role: user

text:
<environment_context>
  <shell>zsh</shell>
  <current_date>2026-03-22</current_date>
  <timezone>America/Chicago</timezone>
</environment_context>


text: ok - i want to review our strategy.  what are the reasons i can put forward that we agreed to use Lisa's inheritance for retirement?


role: assistant

text:
Frame it as `shared expectation + conduct`, not just a verbal claim.

**Strongest Reasons**
- `No separate retirement build`: you did not build meaningful conventional retirement savings during the marriage.
- `Resources were used elsewhere`: your earnings, business labor, and assets that could have become retirement resources — including the BTC position — were used for the household and Snow Day instead.
- `That only makes sense if there was a backstop`: the economic structure is hard to explain unless both of you understood Lisa’s inheritance as the long-term security source.
- `Behavior changed when the inheritance arrived`: after Lisa’s mother died in `2022`, you began winding down Snow Day rather than continuing to run it as a growth business.
- `You both effectively retired`: since `2022`, the household was no longer organized around rebuilding your career or expanding the business.
- `You lived on the trust distributions`: the marital standard of living was funded by Lisa’s monthly trust allowance.
- `The money entered joint banking`: the `PERSHING` deposits landed in the SLCCU account you were on, which shows the allowance stream entered the marital cash-flow system rather than being kept separate.

**Best Strategic Point**
- The point is not `the trust principal was mine`.
- The point is: `we treated the allowance stream as our retirement income in practice`.

**Clean Formulation**
- “Throughout the marriage, we made financial decisions on the shared understanding that Lisa’s inheritance would provide our long-term security. We did not build separate retirement reserves, we used other resources to support the household and our business, and once the inheritance arrived in 2022 we reorganized our lives around that income and wound the business down.”

**What Strengthens It Further**
- Any email/text where Lisa discusses the inheritance as future security.
- Any notes showing Snow Day was wound down because the inheritance made continued operation unnecessary.
- Any documents showing the trust distributions funded ordinary household life.

If you want, I can turn this into a short `argument outline` for Sarah or mediation.