The employer was already way ahead of you. The original non-compete included a clause that you had 24 hours to inform the previous employer if you took another job at any company that could be seen as competing within a year of leaving. It's not a huge market, and they would have found out if we just didn't tell them. That would have probably gone even worse for us. Our best asset, though I guess not good enough, was that we hadn't been deceitful at all. The only other real choice we had was for my spouse to either not work for a year, or start a completely different career (giving up 30 years of experience in the field).

Thankfully now though, it's mostly all behind us. My spouse is in a new job in a company that the first employer gave the ok to, and in two more months a year has gone by, and they have no more hold over us at all.

The current employer doesn't actually know anything about the situations, as when my spouse took the job the lack of work for the previous three months was explained as, "I was unhappy at the previous job, and I took some time off and helped my aging parents get settled into a retirement home", which was all true. The new employer also wanted a non-compete signed and was a little confused why we pushed back so hard on it. They'd never seen anybody ask for changes in it. They agreed to some changes, but in the end really didn't want to make one that was compliant with state law. We settled for a written statement from their corporate council to our lawyer that said they understood it did not comply and was likely unenforceable.