More of a WWYD? Moral dilemma

[Zarathustrasilver]

NC for this.

I have been separated from my husband for 5 years and we are now finally getting round to sorting out the financials and our divorce.

We were together for 7 years before getting married and married for 2 years before we split up. I'm currently renting with no chance of getting onto the property ladder until I have saved a deposit.

We met in 2002, I moved into his house in 2003 and I went onto the mortgage in 2005. We then married in 2009. We have no children together. I left the marriage with nothing, he is still in the house with our 2 dogs. I contributed to the house financially from when I moved in, 8 years before we split up.

The split has been more than amicable, we are still friendly and have met up for a few times for coffee and a chat to discuss the financial stuff and text and chat on the phone every so often.

We have joint debts amounting to approx 10k. His suggestion was that he will pay off the joint debt and I will come off the mortgage and then we would be completely separate from each other financially. This was agreed about a year after we split. I was in complete agreement about walking away and not asking for anything else. The reason for this was over my guilt over how we separated because I left him for someone else who I now have 1 child with.

Last month we got the ball rolling by going to a solicitor each to draw up a separation agreement.

My solictor told me that I would be legally entitled to a substantial amount of money after the debts are cleared off.

I was aware that I would be legally entitled to money as we were married and I was on the mortgage however I had decided years ago that I wouldn't ask for anything because of the guilt I would feel asking this after I left for him someone else and that it was his house to begin with.

So really what I'm asking is what would you do in this situation? Would you ask for a cash lump sump sum as well as what we'd agreed?

You are also right about the £400 not meaning any debt.

I'd just look at asking for half of the increase in value during the time you were with him. To ask for more is morally wrong.

One thing, if he needed to sell the house then I absolutely wouldn't consider going for more money. But that comes back to what difference does that make to what I'm "owed"? So does that mean because his dad can bail him out I should go for more?? And it also goes back to it was his house to begin with when we got together (he was in it 6 months before we met and bought with a prev girlfriend) and he is super attached to the house so I have guilt over that.

I was a very young girl when we got together. Would I have had my own place by now? I don't know. I do know though that me living with him has definitely hindered me having my own place because it was his to begin with and we were together so long.

Do you know what the house is worth and what mortgage he has in it?

You built up the debt together 50:50 I assume so £5k is yours? Yes you left him I see why that's making you reluctant to rock the boat but, you paid in for 8years, that surely amounts to more than £5k? You are entitled to more and this is your future your talking about if you have both sought legal advice and things are amicable could you not speak to ex come to a new arrangement together?

Work out what you put in from when you moved in (rent free but contributing to the household) and what you put into the mortgage in 2005 till you split up in 2011 and finished paying in in 2012. Would his paying off the JOINT debts of £10000 balance this out? I suspect not. Meanwhile the property will have appreciated with your seven years of contribution.

I think you should go to mediation. Think of a balance between your guilty give-it-all-away and what you really have contributed. Then work out a compromise. Clearly you don't want to take him to the cleaners, good on you, but don't ignore what you've paid in. DO THE SUMS!

Work out a compromise, you have your child's future welfare to think of as well as your integrity. Find out what you could get and see if you can come to an amicable agreement.

So you married him, then left him for another man. You made an agreement, but now you want to go back on it?

Not so good about keeping your promises, are you?

And now you expect your ex to sell his home so that he can finance you shacking up with your new bloke? Classy, really classy.

So say you paid mortgage contributions for 8 years - that 96 monthly payments in total.

The £5K that your ex paid off in return for you not claiming any money from him - if you divide it by 96, then that's effectively him paying you £52 for each monthly payment that you made (whether it was an actual mortgage contribution or a rent payment to him for him to pay his mortgage).

The big question is - can you remember approximately what monthly payments you were making at the time?

If you were paying your ex £50/month then he has lost out by nearly £300 in the agreement because you would have had more back than you paid in.

However, if your rent was £150/month then you have lost out potentially on £9600 that you have put into his property for no reward. And for every £100 more rent that you paid to him then you have lost out on another £9,600 (or appropriate share thereof).

I know that you would have had to have been paying rent at the time if you weren't living with him. But he also gained - his share of his bills would have been lower with you there to share them with, he might have been overpaying his mortgage which would have enabled him to pay off his mortgage much more quickly and thus more cheaply or whatever. (and was any of the debt for any furniture or improvements to the house that he has benefited from since you left, while you haven't been able to?).

So I would say that while I wouldn't necessarily demand that I got a big share of his house that covered a rise in value from when you started paying to this day, I would certainly compare what I'd put in, what he put in and the uplift in the property values while you were there and see what they all amounted to before making any decisions.

I'd also be thinking very hard about the deal that my ex guilted me into from the way you describe it, it doesn't sound like you got a very fair deal at all - can't see that your ex's uncle would have bothered to make sure that you got a fair deal at the expense of his nephew and doesn't sound like your solicitor got you a good deal at the time.

(sorry if I've got muddled and the separation deed is only now being drawn up, and it's your current solicitor that is trying to sort stuff out better now)
(and sorry if this is too long and I've cross posted with lots of other posts again).

You definitely shouldn't be writing off any of this yet just to stay nice to someone who it sounds like is quite happy to rip you off and to do it without letting you know!

So he came up with the original financial settlement. Do you think that he intentionally ripped you off in revenge for you leaving? He seems to have used your guilt to get himself a very advantageous agreement.

What is legal and what is moral are often two very separate things. If you are happy to have your new start off the back of someone else's misery, go for the money. If not, stick with the original agreement.

You went on the mortgage in 2005. Forget any contributions from earlier; they won't count and you should consider it rent.

You split up in about 2011, so you made mortgage contributions for about 6 years, between 2005 and 2011. The average house price growth in that period, (which of course spanned the 2008 crash), averaged about 6% across the UK. Of course, there were large regional variances; some areas experienced much greater growth, others much less, some incurred losses. So, financially, I would say you are entitled to 50% of the change in house value over that period.

What would you do if that's a negative number?

Then you have your moral dilemma. Lots of people advocate sticking to your word and walking away. I ponder whether it would also be appropriate in relationship breakdowns for the "guilty" party to apologise by way of a lump sum payment?

This is why people should engage solicitors.

Just leave it to a solicitor to sort out and don't be silly.

You have a child - are you really going to put your ex's interests ahead of your child?

Presumably your relationship with your ex wasn't great if you left him? Why carry all the guilt for a relationship ending that had two people in it?

What would your Ex do, if the situation was reversed?

So much bitterness on this thread! So the OP left someone for someone else. It happens. She can't beat herself up about that forever more! Yes, she broke promises but she won't be the first person. The uncle's document sounds pretty dodgy to me. There are too many posters on this thread ready to vilify the OP and see all of her ex's decisions in a positive light.

You're entitled to £20k after wiping away the shared debt?

No way would I walk away from that. It sounds like he is planning to completely swindle you out of what is a lot of money - no wonder he is being so amicable and trying to keep you on side.

I'm willing to bet that once you have officially and legally walked away and he knows you can no longer make a claim on the money you are entitled to he will walk away from you and stop playing at being nice.

Take your money. If you're feeling especially guilty knock of £5k and take £15k but if you're entitled to the money take it. Take it for your child and the future you can build with it.

I think the reasons why the relationship ended should largely be taken out of the equation when dealing with finances.

Relationships break down for all sorts of reasons, some more painful than others.

You were a married couple without dependants and during your marriage, your exH agreed to put you on the deeds to his house whereby you jointly paid into the mortgage and also had other jointly responsible debts.

Your marriage ended because you met someone else with whom you have subsequently started a family with.

Regarding the house, what kind of deed of trust did you have? And if you were tenants in common, how did you agree to divide the percentages?

Personally I would advise you to keep a cool head and not be alone with your ex. Equally I would instruct your solicitor to go for a decent negotiation rather than an ugly fight for every penny he thinks you legally have a shot at.

Sorry, meant to put in "As I understand it" after second para.

I was going to say, considering the circumstances I wouldn't take more. Walk away with a clean slate and enjoy your family.

But £20,000 is a big chunk of cash... Do you have your partner's support? I wouldn't prioritize keeping your ex's friendship, you may find that evaporates once the settlement is reached anyway. And the good news is, all his friends already hate you. They can't hate you afresh! Do what's best for you and your loved ones.

I think there is a midway,...

As others have said .. calculate what you contributed....and then calcylate the increase in value...is this less than 5k?? thought not!!

You also lost the opportunity cost of starting your own mortgage...

I would think of it like this,,,,try and take the emotion out of it, if someone approached you with a fair amount of cash that. you were legally and morally entitled to (I wouldn;t advocate screwing him into the ground!),,,would you just hand it back? Say if was 10k/15k/20k what would that mean for you and your family??

The most important thing to me when I left my Ex was: "Could I look myself in the mirror at the end of this?"

There is a reason why you reached the settlement you did OP. Leave it. Don't let solicitors or your DP tempt you otherwise with tales of easy money.

Not sure these are relevant points but I'm interested to find out - if you hadn't been living there he might have had a lodger who he could have charged more than half the mortgage for a room so in theory the ex is worse off...?

Also you would have been paying rent or big mortgage with small deposit during those years, would that have left you better or worse off than you were/are?

Were your mortgage payments paying off interest only or capital?

No idea if any of those things make a difference legally but I might ponder them morally.

Where did the debt come from?

I'd probably go after less than what I was entitled to, because you did verbally agree on a low amount and it sounds like he doesn't have much cash but daddy does

I'd also expect things to turn nasty if you do pursue it, and only you can guess the cost of that in terms of your time, energy and emotion.

Given your updates, OP, I would ask for more.

You said he was putting a substantial chunk of money into an investment [to which you have no access or benefit] and that £400 pcm might have avoided or diminished the £10k debt you now both face. What did he say about this at the time he was doing it?

I think we need to see more examples of numbers (how much was the mortgage, house value then and now, what were the debts on, etc), but unless you were both making well above national average, £400 a month is a lot of money for an investment that only one is going to reap.

Definitely crunch some more numbers with your solicitor.

This is very confusing.

For years, since you split, you've presumably been on the mortgage papers 'in name only' - I.e not actually paying towards the mortgage.

Why would his dad need to buy you out to get your name off the mortgage? It's just paperwork, surely.

Your ex is obviously financially able to pay the entire mortgage himself, as he has been since you split. Why would the lender require his dad to be on there?

Am I missing something?

I was a very young girl when we got together. Would I have had my own place by now? I don't know. I do know though that me living with him has definitely hindered me having my own place because it was his to begin with and we were together so long.
You made decisions at the time that you thought were for the best, at the time. He doesn't owe you money based on the what-ifs of your life. He certainly doesn't owe your new husband a foot on the property ladder.

Your ex isn't able to buy you off the mortgage. His dad is going to have to do that if the ex isn't to lose his house, which was his before he met you.

Don't play hardball.

I think you wouldn't be able to look at yourself in the mirror if you were to press a case for more than walking out debt free.

Koala D.U.

Yeah - I agree. The OP is 'only' getting five grand ? OK, that was agreed to initially. Bills can't be paid with guilt, can they ?

The partner he was with when he bought the house left him prior to him starting the relationship with the OP.

Hang on, is this a 'reverse thread' ? It's just that I know someone who used one bloke to buy a house then another bloke, after he left, to keep it. In under 2 years the other bloke had got his marching orders also.

I agree with the contributors that say calculate what YOU paid. I'm not understanding why his Dad (some say uncle) is buying him out so the OP can get her five grand. Could he not just loan him the five grand ?

Twenty grand isn't a great deal in relation to property. How come the ex-husband can't raise finance for this ? What's the deal with the four hundred quid a month going into a company share scheme ? So, how many years has he been paying into this now ?

He's all about assets isn't he ?

Yeah, I can understand why some posters believe he's being nice to keep her sweet in the meantime. Is he kind of preying on her guilt even though he's not that bothered as long as he doesn't lose HIS house ?

As has been remarked up thread (and I've seen during a family disagreement) 'a gentleman's agreement' only works if both parties behave like gentleman. Even if one or both are female.