Divorce is looming, and my biggest concern is loosing access to my children. All of our monetary assets are currently located in the US, so I do have a little bit of leverage.
I’d like to propose a separation period between my wife (TW) and I (US) with me moving out of her family’s house (where everyone including our children are currently living) and us splitting the children 50/50.
Note I do not intend to date around, I just think we need some time apart from each other
Would this be a bad idea? I don’t want it to be construed as abandonment if it was mutually agreed to.
As Marco said, you should be getting advice from a lawyer. However, since you posted here and obviously want advice from idiots on the internet, here is mine based on the limited information you have shared:
As your biggest concern is losing access to your kids, make the marriage work, even if you have to pretend to still be interested. Since your wife is Taiwanese, you stand very little chance of coming out of this with custody of your kids if you get divorced. This shouldn’t be too hard if you don’t intend to date around. Stick it out until your kids are 18 and can make up their own minds and then start looking for greener pastures.
Definitely don’t count your chickens there! See a lawyer, Taiwan lawyers and legal system have some truly weird and bizarre divorce antics.
A college divorced his wife some years ago and the final push to have her agree to the divorce and it’s terms was his lawyer pulled out her health check report from just before they were married which showed she had been tested for STD’s and therefore was obviously a slut who slept around a lot and had continued to do so. The fact that the health check items were a standard “pre-marriage” package that hospitals provide for a fee was apparently not considered relavant. Gloves are definitley off with divorces in Taiwan and your spouse may have access to a lot of reports/information that you may not be aware off.