AIBU to think the system punishes hard working women during divorce

No, total wide-eyed and stupid optimism even in the presence of some reddish flags. I look back at Past Me and roll my eyes very hard.

Did you have a pre nup second time round? I certainly did!

I divorced my first husband over 20 years ago after a 15-year marriage and with school age children, and discovered then that the law wasn't set up to accommodate the fact that I'd be taking on full financial and practical responsibility for the children going forward and my wilfully unemployed XH, who would have responsibility only for himself, was entitled to 50% of everything, including assets (pension, mostly) that I'd accumulated before I'd ever laid eyes on him. He actually got a bit more, because he had lots of time on his hands to keep going back to court and appeared to revel in the process and I thought it was worth buying him off rather than continuing to rack up legal fees.

I remarried a few years later. If I'd been on Mumsnet and paying attention at the time, I'd probably have said, "No, let's just stay as we are," when my boyfriend who was living in my house and had just quit his job proposed. It's turned out to be a good marriage, but I shudder to think of all the things that might have gone wrong.

Sale costs get deducted usually at 3% gross sale price plus any mortgage redemption costs

What is each of your max mortgage capacity if you extend the term as long as possible? Have you both done mortgage reports (brokers will give you free quotes). your own bank may be more generous to keep your business. Put his figures through a calculator to check
£30k isn’t worth arguing over - legal costs would make a hole in that quickly. can you both really not just borrow a bit more?
Have you done a search of properties that would be suitable for him - if he wants both dc at some point he will be considered to have a 2-3 bed housing need. But housing doesn’t need to be equal if one has dc much more or needs space to work from home due childcare etc.
The court will say you both agreed to the division of work at the time and they will consider it was equal. This is annoying I knew when you were both higher earner and main carer whose career was arranged round dc but the court doesnt want to litigate your marriage and it’s impossible anyway as lazy people lie about what contribution they made.
Capital contributions and future care contributions or different housing needs can shift the dial from 50:50.

I dont think anyone else have mentioned this, but from your OP is he having every single Saturday daytime and a couple of nights in the week?

think hard about that as you’ll never get a weekend away with or without the kids.
And if it goes into place now it could be tricky to go back on later.
He’ll have Friday and Saturday nights to go our doing what he likes, while you’re home with the kids every single week.

How patronising. It think it’s perfectly clear from my posts that I understand the law. The title of the OP’s thread explicitly states that it is about the fact that the law is unfair as it stands to women (and it is almost exclusively women who are in this group) who are both the higher earner and the main carer and yet end up also having to pay off useless husbands who didn’t contribute 50% to joint assets OR do their share of parenting and almost always fail to do 50% of parenting or pay 50% of the cost of raising a child after divorce, either. It’s not about “emotion”, it’s about the fact that the law as it stands often leads to illogical and unjustifiable division of assets in these cases as it was set up without considering that the woman might be the higher earner AND main carer, as is increasingly common now.

Most of these men have little intention of doing a significant amount of parenting and are perfectly capable of supporting themselves without also expecting a higher share of the assets than they contributed while their ex-wife actually needs to provide for and care for and house the children.

Highlighting this blatant unfairness in the law shows that people DO understand it. Nobody is disputing that this is how it works currently, people are discussing why it shouldn’t be set up that way because it disadvantages women and children in favour of useless men who don’t pull their weight in any respect.

Really good point here !

Why don't you tell him that if it's going to be 50 50 then he needs to have kids 50 50 and call his bluff

You need your solicitor to push for these and 60% as you are the only one having the dcs overnight. Be clear you’ll go to court and his costs will eat into the difference he’s getting.

There is precedent of fees being part of a settlement so even if he refuses, be clear if you don’t get the percentage you want in the house/pension you’ll ask for these to be court ordered, after all the childcare costs are so you can both work, not just you.

I’d love to know the rationale of the 24% of people who’ve voted that you’re being unreasonable
Those are the posters who understand the law and particularly that the ultimate decision has nothing to do with what is emotionally fair but legally fair, which can be two very different concept. What is fair legally is that both spouses have their needs met going forward. The past has very little incidence.

This is interesting. The decline in overall percentage of the adult population in marriages is almost entirely down to fewer people getting married in the first place, not more people getting divorced (proportionate to the adult population).

In fact divorce rates have largely been on a downward trend for decades, other than returning to the previous level post-Covid, whereas the number of marriages relative to the population rose after Covid by nowhere near enough to “compensate” for the decrease that happened when they couldn’t take place, and it’s now falling again…

It’s really no surprise given the above that marriage rates are at historically low levels. Women are wising up!

The thing is this situation isn’t at all unusual anymore. I’ve been through it, so has another close friend and another one going through the same now. It’s increasingly common for women to be the higher earners but still in 90% of cases they are the primary carer during marriages and after divorce as well, regardless. In fact, research showed that women who out-earn their husbands actually do a higher percentage of the childcare/ housework on average than the women who earn less than their husbands!

Divorce law and the rules around maintenance both urgently need updating to reflect reality and ensure that both parents are legally required to pay 50% of the actual costs of raising the children they create, including housing, childcare and everything else, and that just having been married to someone doesn’t come with a presumption that you should receive 50% of the assets if you’re contributing less in terms of money and care: the law is set up how it is because it assumes that the person earning less will be doing more caring/ parenting to compensate and in a great many cases now this is simply not reality.

well yes, I compared with the usual situation where men are earning more and complaining that wife will take all 'their' money, trying to make a point that this situation is not the same.

What a prick. All about him isn’t it.

God knows what I would do, but probably something that infuriates him
and spites myself long term. You sound far more sensible.

LOL. Given how useless some of these fathers seem to be, perhaps social services should be called if in rare circumstances the children are “left” with them!

But I’m sure that wasn’t what they meant, was it? It would have been that the mother has been neglectful to leave their child with the child’s second parent because how could anybody expect a father, with an actual penis, to inconvenience himself and actually do any parenting?

And meanwhile these parasites act like they’re doing everybody a favour if they pay a measly 15% of their salary towards the cost of raising their children. The mystery is how so many of them manage to get a new girlfriend or wife according to threads on here.

You’d think any woman with an IQ over 70 would run a mile from a man who has already proved himself beyond doubt to be such a staggering waste of carbon.

There’s another thread on here where a mother has left her child with his father and announced she’s going on holiday.

Regardless of the wrongs or rights of that situation people are saying the police should be called, that social services will “not look kindly” as its child abandonment and neglect.

Can you imagine anyone telling us to call the police or social services when our feckless husbands walked out? Of course not! Kids are with their mum! But when it’s the dad it’s all “but he WORKS”!

Yes we fucking work too thanks, and a damn sight harder in most cases.

This man was not earning more! The OP is the higher earner.

Agree that men get screwed over by this too, although maybe not to the same extent as women who are more likely to do the majority of the child care as well as work.

YANBU. This is one of the reasons why I don’t intend to ever get married. I have a decent salary and pension and I don’t want to be financially tied to someone else. Especially not to a lower earner when most marriages end in divorce! You’d have to be mad imo.

he was a not comfortable doing her bedtime or attending to night wakings

Is he not even a tiny bit embarrassed being such a waste of space?
Yes sure, higher earning men have been sharing the martial assets bought with money they earned - but that usually has also meant that the mother was earning less because she was doing the majority of childcare.
If a parent is unable to put their 1yo to bed, that's clearly not the case.

YANBU. He is basically walking away from raising his own children. He's a total bastard.

Can you say that a 50/50 financial split needs to also be a 50/50 child care/residence split? So on the days when he has the DC, the nursery/childcare fees are his responsibility. That's the way it should be.

This is why I always laugh at the "marriage protects you" threads. Not if you are the main contributor to your household finances. So many women are left holding the baby and having to pay their ex off too. It's not fair and detrimental to the children. If both parties earn and parent equally including post divorce that is obviously a different scenario.

As soon as the baby is potty trained and when he doesn’t have to pay nursery fees he’ll push for 5050 so no maintenance is payable