To think divorces shouldn’t be 50/50

[Custardforbreakfast]

It has come to my attention that most of the threads here about divorce/separation always point out that divorces are 50/50 (for starters).

I come from a country where one can choose at the registry if you want shared or split assets. I’ve always thought split is the way to go as honestly whatever you make in your life should be yours and not to share (even in a marriage)

My grandparents were married with shared assets and it’s absolutely broken my family now that the they’ve both passed away. My parents on the other hand married with separate assets and divorced a few years ago, it was the least complicated separation I have seen as there was no fighting over things. It makes my cringe when people on here say you should take everything from your husband or make sure to take your half or even more if you can

AIBU to think that not everything needs to be shared? Even in marriage.

I couldn’t disagree more strongly. On marriage the words were about us becoming as one. Our lives became enmeshed and entwined. Decisions were no longer made in isolation for individual benefit.

Being a SAHP is a joint decision made in the best interests of the family. It’s not a cop out or say ride if done properly. Far from it, it’s often easier to pop your children into daycare of some sort than deal with the daily grind.

Children are a joint responsibility and their needs must come first. Most consideration should be to securing their future. Top slicing family assets and income into a trust held for the raising of children would be the ideal - a government secured fund that took income alongside tax to ensure payment was made. Big spends should be agreed over a certain amount.

Once children are secure then assists should be split jointly as it was a shared marriage. The women (usually) has enabled the family to earn more by supporting the man into higher paid employment. Men usually fare better out of divorces than women currently and that’s not fair.

Securing assets for children of a current marriage and making that money untouchable might help stop men reproducing all over the place with little thought of consequences. A pre-allocated income for existing children until they were past university- so 21/22 might make them less attractive as fathers to other women who might think twice if their existing children took precedence in all things financial.

OP I do kind of agree, but each family is very different. I know 3 SAHPs - 2 decided themselves they were not working again and their spouses are not happy about that decision. I don't think in these cases the SAHP should get 50% - in 1 case they live separately in the same household as the DH doesn't want to lose their assets through divorce. In the 3rd case the DH has paid into his DWs pension and pays into her savings so she has financial security - this seems fair so if they ever divorced I would hope it would be more clearer that they both have financial security and it would be an even split.

I won't marry even though DP would like to, as a SP with my own assets, I don't want to risk anyone but my DD getting her inheritance (I made a lot of sacrifices in time with her when she was younger to build these assets). If we could get married and 100% walk away with what I put in I would get married but until that can be guaranteed I wouldnt take the risk.

Some ridiculously naive comments on here, particularly that no one is ever "forced" to give up their career or stop climbing the ladder. I had a job that involve working 12 hour days in order to get promoted as did DH. in fact we had the same job. It also involved moving to different parts of the country to get promoted. We couldn't both work those hours or live in different parts of the country without it effecting our children so one of us (i.e. me) made the sacrifice. I'm not happy that it was me in retrospect and I would be seriously pissed off at the idea that a split shouldn't be at least 50:50.
I don't know what childcare provision s like where you live OP but it is often not bloody great in this country. Nurseries are usually only open from 8 to 6, nannys are very expensive and not everyone has a grandmother living nearby to help as your parents did.

@ginnylamb no. I'm not keen to see anyone penalised but I'm very much in favour of valuing each parent's contribution to a marriage appropriately. Sometimes that will mean the WOHP taking more (see example of feckless father who shafted poster above) and sometimes that will mean SAHM taking more, e.g. carer of a disabled child.

I'm amazed you find that a contraversial opinion.

I'm a bit torn on this. I do think divorce settlements should recognise non-financial contributions to family life, and if one partner has taken a hit to their career in order to look after children, then this should be taken into consideration. However, reducing hours or SAHPing is often a personal preference rather than a necessity, so I think it needs to be looked at on a case by case basis.

From what I read on here, it seems that in the majority of cases, the parent who stays at home is generally the one with lower earning potential. Sometimes, people sau that they SAH because their salary would be less than the cost of childcare. I don't personally see why this should entitle them to half of what their partner has earned.

In a small number of cases, I am willing to accept that the lower-earning partner may have somehow facilitated their partner's high earning potential. If that is genuinely the case, then this should be recognised. However, I don't think this happens nearly as often as people claim. There are very few jobs that can't be done with a WOH spouse.

DexyMidnight IT wasn't clear to me that your position was that sometimes the sahp should get more. I read your posts as critical of people not maximising their earnings and arguing that caring for children unpaid is a rather self indulgent thing for which parents should accept the consequence is being a second class human entitled to a lower standard of living than an uninterrupted wage earner should they divorce.

I apologise for misunderstanding you.

Things aren't 50/50 though physically are they? I brought a house into my marriage. He had nothing, but we earned similar amounts.

I had 3 children and breastfed them. This was something we both agreed on as we thought it was the best option for them.

But it was me who had 3 pregnancies, me who got up to do all the night feeds, because breasts. Me who had 3 maternity leaves, impacting on my pension and income. Our children were quite close together so at some points I was pregnant while still getting up in the night to breastfeed.

In total I spent almost all my thirties either breast feeding or pregnant or both. I clung on to my job, but inevitably I had less energy to put into it and when redundancies were made I lost it anyway.

Meanwhile he continued to work without interruption and your 30s are quite a lucrative time career wise. He started to travel a lot with work, so my options for working were even more limited. I was looking for a new job with 3 children under 6 and it was very difficult to find anything with sufficient flexibility given I now had no other parent at home every night. So I ended up not being able to to work for a while.

He is now divorcing me because he has a new woman who he met on his business trips. He now earns 3 times what I do and has the children eow.

Hell yes I want more than 50% of the assets!

He is now divorcing me because he has a new woman who he met on his business trips. He now earns 3 times what I do and has the children eow.*

Hell yes I want more than 50% of the assets!

Quite right too.

I am from a country where we have a similar organisation revthe split of assets.

I would say that you have a family problem not a split problem.
If the siblings were able to talk to each other and come to a compromised, they would have much less problem. And if assets had been split between your grand parents, they would still be fighting over what to do with said assets. It would only have been spread in time rather than eliminate the problem.

Re divorce, splitting assets like this can be a good and a bad thing. When my uncle decided to be married like this, it was a good thing because when his company hit problems, assets (aka their family house) were in the name of his wife and therefore couldn’t be touched to pay for debts. He then went in to get divorced and lost absolutely everything because it was all in his wife’s name.....
Then you have the issue of SAHP, partners getting ill or disabled (me) or a simple big discrepancy in income (my own grand parents).
So when my grand father died, he had split assets with his wife. She never worked (officially!) but supported him in running his business (so was basically working for free) On paper she had nothing.... Would it have been fair to kick her out of their house at 95yo when he died??

Imo for a split asset to work, you need to either have very similar wage (very hard to achieve in a world where women are earning less than men and are still seen as the ones who deal with the family and house) or you need a system that will, in some ways, protect the most vulnerable person in the couple. Aka transfer some money to them so they are still left with something at the end. Imo this leaves the most vulnerable partner (usually the woman who will take a step back at work/stop work to look afetr the dcs etc...) in the shit.

What I would be much more open to is to remove all inheritance from the split of assets in case of divorce because this is money that has been handed down NOT wealth than has been created by the couple iyswim.

How absurd.

Every time my husband takes a promotion I joke that I want a mid-nup agreement. With every baby my career slows and his advances, and his pension and salary go up. He brings in a lot more money than if I invested equally in my career so we prioritise his career. He's a bit older so was further ahead when we had kids, but mostly he doesn't have boobs. He also doesn't seem so fussed if the toddler does a 40+
hour week in day care. So if I wanted to work, he would support me but not change his behaviour.

If he were to leave me and take half, it would be brutally unfair as we are making these compromises together. I mention this to him all the time because it terrifies me. He is offended I'd even worry about it, but it idiots like OP remind me it isn't crazy to worry.

Completely disagree. In many cases this is literally the only way in which women have some financial protection. Imagine your husband earns the money but emotionally, financially and physically abuses you. As the law stands, she currently has the only means of escape from that kind of marriage or she would never be able to afford to leave him.

Another scenario, closer to my own: when I met dh he earned more than me and had a property whereas I was at the start of my career and had no savings. It was the money he made from the sale of his house that enabled us to buy a home together. 17 years later, my salary is twice his. We couldn't afford the mortgage and standard of life we currently enjoy if I didn't earn what I do. So how do you calculate who has put in the most over the years? Finances are not static, life is not static, our contributions often wax and wain over time and it's incredibly convoluted.

Another scenario: a (usually) woman gives up paid employment to raise a family, save the childcare costs. How do you calculate her contribution, since there is no formal salary attached but her staying home enables her husband's career and her family's standard of living?

Your approach is fraught with danger for women and would set us back many decades. Yabu.

I think the reproductive burden and childcare burden has to be factored in. Its not a personal choice. My husband couldnt get pregnant, give birth or breastfeed. There wasnt even joint parental leave when we had our children. it was absolutely a joint decision that the most effective way to care for our children was for me to work part time and this absolutely allowed him to accept a promotion as he didnt have to worry about certain childcare issues like living in the same country as his children! My part time working has made our family unit better off by a considerable sum of money in terms of childcare saved and increasing opportunities for DH. The only other system that would work would it being socially normal for women to charge their husbands 50% of procreation 'costs' and then 50% of childcare services to be charged out by whichever partner does that.

The OPs simplistic view also doesn’t account for the fact that most people don’t enter a marriage with the expectation it will end. If they did, they might behave differently.

If like a pp I expected my DH to have an affair I wouldn’t have had his child and if I did I wouldn’t have the same view of work and would expect him to drop his hours and take on some childcare so I could work too and keep my career moving at the same pace as his. If he drops dead I have a good life insurance policy but that doesn’t protect me against affairs or abuse. That wouldn’t have been a choice.

The thing is, Missillusioned, I also gave birth and breastfed for nearly 3 years. Did virtually all of the night wakings in that period. I worked a split shift when dd was a toddler so that I could be with her in the afternoons, and then I went back to work until 10 or 11pm every night while he was at home with her. It just so happens that I also earn about five times his salary.

If we were to split, I don't see why everything should be split half and half. He has not enabled me to earn more money any more than I have held him back.

Tbh I think the idea that everything should be shared 50/50 is going to change.
There are more and more cases where women are actually the highest earner and said women are quite pissed off at having to give 50% of the assets to a man child who did nothing (or very little) to support the family (I’m thinking financially, practically, eg HW, or emotionally).

But overall, I think the idea of 50/50 is a good one when partners are in an equal footing. Not so much when the society is still as patriarcal as it is now.

Custard you seemed to have led a very simple life.
Nothing has happened to have it even cross you mind why things might not go according to plan.

What would have happened if your grandmother hadn’t been around to look after you.

You do know in a lot of cases this doesn’t happen either because the gps are dead or nc or just live too far away.

What happens if you earn so much less than your spouse that if you put your child into childcare then your half would be more than you earned.

Are you saying only rich university educated mothers can have children and poorer mothers should not have children because they can’t afford to.

What happens if you become disabled does that mean that because you can’t earn your dh will sit there with a dinner and you haven’t the money to feed yourself?

What would happen if it was your spouse that made you disabled.

What happens if the dv means you are psychologically broken and can’t work.

I think op you have led a very sheltered life and are still quite young. Life isn’t that simple.

Your gps marriage as a 50/50 split should have been very simple. Gm wanted to leave your dm her 50% then all that needed to happen was everything gets valued and divided by 2 then cash and or property to that value was signed over to your dm.

Only problem is you have infighting over who gets what. Either your gms will wasn’t clear and now you have sibling fighting over their share. Nothing to do with 50/50 split.

From what I read on here, it seems that in the majority of cases, the parent who stays at home is generally the one with lower earning potential. Sometimes, people sau that they SAH because their salary would be less than the cost of childcare. I don't personally see why this should entitle them to half of what their partner has earned.

I think you are probably getting the wrong impression then. On average in this country women should have the same earning potential as they aren't less qualified than men on average pre children. If anything they do better academically on average so how can it be that they have lower earning potential? In cases where the women earn less pre children it is often just because they are younger but that doesn't mean that they didn't have as much potential to be a high earner as their DH.

Xpost Alexa
Women like you will be annoyed just like men are annoyed nowadays at giving up what they see as their hard earn money.

The problem is we can’t, at the same time, say that women contribute to family life in other ways than a wage, that marriage is about supporting each other (and not always in ways that are visible and quantifiable - HW would be a quantifiable way to support the family but emotional support wouldn’t. Or being your best advocate/cheerleader etc...). And at the same time say that when tables are turned, men don’t bring anything to the table and they can’t have a 50/50 split.

Atm, because there are still many many more women who will be at huge disadvantage and at risk of financial abuse (see what happens when women only have child benefit to buy food and clothes etc..l for the dcs and their DH carries in buying luxuries for themselves for example), I think the current system is still better.

50/50 is just the starting point. This is just so both can start afresh in an equal footing and will be increased in the favour of the most disadvantaged party if the other has the possibility of being better off more quickly.

A split of 50/50 or everyone takes what they made is only fair when no party of that marriage has made sacrifices for the other that affect their earning power like having children who limit career opportunities or taking time off work to raise them so other one can focus in their career.

If your parents had no problem separating the assets was because both of them had what they needed and didn’t need to fight for a house or resources to raise the children.

From what I read on here, it seems that in the majority of cases, the parent who stays at home is generally the one with lower earning potential. Sometimes, people sau that they SAH because their salary would be less than the cost of childcare. I don't personally see why this should entitle them to half of what their partner has earned.

Not always the case.
When I stopped working after dc2 birth, H and I had exactly the same wage... But H had (very conveniently...) started to travel for work when dc1 was born. My job also had a travel element that I couldn’t change. As clearly we couldn’t both travel at the same time, one of us had to step down. Add to that the fact that we didn’t have more disposable income with one wage than two less nursery cost, it made sense that someone would stop working. And of course it was me.... as the woman....
And then I got ill and was unable to work full time (still am).
I got married under the idea that we would be supporting each other in health and sickness. Does it not apply when we get divorced too then?

Hey OP, I used to be of the same opinion as you before I had children. Also from an underdeveloped country outside Europe and have a good career.
After I had my second child (one year gap between them, and I returned to work after three months after the first one), exh changed his mind and said there's no way he will be paying 50% of childcare, "other women manage somehow" and so should I. Maybe there's a kind neighbour who would babysit for free 7am to 7pm, well he does not want to know those boring minor details really, but he's not sponsoring my lifestyle. At this point the childcare bill for two under two was around £3K / month, and there were absolutely no legal means to make him contribute. He left within 2 months, of course, there was an OW.
There are very few careers that pay enough for a £3K childcare bill to be affordable for a single parent.

Custard,

From your comments I am going to make a guess that you are from a country/ culture where the males have a lot of money invested in their education, it was very usual to have your Granny live with you (probably your paternal GM) and your "nanny" wasn't actually a nanny in the UK sense (educated, trained, paid well). I bet your nanny was someone who worked 16 hours a day and did all the chores around the house and looked after you to whilst your granny did some nice stuff with you and your "nanny"got paid about 200 quid (if she was very lucky) a month with a day off a week.

Under these circumstances it is very easy to hold down a full time job as a mother because you do NOTHING except nice stuff with your DC at the weekend. You don't even get to wash a dish.

You come across as if you have had a privileged upbringing and know nothing about the real world.

You sound v young. Either that or a bitter man who had to 'give away' his assets... Or, even more worrying, you are a full grown woman, married with children who has consumed mysogynistic nonsense. Look at statistics. The number of women in high earning roles, versus men. The number of women who give up careers (whatever their reasons, that you simply cannot understand) versus men. On and on. So your idea would benefit whom in the event if divorce? Again looking at populations rather than the one or two women (including apparently you...) who wouldnt be burdened by this? It would benefit, in general, the men who have been enabled (to a large degree) to collect these assets, by the unpaid and underappreciated domestic work of women.

@AlexaShutUp you were able to do that option. Who was looking after your children while you worked shifts? I had no affordable out of hours childcare, or a job which gave the option of anything other than 9-5 working.

In any case I think what isn't factored in is physical toll. How many women have health problems resulting from childbearing? Quite a lot. Birth injuries and PND are common. Also lack of time for self care and repeated pregnancies can result in things like weight gain with associated health problems and anemia.

To work full time and advance your career while bringing up children requires in most cases robust physical and mental health. Yes, many women remain healthy, but you don't know beforehand whether you will be lucky in this respect or not.

my husband has dividends not payslips - would these be around for the last 30 years? I've inherited money and he hasnt. I had equity in my property his was a lot less. so this would all be quite complex to work out fairly taking into account that some amounts were a long time ago and therefore worth more in todays money.

More to the point, we both wanted children and it would have been impossible for us to look after them properly and have two people working 50 hours a week in jobs away from home. So I work PT in a less demanding role. WE BOTH AGREED THAT. so why shouldnt it be taken into account in a divorce?