Ten minutes after my divorce became official, I revoked the power of attorney my husband had over my apartment.
That same evening, he brought a realtor and a buyer there.
We had arrived at the registry office together, but we left separately.
Igor was the first to walk down the steps. Before getting into his car, he turned toward me and said something cheerful about how we should “handle everything calmly, like adults.”
Then he drove away without waiting for me.
I stood there for another minute, searching through my bag for my keys and thinking about those words.
“Like adults.”
At the time, I thought he was talking about the divorce.
Later, I understood that he had been thinking about something else entirely.
A young newlywed couple passed me on the steps, surrounded by flowers and smiling relatives. Their life together was only beginning. Mine had just ended.
Strangely, I wasn’t jealous of their wedding.
I was jealous because they still had no shared history to untangle.
The notary’s office was only seven minutes away by car.
I hadn’t planned to go there.
But once I got behind the wheel, one thought suddenly came into my mind: Igor still had power of attorney over my apartment.
I didn’t want to go home carrying that thought with me.
At the next intersection, I turned around.
Ten minutes after our divorce, I was sitting in a notary’s waiting room.
“Do you want to revoke the power of attorney completely?” the notary asked after finding the document in the system.
“Yes. Completely.”
“You don’t need to provide a reason.”
“I know. Just revoke it.”
She printed the papers.
This time I read every line carefully before signing.
Two years earlier, when I had originally given Igor the power of attorney, I hadn’t been nearly as careful.
Back then, I was about to leave on a three-month work assignment. Our apartment building was changing management companies, and somebody needed to handle documents, public service offices, and property-related paperwork while I was away.
Igor offered to do it.
“Just give me power of attorney,” he had said. “I have more free time. I’ll handle everything.”
The notary had listed all the rights the document gave him, including the ability to sign certain real estate documents.
But I had barely listened.
I had been thinking about my flight, my luggage, and everything I still needed to do before leaving.
So I signed.
The apartment itself had always been mine.
I had bought it before our marriage with a mortgage. My parents helped me with the down payment, and I paid the rest myself from my salary.
Igor never contributed to it.
That was why, even after we married, I always thought of the apartment as something completely separate from our shared finances.
The problems began about a year after I returned from my business trip.
Igor suddenly became obsessed with business ideas.
First, he wanted to open a coffee shop with a friend.
Then he wanted to start a breakfast delivery service.
After that came an idea involving short-term rental apartments.
Every idea sounded brilliant when Igor explained it.
He could draw profit calculations on a napkin and make almost anything seem like a guaranteed success.
But there was always one detail I didn’t like.
The money was supposed to come from selling my apartment.
“Why my apartment?” I asked him every time. “Why not use our savings?”
The truth was, we had no savings.
In three years of marriage, we hadn’t managed to build any.
“We’re a family,” Igor would say. “Don’t you believe in me?”
“I don’t believe in risking my apartment for your third business idea in two years.”
He would become offended, stop talking about it for a few days, and then return with another plan.
The final warning came in May.
One evening, I returned home late from work and found a partially completed real estate agency contract lying on the kitchen table.
My name was written as the property owner.
But Igor’s phone number was listed as the contact.
“What is this?” I asked.
He barely looked up from his phone.
“I was just preparing everything so we wouldn’t waste time.”
“I told you I’m not selling.”
“You never said absolutely no.”
“I said no every single time you asked.”
He sighed as though I was being unreasonable.
“You’re afraid of change.”
That was when I finally looked directly at him.
“If you touch my apartment again without me, our next conversation won’t be a family discussion.”
He smiled like I was overreacting.
A month later, he suggested we divorce.
Quickly.
Peacefully.
No court.
No property disputes.
“There’s nothing to divide anyway,” he said. “The apartment is yours.”
At the time, I thought he was being surprisingly reasonable.
He even said, “We can close everything in one day.”
That sentence stayed in my head.
I just didn’t understand its meaning yet.
That evening, after the divorce, I returned to the apartment only to collect a bag of documents.
I had no intention of staying there with Igor after the divorce.
When I stepped out of the elevator, I heard voices from inside.
Someone mentioned my apartment number.
Then I heard the word “viewing.”
The door was slightly open.
I pushed it.
Inside stood three people.
A woman with a folder.
A tired-looking man in a business suit.
And Igor.
He was pointing toward the kitchen window and explaining the advantages of the neighborhood.
When he saw me, he didn’t look shocked.
Instead, he smiled.
“Oh, perfect. You’re right on time.”
I stared at him.
“Right on time for what?”
Then I turned to the woman.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the realtor,” she said cautiously.
“And who arranged this viewing?”
She looked at Igor.
“With the owner’s representative.”
“He stopped being my representative this morning.”
The hallway went silent.
“I revoked his power of attorney ten minutes after our divorce.”
The realtor’s face changed immediately.
She turned toward Igor.
“But you told us your wife knew about the sale.”
“I never agreed to any sale,” I said.
The realtor tightened her grip on the folder.
“Igor Sergeyevich told us two weeks ago that the divorce was just a formality and that you would sign everything afterward. We even accepted a deposit from the buyer.”
I looked at Igor.
“Two weeks ago?”
The buyer shifted uncomfortably.
“I was told the sale was basically settled,” he said. “That’s why I paid the deposit.”
Igor shrugged.
“I thought we’d finish everything in time.”
And suddenly everything became clear.
The divorce had never been the important part.
The power of attorney remained valid whether we were married or divorced.
Igor didn’t need the divorce in order to sell.
He needed a date.
A convenient deadline.
He had already promised the realtor and the buyer that everything would happen immediately afterward.
He had already taken a deposit.
He had already made commitments using my apartment.
And he had expected me to be too exhausted and distracted on divorce day to think about an old document.
His entire plan depended on me doing nothing.
But I had stopped at the notary.
Ten minutes had ruined everything.
The realtor closed her folder.
“If the owner objects and the power of attorney has been revoked, there’s nothing more to discuss.”
The buyer looked relieved.
“What about my deposit?”
Igor lowered his eyes.
“I’ll return it.”
They both left.
Then Igor and I stood alone in the hallway.
My spare keys were still in his jacket pocket.
“You didn’t have to embarrass me in front of them,” he said.
I almost laughed.
“Embarrass you? You brought strangers into my apartment and tried to arrange a sale behind my back.”
“I needed money.”
“For what?”
He hesitated.
Then he finally admitted it.
He had already paid an advance on a commercial property for another business idea.
He had expected to cover the cost after selling my apartment.
That was the real sequence.
First, he committed to a property he couldn’t afford.
Then he suggested a quick divorce.
Then he promised my apartment to a buyer.
Then he accepted a deposit.
And only after all that was I supposed to cooperate.
I held out my hand.
“The keys.”
He stared at them for a second before dropping them into my palm.
“Happy now?” he asked.
“No.”
I closed my fingers around the keys.
“I just don’t want to live like this anymore.”
The next morning, I changed the lock.
I also wrote to the real estate agency and made everything official: I was the sole owner, the power of attorney had been revoked, and nobody had permission to advertise, show, or negotiate the sale of my apartment without my written approval.
They apologized and confirmed the change.
A month later, Igor and I met with a lawyer to finish the last divorce formalities.
He never mentioned the buyer’s deposit.
He never mentioned the commercial property.
Apparently, those problems were his now.
And for once, they truly had nothing to do with me.
That evening, I came home, placed my bag of documents beside the door, and went into the kitchen.
I looked at the same table where I had once found the unfinished real estate contract.
Then I put the kettle on.
And for the first time, I didn’t think about how close I had come to losing my apartment.
I thought about those ten minutes.
Ten ordinary minutes between the registry office and the notary.
Ten minutes Igor had never included in his plan.
And ten minutes that changed everything.
