too.

Waxtart · 16/01/2012 18:14

Can't you just ignore them until you're not at work?

mumblechum1 · 16/01/2012 18:15

I never understand why people feel the need to spread this stuff around to third parties, but they do.

Loads of my clients seem to involve their families and friends in the divorce which should, in my view, be kept between the parties and their lawyers.

DublinMammy · 16/01/2012 18:16

YANBU. It's a tricky one though because he obviously needs your support and may consider that you reading her texts and saying "What a bitch, she is so unreasonable, what a nasty text" etc is part of the support. Definitely one to talk to him about face-to-face. I am sure he will be mortified to think he is upsetting you.

mumblechum's advice is excellent as well, I'd include that in my chat with him

Original poster
Slilou · 16/01/2012 18:17

He is venting, sharing, wanting support- wanting my opinion on how reasonable/ unreasonable her latest request/ accusation/ demand is (re aceess, finances, parenting...you name it)

she has no lawyer.

OP posts:
Original poster
Slilou · 16/01/2012 18:18

oh, sorry. she must do, mustnt she! doh! but emails/ texts pre date her getting a lawyer by a long way

OP posts:
Gumby · 16/01/2012 18:18

I don't get why they would upset you so much
What do they say? Obviously slagging off your brother but unless threatening don't get the problem unless you're fragile at the moment?

JustHecate · 16/01/2012 18:18

delete them without reading them. You can still give him support, listen, etc. Will he know if you don't read them?

LineRunner · 16/01/2012 18:19

There is of course a person who needs to stop sending these upsetting texts and emails in the first place, and that is your sibling's OH. The appropriate route is for your bother's solicitor to write to her (or her solicitor) and request that she desists.

You might suggest that he does this, for both your sakes.

FabbyChic · 16/01/2012 18:19

Tell him to change his number and that she should only talk to hm via email which he can then print off and show a solicitor.

HeadfirstForHalos · 16/01/2012 18:21

You've already said it, it must be far more distressing to him to receive these emails from her. He probably needs to vent/get it off his chest/make the people he cares about aware of how awful she is being.

Personally I wouldn't ask him to stop.

Original poster
Slilou · 16/01/2012 18:21

sorry, x posts.

i have a new job, and am trying to focus on it. my phone doesnt tell me who messages are from, so i keep getting a hell of a shock reading pretty abusive stuff, before i realise who its from... (ie not aimed at me!)

callisto and dublin are stop on, re why he's doing it.

i will ask him to email if he needs to, as i only check that at home.

OP posts:
carabos · 16/01/2012 18:22

mumblechum is right. During and for 12 years after my divorce, XH used to send very long diatribes in which he never answered the points at hand why he wouldn't see DS, why he wouldn't pay maintenance etc but would re-hash the whole bloody saga from soup to nuts.

I would forward the envelopes unopened to my solicitor and he would fillet them for any nuggets of anything that I needed to see or make decisions about. Definitely the least painful way of doing it.

Original poster
Slilou · 16/01/2012 18:26

gumby, i hope i've now explained the upset a bit more. also, i am v loyal to my db and i get really upset on his behalf.

i give him so much support, honestly.

she also has dragged me into it as well, although that contact has now stopped as i appear to have upset her Sad

i just cant deal with it at work.

OP posts:
Original poster
Slilou · 16/01/2012 18:27

ps sorry, shouldve thanked you all for advice Smile

OP posts:
LemonDifficult · 16/01/2012 18:30

I don't understand why you can't just put an ID on your phone for your brother's number and then read anything from him after work? Or not read it at all if you are having a bad day.

I think you could find a solution to this without adding any further drama or back-and-forth.

Original poster
Slilou · 16/01/2012 18:33

my phone seems to have a fault re caller/texter ID . have tried to fix it...

lemon, if i ask him to email me instead, and not text, surely that would be ok, if i say 'then i can give it my proper attention at home' or something

OP posts:
2rebecca · 16/01/2012 18:38

I wouldn't want that sort of stuff forwarded to me whilst at work as getting wound up at work won't help anyone. I would ask him only to send them between certain hours. I had an unpleasant divorce but wouldn't have forwarded stuff to my sibs as I think getting these emails cand texts can be upsetting and forwarding them isn't helping you but is making someone else upset as well. Some people are very selfish about "spreading the misery".
I'd just ask him to give you the gist of the texts. This is his unpleasant divorce not yours. Maybe tell him that overloading you is making you feel less supportive not more, and ask him to see you as a support that he can talk to about it, not his solicitor who has to see all correspondance, not that I forwarded all stuff to my solicitor as it would have cost too much.

mumblechum1 · 16/01/2012 18:44

Why can't you just tell him that you don't want to see all that stuff as it's private, and that the only person he should be forwarding it to (if at all) is his solicitor.

I get reams of this stuff every day from various clients' exes and generally give it a cursory glance while I'm on my tea break and only tell the client if there's something there that needs attention. Often it's just really ridiculous ranting and I either delete it or write to the other side's solicitor with a sample and tell them to tell their client to pack it in or we'll apply for an injunction. I never do apply for the injunction but the other side's solicitor will show the threat of it to their client and they nearly always pack it in then as they don't want to run up costs necessarily.

There's absolutely no way, OP, that it can be reasonable to expect you to have to read all that rubbish. I had a client today who insisted that I wrote a really unnecessarily nasty letter to his wife's solicitor blaming her for the breakdown. I got him to write down exactly what he wanted to say to get it off his chest but seem to have mysteriously misfiled it in the back of the file, as I see my job as not winding the situation up any more than it already is.

NoOnesGoingToEatYourEyes · 16/01/2012 18:45

Fabby is right, instead of sending these things to you he needs to send them to his solicitor.

I'm sure he doesn't want to upset you, but the scenario I have imagined is that you have been incredibly supportive to him and he has come to rely on you, so when he gets a message from her the first thing he thinks is "I can't believe she just sent that, wait while I tell Slilou what she has said now" and forwards it on immediately, not realising that this is upsetting you at work and expecting you to ring him to be all shocked and outraged and reassuring.

Tell him just what you have said above, that you can't give him the attention you would like to while you are at work, so to forward everything to his solicitor and then tell you about it later on when you are at home (to be honest even that sounds exhausting and I think you are being very good to him).

But tell him to chance his number and ask his solicitor to write to her stating that all contact is to go through them in future.

LemonDifficult · 16/01/2012 18:46

What about saying something like

'DB, the text thing is out of hand. Rather than forwarding them on to me, I think you MUST send them to your solicitor who will contact her and tell her to stop. If I'm finding them distressing and distracting then you certainly can't be expected to cope. We have to find a solution and I think a solicitor's letter would be it, at least asking that she keep her correspondence to email.'