Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Rough idea what would be fair in divorce.

85 replies

FuzzyFelt85 · 19/12/2025 15:28

Hello all,

Looking for some rough advice, a starter for ten, to get my head around what would be reasonable in a divorce.

My husband and I are separated and sleeping in different rooms in our house. There has been no intimacy for years. I won’t bore you with the details but I can’t bear to live with him or go on like this any longer. I believe we could do this amicably for our children. There is nobody else involved on either side.

Children are 6 & 7. No wraparound where we live and no family help… but I have a school hours job that I currently earn £17k pa in. I could potentially take on some additional work from home (my qualifications lend themselves to this fortunately). I do all school drop offs and pick ups and would likely keep doing this.

Husband works extremely long hours , often gone 7-7. Doesn’t tend to work weekends unless there is a hideous deadline. Earns 90k pa.

House is worth around £400k and the joint mortgage on it is £110k atm.

I would like to remain the primary carer and I don’t think my husband would challenge me on this, he is a workaholic.

I am thinking of asking for 2/3 equity in house plus some maintenance (a few hundred a month). I would like to stay in or near our current village and am happy to buy a basic 3 bedroom semi (where we live is quite cheap). Currently we have a huge Georgian house. There aren’t any other assets really. I don’t think I could afford to stay in this house on my own.

I would be happy to leave pensions alone.. mine in tiny and my husband probably has more but I am a lot younger so have longer to “save up”.

So in theory it could go-

Me - 190k of house proceeds (could by a basic house outright for this around here), my salary plus maintenance and hopefully some child benefit (never had it before).

Husband - 95k equity, keeps most of his salary. (He could easily afford a mortgage).

Could I ask people’s thoughts please?

(i know he’d be happy to continue as we are for ever more, despite him being quite unhappy and having no intimacy either … but it’s me that will propose divorce)

Thanks for reading!

OP posts:
arethereanyleftatall · 19/12/2025 15:58

I think you would get more than that. That plus half his pension I expect. Obviously you would get child maintenance, I think it will be around £1k a month on his salary, and EOW, but haven’t done the maths. There’s calculators that you can work it out from.
my figures weren’t massively dissimilar and I got spousal maintenance too but assets were 50/50 as we weren’t aware anything else was a thing!

ByQuaintAzureWasp · 19/12/2025 15:56

Can not possibly advise without knowing what his pension pot is worth.

Mauro711 · 19/12/2025 15:55

FuzzyFelt85 · 19/12/2025 15:47

Thanks.

Im not sure a mesher order would work … perhaps for a short term. But it would be very expensive for me to stay here and him to get another place. I don’t particularly want the responsibility of this big old house, even if he kept paying the mortgage.

Courts tend to favour clean breaks these days so it's very unlikely that you would get a mesher order, and as you say, you don't need or particularly want it.

Mauro711 · 19/12/2025 15:53

You can't really pick and choose what goes into the pot. All marital assets gets included, then divided and if it seems fair a judge signs off the financial settlement at the end. You will most likely get more than 50% of the assets if you will continue to have almost full responsibility for the children and earn significantly less. Child maintenance is easy to work out by using the government calculator. You probably won't get spousal maintenance though, he's not on crazy money.

MandemChickenShop · 19/12/2025 15:51

Thoughts....add up all the assets accumulated since you got married and divide by 2 to get a baseline

Original poster
FuzzyFelt85 · 19/12/2025 15:47

Thanks.

Im not sure a mesher order would work … perhaps for a short term. But it would be very expensive for me to stay here and him to get another place. I don’t particularly want the responsibility of this big old house, even if he kept paying the mortgage.

OP posts:
Phylllis · 19/12/2025 15:46

What do you want contact (overnights) to look like?

Goodadvice1980 · 19/12/2025 15:38

His pension should be taken into consideration.

Not sure if a Mesher order would be appropriate for the home.

RandomMess · 19/12/2025 15:36

His pension could be worth an awful lot more than the equity in your home.

You need to factor in all sort of eventualities.

randomchap · 19/12/2025 15:34

Get proper legal advice.

What seems fair to you now may look unfair at a later date. A solicitor with experience will be able to guide you.