How much are you supposed to care about someone you married who wants to divorce you?
Well, if you dont care much about them, they are likely to divorce you. By the sound of it, this dude did not cared about relationship one bit. God knows what faults she had, beyond jealousy, because OP choosen not to trash the ex. Which is noble.
But she was done with relationship for reasons that had nothing to do with money. He was emotionally checkout out for months too. Expecting money windfall to fix that all is asinine. Even if she decided to cancel divorce for half those money, it would be marriage for money and nothing more.
It's not hard to imagine an alternate scenario in which a different person would have at least made an effort to talk to his wife and understand why the marriage got to that point instead of making a V-line for the beach when she told him she wanted a divorce.
Again, the impression I got from comments made in the post was that the OP was self-centered and didn't care that much about his wife's feelings, which one might reasonably assume contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. The OP responded and, to his credit, confirmed "I am selfish and self absorbed".
What do you know about him ? Maybe he already knew why the marriage got to that point. What's the point of continuing when the two agrees that the marriage leads to nowhere and that they are both unhappy ? To be fair, as I read it, this sounds like a pretty sane divorce. And sane divorces are far from being the norm.
But if you get home and the papers are on the table as he mentioned, that is past the point of talking with your spouse about your relationship, it is the time to get out, think straight and then head to a lawyer to make sure all is done right.
(coming from someone that has been divorced for 5 years and am in good terms with my ex-wife, we help each other all the time and talk about things/life regularly as friends)
I would argue that's the point where the talking should start (ideally there is also talking before it comes to that, of course).
But that's wasn't the point, the point of the post was that I had a moment of clarity, of what was important to me and where my life was going. I got married because that is what society and family expected, I realized that was not for me.
But ya, if divorce papers are on the table, time to smell the coffee, the fat lady is singing, turn out the lights, time to move on.