role: user

text: ok - and now we should sent a message to Sarah asking her to review the material i've sent because mediation will begin soon.


role: assistant

text:
Use this:

```text
Hi Sarah,

I wanted to let you know that Jennifer Piper’s office is ready to send mediation dates, and I have asked them to move forward with scheduling as soon as possible.

Because mediation now seems likely to begin soon, I would appreciate it if you could review the materials I have already sent when you have a chance.

Thank you,
Karl
```

If you want, I can make it a little more specific by mentioning that you would especially value her thoughts on framing and priorities.


text: send to pbcopy


text: Copied to your clipboard.


text: and let's create a mediation brief to send to Jennifer


text:
Created `records/mediators/piper/2026-03-25_karl_mediation_brief_for_jennifer_piper.md:1`.

It is a shorter mediator-facing brief, built around:
- integrated economic partnership,
- inheritance as retirement backstop,
- `2022` to `April 2023` transition,
- trust allowance entering the marital cash-flow system,
- and your core ask: a fair structure that actually solves the retirement-security problem.

If you want, I can:
- tighten the wording,
- make it more forceful,
- or generate a PDF.


text: can you show me the doc?


text:
```text
**Karl Stiefvater — Mediation Brief for Jennifer Piper**
Prepared: `2026-03-25`
Status: Working mediator-facing summary

---

**Purpose**

This is a concise summary of the situation from my perspective. My goal is not to argue law in this document. My goal is to explain the structure of the marriage, the financial expectations the marriage operated under, and the problem I am trying to solve through mediation.

---

**The Marriage As It Actually Functioned**

Lisa and I married in `2005` and were together for more than twenty years. This was a fully integrated economic partnership, not a marriage in which each spouse built separate financial security on parallel tracks.

For most of the marriage, I was the primary income provider. Over time, we did not build meaningful conventional retirement savings. Instead, marital resources went into the household and into Snow Day, the custom 3D snow globe business Lisa and I built together.

That included resources that could otherwise have become retirement-positioned assets. Early in the marriage, I purchased approximately `300 BTC` with marital funds, and that position was ultimately liquidated to support the household and sustain the business. I am not raising that to claim today’s value. I raise it because it illustrates the degree to which assets that might otherwise have become my long-term financial security were used inside the marriage.

---

**The Shared Financial Understanding**

My understanding throughout the marriage was that Lisa’s inheritance and the income stream from it would provide our long-term security. That understanding shaped major financial decisions.

I am not trying in this brief to claim the trust principal itself. My point is narrower and more practical: the marriage was structured around the expectation that the inheritance would function as the long-term backstop for both of us.

That is why the absence of separate retirement savings matters so much. We did not organize our lives as though we each needed to independently build retirement security elsewhere.

---

**What Changed In 2022–2023**

Lisa’s mother died in `2022`, and the inheritance arrived. At that point, we began winding down Snow Day rather than continuing to run it as an ongoing growth business.

`2022` was the last fully active year for Snow Day. The full allowance payments did not begin until `April 2023`, which helps explain why the business still operated fully in `2022` even though the inheritance had already arrived. After that, sales contracted sharply and consistently from `2023` forward:

- `2022`: `418` orders / `$202,025.46` gross
- `2023`: `224` orders / `$118,552.66` gross
- `2024`: `164` orders / `$83,634.70` gross
- `2025`: `61` orders / `$40,255.85` gross

That pattern is consistent with a deliberate transition away from active business dependence and toward living on the allowance stream.

---

**How The Allowance Was Actually Used**

The records I have reviewed show recurring `PERSHING` deposits landing in the SLCCU account ending in `245`, which was an account I was on. From my perspective, that is concrete evidence that the allowance stream entered the marital banking system and was not treated as something isolated from our ordinary financial life.

Lisa later described the gross trust disbursement as approximately `$19,500 per month`. Since `2022`, that distribution stream has been the only stable, predictable financial foundation in the picture.

---

**My Current Position**

I am now `56` years old. My last year of full independent employment was `2015`. I have no meaningful retirement savings and no realistic path to rebuilding long-term security from scratch at this stage.

My background is in visual effects, computer graphics, and software engineering. Because of age, long absence from the market, and major industry disruption, I do not see realistic re-entry into those fields as a serious solution to the retirement problem created by the end of this marriage.

I also do not think it is accurate to treat me as though I simply failed to protect myself independently while Lisa separately maintained her own long-term security. My position is that the marriage itself was organized differently than that.

---

**What I Hope Mediation Can Accomplish**

My primary concern is retirement security and long-term stability. I am not seeking a punitive outcome. I am trying to reach a fair structure that reflects:

- the length of the marriage,
- the fact that it functioned as an integrated economic partnership,
- the shared expectation that the inheritance would provide long-term security,
- the depletion of other resources inside that structure,
- and the reality that I now face significant financial exposure without comparable security on my side.

I am open to creative solutions. I am not attached to only one form of resolution. What matters to me is that the outcome actually addresses the problem rather than reducing it to short-term monthly survival.

---

**Closing**

The simplest way I can say it is this:

> I want a fair approximation of the long-term financial security I reasonably expected to have if the marriage had continued. From my perspective, that expectation was built around Lisa’s inheritance and the income stream from it, and the mediation needs to grapple with that reality directly.

---

*This document is a working mediator-facing summary prepared for discussion. It is not a legal filing and not a claim of legal entitlement to any specific asset.*
```


text: that looks good.  let's turn it into a PDF via tex.


text:
Built the PDF.

Files:
- `records/mediators/piper/2026-03-25_karl_mediation_brief_for_jennifer_piper.md:1`
- `records/mediators/piper/2026-03-25_karl_mediation_brief_for_jennifer_piper.tex:1`
- `records/mediators/piper/2026-03-25_karl_mediation_brief_for_jennifer_piper.pdf:1`

`tectonic` compiled cleanly. If you want, I can open the PDF or copy the brief text to your clipboard.


text: open the PDF please


text: Opened `records/mediators/piper/2026-03-25_karl_mediation_brief_for_jennifer_piper.pdf`.