Form Instructions For Divorce Without Children And With Agreement: Fill & Download for Free

There are already some great answers here about seeking counseling, making sure you are giving her love in other areas, possible medical causes, etc. so I won’t add to that side of the equation. The problem I see as very dangerous is your statement “We have two young kids and I don't see divorce as viable option.”You are NOT doing your kids any favors by staying together “for the sake of the children.” OK, it’s TRUE, divorce is not good for the children, and it pretty much always causes some trauma to be dealt with. This pales, however, in comparison to the relentless, 24/7 trauma of growing up in a loveless household with both parents living a lie. What’s worse, those little amazing human beings are VERY perceptive, and they will know that you are somehow holding them up as the reason you are staying in an agonizing situation. This will cause them immeasurable trauma, FAR worse than enduring a divorce.Please do your homework first, of course. Do everything you can to try and work through the apparent gridlock. Your wife sounds like she is in a pretty painful, awful place, and it’s hard to suggest therapy if your only reason is the very thing she finds most repulsive about you — that you “only” want sex (I know, I know — just hear me out.) So here’s a plan:Drop the sex conversation for a while. Masturbate or do what you have to do to deal with your sexual frustration, but take the pressure OFF. Find other ways to love her, support her, and let her know that sex is NOT all you care about. Give it, say, 6 months.Watch for any thawing in the iceberg, and once trust begins to form, do NOT start right away with the sex conversation. Tell her you can see she’s feeling stressed and find a way to begin the family therapy process. Be patient. Nobody WANTS to feel like they are broken and need to be fixed (even though this is NOT what therapy is, or how it works.)Once therapy begins, be honest, and follow your therapist’s instructions on HOW to express your feelings without making the other one feel blamed or shamed. They are YOUR feelings, after all, no matter what circumstances triggered them. Participate in the therapy from a position of integrity and love, and give it a chance. If you aren’t seeing at least a sliver of progress in 3 months, then consider switching therapists. If you are, give it time. Even a little progress will help your children’s and YOUR sanity.If, after 6 months to a year there has been zero progress, you need to consider other options. Yes, I mean DIVORCE. As a retired therapist, I can tell you that one of the TOP reasons for people carrying childhood trauma into their adult lives is “My parents hated each other” with the unspoken part being “I thought it was my fault.” There are ways to be patient and leave the lawyers out of the divorce process, which more often leads to amicable agreements about child support, alimony, custody, visitation, etc. That demands patience as well.Your children need to see their parents loving each other, or they need to see them seeking other people with whom they CAN have a healthy love. That includes healthy sex. If you are divorced then at least you can find someone who does want the same things in a relationship you do. Even if your current spouse chooses not to be in a relationship again, you now have the opportunity to demonstrate how people have a healthy, loving marriage. They NEED that, my friend.When my ex and I divorced, we waited almost a year, until we had worked out all the details personally. I had already fallen in love with my current wife, so we were able to create a household that respected and nurtured the kids and each other fairly quickly. I have nothing to say about my ex, except that she was fair and honorable despite being VERY hurt at my leaving. She loved our kids too much, plain and simple. In truth, it was our differences in child rearing that was most at cause of our split, and it meant the world to me that I could show them an example of a truly loving, mutually giving marriage. They are both in healthy marriages today, with happy children of their own. I feel absolutely certain that this would not be the case had I tried to stay with my ex and “tough it out.” I would have been miserable, and by extension, so would they all have been.You’re not doing them any favors by demonstrating a fundamentally unhealthy, hateful relationship, or by denying your dreams and your heart’s desire.“Feed them on your dreams, the one they pick’s the one you’ll know by. Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry, so just look at them and sigh, and know they love you.” ~Graham Nash with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Publication 929 (2020), Tax Rules for Children and DependentsDependent.A person, other than the taxpayer or the taxpayer's spouse, you can claim on your return. To be your dependent, a person must be your qualifying child or qualifying relative (both defined later). For more information, see Dependents in Pub. 501.Qualifying child.To be your dependent (defined earlier), a person must be either your qualifying child or your qualifying relative (defined next). Generally, a person is your qualifying child if that person:Is your child, stepchild, foster child, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister, or a descendant of any of them;Lived with you for more than half of the year;Didn’t provide more than half of his or her own support for the year;Was under age 19 at the end of the year and younger than you (or your spouse if filing jointly) (or was under age 24 at the end of the year, a student, and younger than you (or your spouse if filing jointly), or was any age and permanently and totally disabled); andDidn’t file a joint return with his or her spouse.Qualifying relative.To be your dependent (defined earlier), a person must be either your qualifying child (defined earlier) or your qualifying relative. Generally, a person is your qualifying relative if that person:Lives with or is related to you,Has less than $4,300 of gross (total) income,Is supported (generally more than 50%) by you, andIs neither your qualifying child nor the qualifying child of anyone else.Publication 501 (2020), Dependents, Standard Deduction, and Filing InformationAll the requirements for claiming a dependent are summarized in Table 5.Table 5. Overview of the Rules for Claiming a DependentThis table is only an overview of the rules. For details, see the rest of this publication.You can't claim any dependents if you, or your spouse if filing jointly, could be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer.You can't claim a married person who files a joint return as a dependent unless that joint return is filed only to claim a refund of withheld income tax or estimated tax paid.You can't claim a person as a dependent unless that person is a U.S. citizen, U.S. resident alien, U.S. national, or a resident of Canada or Mexico.1You can't claim a person as a dependent unless that person is your qualifying child or qualifying relative.Tests To Be a Qualifying ChildTests To Be a Qualifying RelativeThe child must be your son, daughter, stepchild, foster child, brother, sister, half brother, half sister, stepbrother, stepsister, or a descendant of any of them.The child must be (a) under age 19 at the end of the year and younger than you (or your spouse if filing jointly), (b) under age 24 at the end of the year, a student, and younger than you (or your spouse if filing jointly), or (c) any age if permanently and totally disabled.The child must have lived with you for more than half of the year.2The child must not have provided more than half of his or her own support for the year.The child must not be filing a joint return for the year (unless that joint return is filed only to claim a refund of withheld income tax or estimated tax paid).If the child meets the rules to be a qualifying child of more than one person, generally only one person can actually treat the child as a qualifying child. See Qualifying Child of More Than One Person , later, to find out which person is the person entitled to claim the child as a qualifying child.The person can't be your qualifying child or the qualifying child of any other taxpayer.The person either (a) must be related to you in one of the ways listed under Relatives who don't have to live with you , or (b) must live with you all year as a member of your household2 (and your relationship must not violate local law).The person's gross income for the year must be less than $4,300.3You must provide more than half of the person's total support for the year.41 There is an exception for certain adopted children.2 There are exceptions for temporary absences, children who were born or died during the year, children of divorced or separated parents (or parents who live apart), and kidnapped children.3 There is an exception if the person is disabled and has income from a sheltered workshop.4 There are exceptions for multiple support agreements, children of divorced or separated parents (or parents who live apart), and kidnapped children.Housekeepers, maids, or servants.If these people work for you, you can't claim them as dependents.Child tax credit.You may be entitled to a child tax credit for each qualifying child who was under age 17 at the end of the year if you claimed that child as a dependent. For more information, see the Instructions for Forms 1040 and 1040-SR.Credit for other dependents.You may be entitled to a credit for other dependents for each qualifying child who does not qualify you for the child tax credit and for each qualifying relative. For more information, see the Instructions for Forms 1040 and 1040-SR.

A2AWhat aspects of Christianity do most Christians get wrong?In the last two weeks, I’ve been asked to answer several questions that have made me step back and go hm-m-mh? I’ve had to ask myself whether I really know the answer to those questions, one of which is yours.I think I can offer some partial answers, but only after some cautions.Caution #1: I cannot answer reliably for “most Christians” worldwide. I suspect no one else can, either.The Christian faith includes within the community of (0)rthodox belief — who are those who accept the three ecumenical creeds as accurate and meaningful as they were originally intended — multiple communities of believers: American evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, conservative Anglicans and Episcopalians, and more. In addition, other groups would generally adhere to the contents of those creeds, but may not acknowledge them, such as Pentecostals and American fundamentalists. Beyond that, Coptic and other ancient African Christian churches may well deserve the name Christian.All of those groups are separated sufficiently that is certainly not possible for me, and probably not possible for anyone, to know any group other than their own well enough to know what bits that particular group usually gets wrong.And, that’s not even considering groups like so-called main-line Protestants, or the US Episcopalian Church, or Unitarians, or other liberal churches whose clergy often no longer adhere in any meaningful sense to the historic doctrines or teaching of the Church.So . . . I must make a disclaimer: the group I’ve been a part of, generally speaking, would be “American evangelicals”, and while the errors I’ve seen in that group MAY exist in other groups, I don’t know that for certain.Caution #2: I often attempt to frame my answers within the bounds of “mere Christianity” (CS Lewis’ term) or “(o)rthodox Christianity”, which can be variously defined as “what’s been believed by most Christians, throughout most of history” or “what’s found in the three ecumenical Creeds”.The reason I do this, is that ONLY those teachings are certain. Almost by definition, the doctrines that DISTINGUISH denominations from each other, are uncertain. For example, all Christians believe that participating in the Mass / Eucharist / Communion / Lord’s Supper is essential. But hardly any Christians agree on exactly why you must OR what is happening when you do so. So the obligation is certain, but the meaning and purpose is uncertain.However, your question intrinsically has no “mere” or general answer. For obvious reasons, no one in Church hierarchy, now or in the past, has identified a list of the general failings of the Church, and then had other Christian communities agree.So, I’m going to have to offer two types of answers. First, those things that I have personally observed, and second, some general patterns, identified by the Apostle Paul or Apostle John 1000’s of years ago, that seem generally still an issue.So . . . my OWN observations (not in order of significance) of things American evangelicals get wrong:Failing to distinguish certainties from uncertainties.Many of the battles and fights within the church, and between the church and others, are, or have been, over uncertainties. The RC fight over with Galileo over heliocentrism is a good example. Nothing in the Bible requires a geocentric view, but RC theologians were accustomed to assume that it did so, and reluctant abandon their accustomed view. [A commenter below, objected to my oversimplification of the dispute between Galileo & the RC church. My characterization here is over-simplified, but I still believe the dispute reveals the basic tendency of (o)rthodox Christians to shield conventional doctrine — even when it has speculative roots — from various scientific, philosophical, and theological challenges.]Today, evangelicals fight over inerrancy of the Bible, even though inerrancy is NOT an anciently held doctrine and is NOT necessarily believed by most (o)rthodox Christians, including Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and conservative Anglicans.One terrible consequence of this is the loss of faith by many young Christians, who go to college and discover that their denominations ‘pet’ doctrines are relatively easy to demolish. And since they have never been taught that the essential — and hard to disprove — doctrines are different than non-essential — and often easy to disprove — doctrines, they abandon the whole thing.Overstating the earthly benefits of Christianity, and understating the cost.Becoming a Christian inevitably means being at war with yourself.Christ himself said “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” [ Luke 9:23-24 ] And, there are many, many other places where this is taught. This doctrine has been accepted by virtually all Christian groups over the ages.In spite of this, many evangelicals imply, or even teach, that people should become Christians because doing so will make their life-before-death better. While this might be occasionally be true, what Christ himself taught was that becoming a follower would make life-before-death worse, and life-after-death better.Many evangelicals also teach that becoming a Christian will solve your psychological or social problems, and this is simply not true. I’m a high-functioning autistic, and though I didn’t call it that till a few years ago, the problems have been visible to me and my family for many years. Much of that autism has to do with the way my mind (or brain) works; becoming a Christian doesn’t usually change that, any more than becoming a Christian restored my grandfather’s amputated legs.Confusing Christianity with American Churchianity.There are different ‘flavors’ of this among different churches, but the pattern remains the same. The church I currently attend is a mixed race congregation that leans heavily Democratic. The pastor and some of the officers try to avoid implying that being Christian means being a Democrat ‘to help people’, but more than a few members are less shy. However most of the congregations I’ve been part of leaned the other way. But . . .Christianity is neither Democratic nor Republican. In fact the only Biblically warranted form of government is an absolute monarchy ruled by Christ! All other forms of government, whether better or worse, are flawed stop-gap solutions.The formation of the American government and constitution was apparently as much influenced by the atheistic ideas of Thomas Paine and the heretical Deism of Benjamin Franklin, as it was by the thinking of Christians and Presbyterianism.There’s nothing in the Bible that suggests that prayers at football games, in stadiums filled with people of various faiths, is even remotely appropriateContrary to the eschatological speculations of some of the early Puritans, inherited by GW Bush, among others, there’s ZERO evidence that the US is “God’s specially chosen country”, ordained by God to bring truth and justice to the rest of the world. On the other hand, there’s no reason to conclude that God ‘has it in for the US’, either.Contrary to the hopes of more than a few black Americans, including some Christians, Obama has never been even remotely like the Messiah.There has never been, and never will be, a time when the USA deserved to be called a “Christian nation”.Using, and encouraging the use of, utterly ineffective methods of teaching and communicating content.If you want to teach a group of people some specific content — and Christians do — I doubt that you can come up with a method much worse than teaching your group in 30 minute talks, on random topics, in once a week sessions.A school teacher who did that would expect to fail. A corporate trainer who followed that approach would probably lose their job or their clients. But church pastors continue to follow this pattern because it’s traditional. And because . . . there is a very small group of extraordinary speakers who CAN communicate successfully using that method. Unfortunately, average pastors are TERRIBLE at it, and even better than average pastors aren’t very good at it.Believing that you can serve Christ and the Church with pious lies.This is actually not something specific to the Church. Almost all organizations work hard at concealing and covering up their failings. But when the Church does it — whether it’s the RC Church covering up abusive priests, or a Southern Baptist mission organizations covering up abusive mission schools, or a local Presbyterian Church covering up the choir director’s affair with a choir member — it’s a HUGE betrayal of trust, and entirely contrary to what both Christ and the Apostles taught.Often, when one of these situations arises (at least among evangelicals), the Apostle Peter’s statement that “love covers a multitude of sins” [ 1 Peter 4:8 ] gets quoted, and nobody notices that when some of the apostles got out of line while the Church was still centered in Jerusalem, and began trying to impose Jewish Law on Gentile converts, Peter read them the riot act, so to speak, obviously not thinking that love should cover up any of the church leaders sins!Pretending that church leaders are not ‘actual factual’ sinners.This is related to #4, above, and is one of the reasons why pious lies are so often told.In theory, evangelicals acknowledge that all church leaders and pastors are actual sinners. But in practice, they rarely acknowledge this, and often tend to deny that church leaders are angry, or proud, or ambitious, or sexually immoral, or any number of other things.But, just as children see their parent’s sins as they get older, so church member see the leaders’ sins.The Apostle John wrote, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” [ 1 John 1:9-10 ESV ] but I have only very rarely seen church leaders act as if they believed this.There’s an old principle found in some Reformed creeds, that any confession needs to be as public as the sin confessed, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Reformed (conservative Presbyterian) leader apply that principle to themselves or their peers.Now, this particular area is one in which there is not total agreement among Christians. Over the centuries, there have often been groups that have come close to teaching that it was possible for Christians to live without sin. In recent years, Wesleyan Methodists and evangelicals who subscribed to the Keswick Movement have come close to such a position. Naturally, leaders in such groups are going to tend to hide their sins.Idealizing or spiritualizing marriage.Evangelical views of marriage and sex often have more to do with 18th Century Romanticism and 19th Century Victorianism, than with biblical or Christian teaching.The biblical facts aren’t pretty: most marriages described in the Bible — Abraham’s, Isaac’s, Jacob’s, Moses’, David’s, Solomon’s, etc — seem to have sucked badly.This reality was sufficiently recognized by Jesus’ disciples, so that when Christ tells them that they should not be divorcing, they burst out with,“if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” [ Matthew 19:10 ] But, you’d never know, from the way most evangelicals teach or write, that Jesus Christ sort of agrees with them. In today’s vernacular, Christ says, “Yes, you’d be right if you were able to control yourself, but unfortunately almost all of you are too horny to do so, so you will have to marry to stay out of sin!”Now it might be possible to squirm around and interpret things differently, but then the Apostle Paul goes and says almost the same thing in 1 Corinthians 7 !This is an area where both Protestants and Catholics have chosen to ignore the PLAIN teaching of Christ and the Apostles!Roman Catholics ignore the fact that both Christ and Paul BOTH teach that the great majority of both men and women are too horny (or lonely, or whatever) to live chastely (without sexual sin) unless they marry. Protestants ignore the fact that BOTH Christ and Paul teach that — for Christians — the PRIMARY purpose of marriage is to avoid sin, that it’s a DIFFICULT solution to a hard problem, and that for the TINY minority of men or women able to live chastely without marriage, that’s the preferable option!Among evangelicals, this means that, year after year, starry-eyed Christian romantics marry each other, firm in their belief that [romantic] “love will conquer all” all, and then shipwreck on the hard reality of marriage.Biblically, both partners should EXPECT that they will both continue be tempted to sexual or relational sin. But men and women privately beat themselves up, simply because they continue to FEEL temptation. Worse, they don’t tell each other, because after all, ‘if they really loved each other, they wouldn’t feel that way’! But that idea is pure Romanticism and has NOTHING to do with Christianity.There IS a sort of ‘romantic’ view of marriage in the Bible, which shows up in the Song of Solomon, Ezekiel 16, I Corinthians, and elsewhere, in the image of the Church as the Bride of Christ. But most teaching I’ve heard on this topic is speculative and unbiblical; it’s not a topic upon which there’s been much agreement in the history of the Church, even though most older Christians understand that there is something important going on.Oversimplifying hard problems, or else giving answers that clearly don’t apply.The book of Job is a great example of this.For those not familiar, the story is of a godly man who gets totally slammed, losing his money, his children, and his health pretty much all at once. What follows is a discussion between him and his wife, then him and some friends, and finally him and God. All participants agreed with the idea — apparently accepted doctrine at the time — that if you did well, you’d live well. Or, to put it another way, bad things only happen to bad people. Job’s friends urge him to ‘fess up’ since his difficulties prove that he’s done evil. Job agrees with the doctrine, but then asserts that something has gone badly wrong, because he has NOT done evil. He complains vigorously about this, first to his friends, and then to God.Then, God answers. And what He says is not at all what evangelicals tend to teach. God starts off by showing Job various creatures and natural events, and then demanding that Job explain them. When Job can’t, God basically says, “Well, if you can’t understand this simple stuff, how in the world can you expect to understand the hard stuff. I do, but you can’t’.” End of story.Not much of a solution to the ‘problem of evil’, is it? But, the rest of the Bible doesn’t have a better one.Obviously, people want to know why some of the terrible things that happen, do happen. I know I do. I still have nightmares about some things I encountered while serving on a grand jury a decade ago. But, the only answer Christians have is, “God understands, and He Himself hates the pain and suffering of the innocent.”But, that’s it. There’s no resolution beyond that, except for speculation. And God knows, there’s no shortage of that!To be fair, it’s not just Christians to want answers to obvious questions, even if no answer is available. For example, astrophysicists have been doing it for a hundred years of more:Q: how can something (light) travel through nothing?A: it’s not nothing; it’s “aether” (This answer is discarded, now)Q: why can we detect more gravity, than there is mass to create it?A: there is “dark matter”, which creates it. (But, dark matter is just another way of saying, “There’s too much gravity, and we don’t know why!”). . . and so on.There are multiple other problems like this: free will vs God’s total control; Christ is fully God and fully man, and so on. Christians want explanations, so pastors give them explanations . . . even when they don’t really have one.Unsurprisingly, this leads to all sorts of problems and contradictions!Judging the “world” instead of the Church.I’ve been guilty of this, myself. It’s awfully tempting. But when the Apostles addressed the early Church, they were very, very plain: the business of the Church, was the Church, and NOT the rest of the world.With respect to the rest of the world, Paul tells Christians that “We urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” [ 1 Thessalonians 4:11 ] Christ asks his disciples, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye.”. [ Luke 6:42 ]The Bible rather clearly teaches that the PRACTICE of male homosex is sinful; there’s no way round this without butchering the Bible. But many of the evangelical church’s attacks on homosexuality fall under the category of “failing to mind their own business”. There’s plenty of adultery and fornication going on in the church — and occasionally, some child abuse — to keep the church well occupied, BEFORE they start attacking people OUTSIDE the church.This approach causes other problems as well.Because the church often exhibits an un-biblical view of sex (as in marriage, above), it has developed an un-biblical view of homosexuality. There is NOTHING in the Bible that suggests it’s sinful to be homosexually oriented. The Bible is very, very clear: people on earth are BROKEN, in many ways. Being homosexually oriented is just one, of many. The Bible further makes plain that most of these things will NOT be fixed, here. I’m not going to stop being autistic. Someone with an early and deep-seated homosexual orientation probably won’t stop being that, either. BOTH conditions will cause problems and pain. But I can (at least somewhat) talk about being autistic; someone who’s homosexually oriented cannot safely talk about their struggles in most evangelical churches. And, that’s wrong.[ By the way, general non-Christian society does EXACTLY the same thing with pedophilia. There’s no reason to think that there are not people, broken by genetics or circumstances, who are not inextricably sexually oriented toward children. But, society treats pedophiles EXACTLY like the Church treats homosexuals, and tells them, more or less, “Just get over it!”, and make it nearly impossible for someone struggling with that orientation to get help safely. Both homo-sex and pedo-sex are wrong; unlike homo-sex, pedo-sex is still illegal; but both homosexual ORIENTATION and pedophiliac ORIENTATION, while evidence that people are broken are not sins in and of themselves. (And for the record: I’m not a pedophile, and in fact, have only ever had sex with my wife. Really!) ]I could go on, but some of the other points I could make are less certain, and this is already long enough.The moment in the drafty church at smokerise