During divorce: were you "penalized" for having ASD?

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I'm a middle-aged Aspie male married to an NT woman, who's more on the introverted side...thankfully not one of those "uber-NT" diva-types (you know the type!) but after so many years of marriage, two daughters later, and certain demands and expectations that have been driving me up the wall...I'm contemplating initiating divorce.

We're both quite well-to-do, owing our own house and several assets - I'm a senior CS/IT guy and she's in finance... but I'm thinking it may be time to part ways. You can already guess what I might be about to say next. We're getting on each others' nerves, with me struggling to meet certain expectations, mainly the unspoken ones that she says that she doesn't want to nag me about...otherwise, she says that I'm a really hard-working guy and great provider, but that she shuttles our girls around to all sorts of activities and that there are certain reciprocal expectations. Whereas I'm content to spend my time doing self-development, e.g. taking AI online courses, Python stuff, reading bestsellers on pop psych and societal trends... and I ignore "the little things" apparently. I also find her really cheap, not willing to spend on certain things like we really need a new laptop or piece of furniture or whatever, and we've got the means but she says no.

She also insists on driving all the time, b/c apparently I "lack confidence" when I drive, but the truth is I've NEVER caused an accident in more than 25 years of driving (I've been rear-ended twice, had someone back into me when I was stationary, and had someone turn right in front of me where I couldn't avoid t-boning them (just minor injuries!) but never did I CAUSE any accidents). If I "lack confidence" it's due to pessimism in other drivers not to do something stupid. But I digress.

Just one of those things, I guess- the differences in motor skill mannerisms that ND and NT folk perceive differently. Which researchers believe ties in with our clinical difficulties in non-verbal nuance processing. Again I digress, sorry!

In any case: our older daughter has begun to notice that I'm "weird, but brilliant" so yeah, tough to conceal 100% when you're around these people all the time. At work, my symptoms are largely suppressed and masked but again, being a CS/IT pro, some eccentricity is accepted as long as you're not "way weird".

WELL!! Getting to the crux of the matter: is there a chance that the family law authorities could treat me in a heavy-handed manner, due to prejudice & stigma against my ASD condition? It's well known that there's a stigma against us, especially Aspie males more than females...there are still unjustified stereotypes like "lacking empathy and being self-centered", which are more befitting labels of a psychopath or narcissist. We also know too well that the media has had a history of figuratively beating on ASD folks, conflating their behaviour with mental illness, "deranged loner", danger, etc... so it's inevitable that some of this toxic bias might permeate into the other institutions of society and punish us disproportionately.

Maybe one of my fellow Aspie men could advise me on this situation given your own anecdotal experience??

I wouldn't have thought there was much risk of that, assuming divorce law is the same where you are as it is in the UK. It's a fairly mechanical process unless there's a complicated fight about division of assets or custody of children. I suppose a spouse might try to claim that they've sacrificed lucrative career opportunities to look after a disabled partner, or that the disability somehow interferes with the partner's competence for looking after children, but I can't see how that could be done without evidence about the specifics of how it would be like that. There's unreasonable behaviour and cruelty, but that has to be something pretty heinous and clear-cut before the courts would take it into account. What form do you think this penalisation might take?

Just my conjectures. I've been through divorce 3 times but there's never been any complications about it, and ASD never came up. There was one who was after my wallet, but only informally before the divorce proceedings were filed, and her reasoning was so full of holes that it was very easy to refute her arguments and she never tried to present any case for that as part of the actual proceedings. I know some couples have great battles about it, but on my level nobody's ever been able to afford the clever lawyers and court fees for that kind of wrangle. So I have no direct experience of complex divorce cases.

Hi "ToughDiamond", I'm in Canada, and so the laws would be VERY similar to those of the UK

And no, there was no severe or heinous incident of any sort of neglect or gross incompetence, and I've had stable employment for many years...not the situation that some Aspies might face of being fired from a string of jobs due to misunderstandings and whatnot (I've COME CLOSE to getting let go during my adult career life, but never actually came to that...the last time I got fired was in my early 20s at a few crap jobs, pre-diagnosis).

There have just been communication struggles, like when I take things literally sometimes (better than before, but still not 100%), or I'm asked something and I'm laser-focused on coding or reading or whatever and I have to ask her to repeat...b/c I suck at multitasking. That gets mildly on her nerves, and I say mildly b/c she knows it's not intentional, it's not passive-aggressive in any way, and that I'm trying.

It's more that her demands and restrictions are really gnawing on me; it feels almost patronizing and a loss of autonomy, which spikes my blood pressure when it happens and she doesn't seem to acknowledge this - I guess that's part of the "double empathy" problem in the vernacular/literature when it comes to ND & NT inter-relations.


Still, I guess I'm concerned that even a supposedly impartial and "reason free of passion" (Aristotle quote) institution like the courts could be prejudiced against an Aspie like me, b/c of some cultural stereotype of us folk - even equating us to sociopaths or mentally incompetent invalids. I sure hope not!! !

I don't see how the court would even know you had ASD, or care about such relatively small matters as those you mention. Many divorces don't involve personal appearances in court, and even when they do, legal proceedings tend to be very calm, orderly, clear, detailed and precise, which is often the kind of thing people with ASD are quite good at. I'm still rather in the dark about what specifically you fear may go wrong.

Hmm.....I see UK divorce law has changed recently and has now deviated from its prior similarity to Canadian law. Specifically, the UK only requires one party to declare that the marriage has irretrievably broken down, and that cannot be contested, while Canadian law appears to resemble more closely the way it used to be in the UK, with separation, cruelty, or adultery needing to be shown.

I guess the thing to do would be to discuss with your wife your wish for a divorce and see how she feels about the matter. After that you might be in a better position to judge whether or not a divorce would be contentious. The only contentious issues I can imagine would be about arrangements for the children and the division of joint assets. But looking on the bright side, it might never come to that. Once she realises you're finding the relationship so bad for you that you're thinking of ending it, she might agree to some serious discussion about how the marriage might be saved. It sounds like your relationship is fairly peaceful on the surface. The courts in the UK only see their role as to adjudicate in cases where the parties have found it impossible to agree out of court on terms of separation.

I think there's great advice in that last post. And I know that in Canadian law, there's a separation agreement that has to be signed first, by both parties.
As for any residual fears...I just recall having read a few anecdotes in the past about someone with ASD being treated in a heavy-handed manner by the courts, but don't have those bookmarked. I think we can agree that regardless of how ASD/HFA folk have turned out in life, there's always been a certain institutional bias against them because it gets lumped under the banner of mental illness.