.. To be furious at DH's ex Wife?

[SSDGM]

DH split up with the mother of his kids years before he met me. In fact he had another 10 year long relationship in between us. Now their youngest DD is 19 and in employment the time has come to sell the house (or her to buy him out) as agreed. However she's changed her mind and is pleading poverty. She's ignored solicitors letters and mediation requests or left any correspondence to the last minute and has said she's about to be out of a job due to illness. DH has had enough and has instructed solicitors that Mediation will not work and to go straight to court. She now wants him to just sign it all over to her and walk away.
I'm fuming because I have 2 now adult DS's from my first marriage and after their father and I split I made a point to ramp up my career to look after us all where she has just ignored the passing of time and can't now cope without the maintenance and tax credits she got before her DS/ my DSD was of age. I have a little nest egg put away for a house deposit and earn a decent salary. She has now said she will come after MY money and she will be given the house they shared by the courts because she's poorer than I am.
DH is self employed and earns less than I do.

AIBU to want to get involved? How dare she sit on her arse working part time for years after the kids were old enough to take care of themselves and then piss and moan it's unfair that we have a nice life and should give her everything. I've always been nice to her to keep the peace, but I'm losing patience. Why can't she just bugger off?

Your situation sounds (weirdly) identical to that of DD's female friend's partner 5 years ago. Divorced several years, time for house sale as youngest child turned 18, ex-wife stalling.
Wasted everyone's money on legal fees but eventually she had to sell and give him 50% as agreed years before.
Get your DH's solicitor to tell her to stick to the agreement or he'll be claiming any and all costs involved due to her stalling. If solicitor is weak change to a different solicitor.

Yep. Frustrated to the point I'm still awake at 1am when I have bloody work in the morning.

I'm also furious with him now for not dealing with this which isn't helping much either. He admits he left it for an easy life. Not so easy any more.

llangenith, the OP's problem is that there is no legal agreement to enforce.

The amounts of money concerned versus the likely cost in solicitors fees make it a totally pointless exercise.

Tell her that he will sign the house over to her in its entirety provided that she signs all paperwork to get him off the mortgage within a set period (I dont know how long these things take so say 6 weeks) and if she doesnt then you will go to court to seek sale of the house.

The only thing that is a concern is that if she really is about to lose her job then she may not be allowed to take the mortgage on on her own.

I will start this by saying I am Canadian so different ways of doing things. I triply can't comprehend getting divorced without all of the financials being taken care off. I am divorced and it was brutal! The financial part if child support was the hardest. The house for us was easier as I was able to buy him out due to earning significantly more than him st the time. We aren't allowed to divorce here without having everything figured out. It costed a pretty penny in the end as he was fighting paying child support.

Your countries way of mortgaging et al is very confusing with how you are talking about it. Our is fairly straightforward, you either get approved for mortgage or you don't and their are slightly different kinds but they are all similar in nature. The main differences are how you pay them, monthly or bi-weekly, is the % fluctuating or fixed, can you make lump sum payments and the amount you can make and I think those are the major ones. I could be wrong, I am no expert, just with my personal experience😁

OP, I hope you can get this worked out without breking the bank! It seems a bit crazy that he can't remove his name by passing it on to her with such little amount owing. I do understand if she can't mortgage but at that little amount even with bad credit is she has been regularly paying the mortgage she should hopefully be able to get something?!?

I get it's really frustrating that she might walk away with all this cash but court is a hugely expensive option and in my experience he'll come out with very little.
When my husband divorced his wife she was also pretty difficult he got 6k and she got just over 100k. All children were grown up. It's similarly that she hadn't worked (by her own choice he'd been trying to get her to get a part time job for years) and therefore didn't have the earning potential benefits he had. He would've just walked away from the house but needed the courts to force a sale as she was refusing to sell it leaving him with a £1000 mortgage every month and rental in his place.
It's fine. We bought a house a few years later, his ex wife has bought a house outright. There's no animosity from our part (we don't see her so no idea from her) it's just one of those things in life. And no one is happy feeling ill (genuine or psychosomatic) and living in a house smelling of cat shit so sounds like she has other issues going on. Sign the house over, buy your family home and be happy.

OP, I hope you can get this worked out without breking the bank! It seems a bit crazy that he can't remove his name by passing it on to her with such little amount owing.

With endowment mortgages, you only pay the interest and then pay off the amount borrowed at the end of the term. The vehicle for repaying the capital is an endowment policy, where the monthly premiums are is invested (a bit like a pension plan) in the hope that it is enough to pay off the mortgage at the end.

Years ago, when the economy was buoyant, they were quite a good deal as the endowment was often worth a lot more than the mortgage at the end of the term, but these days it is often less, often by quite a margin.

So, at the moment the amount owing on this mortgage is still the original £31k. At the ex-wife's age and with low income (possibly soon to be no income), it's quite possible that the lender would not agree to put the mortgage in her sole name because, basically, she might not be good for the money.

If you can get the endowment details from the mortgage company and get an up-to-date statement, you may find the endowment will cover the mortgage. Then you'll at least know if she can afford to to release DH from the mortgage, and will be in a better position to decide how to proceed.

You never know, the endowment might even be worth more than £31k, and it might be in her interests to have it in her sole name so she gets to keep the excess.

As said above Llang's situation is slightly different because probably there there wqas a court sealed consent order with a "mesher" order all approved by the court which says the house is sold when youngest child is 18 or remarriage but the mothe is refusing to go or dragging feet - there it is a question of forcing what is clear. Here instead there was no court order over finances at the time so it is up in the air as to whether she gets 100% of their assets now or 10% or 50% or whatever and it's not just assets at date of split in England, it's assets now.

I don't think people are being fair above. Loads of people have no idea you need a financuial court order when you divorce ideally before decree absolute. That multi mulilionaire eco - ex hippy had to pay his ex wife loads 20 years after they divorced because he had not had one at the time. What we need is a lot more publicity over this - verbal or written separation agreements are not enough and even if you have no money now you might later so always get the finances approved by the court and ideally in my view get a clean break with no on going spousal maintenance so it is all over and done with (in my case that was better - my ex got over 50% as I earned more but at least he had no future claims).

I would be furious if I were you too - all you want is to buy a family home, using your husband's income so you can get a better house.

However, sadly, this is what happens when you marry somebody who is still financially enmeshed with someone else (I'm not wagging my finger at you, honestly!).

From her perspective, she's stuck too. She probably won't be able to get a mortgage in her own name, therefore it will be impossible for your DH's name to be taken off the mortgage. How much he would be legally entitled to is anybody's guess - mine would be 'not much'.

As the mortgage finishes in two years anyway, couldn't you just sit tight and buy a house then? Or am I missing something?

You can't get someone off a mortgage easily. The bank currently has two people to chase if things go south. Why should they lose the main earner? The bank want to protect their money.

The only easy way to get the DH off the mortgage is to re-mortgage, and good luck finding someone to sell a mortgage that small! You're heading into secured personal loan territory and needing a good income and good credit score.

I hope he goes for 50%.

It's interesting that for all your claims of financial independence and saving vs her sitting on her arse, you want this man's income to secure a mortgage just as much as she does.

In amongst the bitching about her, maybe stop and think that she probably hates this situation too.

You portray her cackling over having played a good game. Hardly. I think she's ignoring the situation because she's confused, scared, badly informed - and hasn't a clue what to do for the best. She's probably very frustrated - you have more in common that just your choice in men!

She may have ignored solicitor letters - but then your husband just gave up too, without ever really pushing it very far. Like - even finding out how much he owes The pair of them would drive me batshit!

All this talk of court though...
He needs to start with the basics - find out what they owe.
If the endowment is due to mature in 2 years time, and only has a £3K shortfall, that's great.

He needs to get all the financial information. Has he even googled or posted on MSE asking who were the main endowment providers in 1994 to see if one jogs his memory? Although other posters have given great search info.

He needs to speak to a solicitor to start the ball rolling to ensure that the endowment policy can only be used to pay off the mortgage.

With the caveat that I'm not a solicitor, I really can't see a judge ordering a sale when she resides there, when the endowment would end the mortgage in less than 2 years time.

In your position, I would look at buying a house with your own mortgage and then upsizing later. Of course, if it's your mortgage, make sure your have a deed of trust and it is very legally clear who owns what share of your house.

missmolly I'm interested in why you think 50% is fair when she has paid 80% of the mortgage and endowment?

If the ex wife has paid 80% of the interest etc and earns less it would seem fairer she would get more than 50%. However as they are married it does not matter who paid what and when in England. Plenty of men pay everything and wives still get 50%. My ex got over 50% because I earn a lot more.

Good advice from Ellis above.

Ah sorry, only the first page had updated for me.

Will read the rest of the post about mortgage.

Of course it matters who paid what and when!!!!!

Otherwise, nobody would use solicitors, and nobody would go to court.

It is precisely because in our legal system it does matter who paid what and when, that this wasn't finalised 14 years ago when they split up.

Email has gone to solicitor this morning requesting a meeting to get more information on how her illness/ lack of income would affect this situation and to find out if it is better to just wash our hands of the whole business. I've also sent my DH the link for the SAR.

Let me make it clear. This was never about the money we could get out of this woman. It's about getting his name OFF the mortgage so WE can buy a house together which was the agreement they made years before I appeared and despite our efforts to 1) ask nicely and 2) get legal support she has chosen to ignore a situation that would always have happened. Maybe im naive for expecting her to act as reasonably as my exH did as we both wanted to get on with our lives, but there you go. I don't think she's cackling and rubbing her hands together. I don't believe she understands that her procrastination has actually benefitted her situation at all even though it looks like it has. I'm grateful for the advice received and glad I gave some of you a giggle.

The more you post the more it sounds like a competition about who's the better woman.

Utter bollocks. Weird projection going on on this thread.

Elisandra I think you're being really unfair. Are you a divorced wife with an axe to grind? The OP's main wish is to get her dh's name off the mortgage so they can buy their own property. If his ex-wife was really so confused, scared (and all other fictitious emotions you are projecting onto her) rather than just being bloody minded, she would not be so unwilling to engage with negotiation or mediation, like, you know, a reasonable adult. It seems suspicious that her partner moves in once younger child goes to uni, rents out his place etc.

Unfortunately OP the law seems to be entirely in the wife's favour. She can bury her head in the sand as long as she likes and the OP's husband can't do anything about it. This seems really unfair. At the very least he should be able to force her to some kind of mediation, at which a plan is agreed for going forward, e.g. he is allowed to relinquish rights in the property in return for coming off the mortgage. If she refuses to do that, he should be able to force a sale. Just because you were married for a short time years ago, doesn't mean you should be responsible for someone financially forever. It's madness.

And I am not a divorcee before you ask or married to a a divorced man. It just seems unfair that someone can pull this shit.

I'm divorced, yes - but no axe to grind.
I paid 50% of the deposit and mortgage for my house.
When I left my XH (he cheated) I proposed that we value the house, he remortgage and buy me out of 50% of half the equity.
He earned more and have significant other assets that I took a personal and moral stance that I was not entitled to - which was opposite to the legal stance.

I recognised that him increasing his mortgage payments was going to be a strain, so whilst he had to take over the mortgage completely (so I could buy a house) I allowed him 12 years in which to repay my equity share - protected by both a legal charge and making it a part of the Consent Order.

So I'm an example of willingly taking less, and sorted things out quickly, decisively and legally.

No axes here.

I don't see what is "suspicious" about the timing of XW's boyfriend moving in. Another poster gave a very probably explanation - her daughter turned 19 and left education, therefore she would have lost tax credits that she previously would have lost if he moved in.

The OP has been quite derogatory about this woman. I already said - maybe she's a bitch, who knows. But in OP's shoes I'd be directing my frustration at my husband - and I certainly wouldn't have married him until it was done.

And living why do you say there's nothing the OP's husband can do about his XW burying her head in the sand?

There's plenty he can do. Knowing who his endowment is with, for a start

It is really unfair that she has refused to communicate. Having to wait 5 years for the divorce was a bit of a warning that he should have got the house sorted sooner rather than later. The XW's behaviour is bad - whether that's due to Machiavellian glee or severe MH issues or a thousand other things, who can say?

But the OP's husband has ALWAYS had something he could do (legally) and he never bothered to follow it through.

Which is why it's him that I'd be blaming for this situation, not only her.

Change solicitor. Find someone who is going to fight properly. It took me 4 to find a good one. And she's was probably the cheapest.

Elisandra I think you're being really unfair. Are you a divorced wife with an axe to grind?

After Ellisandra's very informed and eloquent posts on the subject, this ad hominem is as ridiculous as it is insulting.

The XW is indeed acting like an ostrich, but as Ellisandra has so splendidly said, she is no more of an ostrich than the husband - who doesn't seem to know the first thing about his financial situation and who hasn't taken the available legal avenues. As another poster said, the fact that it took five years to get the divorce was the sign than getting this financial mess sorted wasn't going to be easy either.

I still don't understand how his name has been on the mortgage all this time if they're divorced, not cohabiting and the XW has been paying it alone since they split? Or how, given that situation, anyone could be saying he's entitled to half? (I know OP isn't saying this.)

Like Ellisandra, I would really love to hear the XW's side of this and I don't think it's fair for her to be blamed as a scheming even genius when the husband is just as culpable.