If you needed to leave the country quickly...

[need2escape]

And as quietly as possible, where would you start?

Name change and shameless post here for traffic.

Not doing anything illegal such as child abduction. Just may need to leave the country as quickly as possible and return to my home country.

No family here to help, some friends but not sure how much they could assist.

Own house which is mortgaged, car on finance, small loan, credit cards, phone contracts, the usual.

And my job.

House full of possessions I wouldn't really need to take with me.

Where would you begin?

Maternity leave asap… start getting rid of what you can now from the house. Leave estate agents with the keys and instruct solicitor who can deal with everything on your behalf. Get your flight ASAP and get back home before you’re further along in your pregnancy.
Once home, you can instruct a house clearance company and keep up to date with the house sale while hopefully being less stressed as you will be home safe with family.

i wish you the very best of luck OP.

Rent a storage unit and put as much as you can in it. Sort it out at a later date. Instruct an agent to sell the property for you, they can deal with it all for you. Get on the plane as soon as you can.

My family aren't that well off and wouldn't have any meaningful sum of money to help me, but would obviously put a roof over my head, feed me etc when I'm home.

Stupid thing is I only brought this house last year. I put all the cash I had into it and just left a little aside. But that's all gone with boiler going and other bits that cropped up! I haven't been able to build any savings back up due to cost of living!

The car I think I paid £23k for and I put down 5k. It's PCP so I suppose it depends on how much it has depreciated.

This is all hard to get my head around as I'm not without money as such it's just not accessible to me right now.

Looking at a solicitor/power of attorney that would take payment on the house sale is an option.

Money is only money at the end of the day you have family in Aus who will not see you starve.

Your priority is getting to Oz whilst you can still fly and that is a daily decreasing option.

I remember how stressful it was moving last year as well. Would be easy to leave all the big stuff, furniture etc but it's clearing out all the little things.

Agree, priority is safety. Stuff is just stuff, end of day.
Actually, the Northern Ireland option not that ridiculous if Op has missed the flight window of opportunity.

In your shoes I would gather together the essentials, paperwork etc and leave asap.

I'd put the furniture I really wanted to keep into storage.

Ideally I'd get a friend to house sit and keep an eye on things while the bathroom is sorted, then I'd instruct a solicitor to arrange the house sale.

Good luck!

Hi OP, all the advice above is good.

You're worrying about not having cash, but can you get a low-interest credit card to tide you over with expenses until the house sells?

Or your overdraft even? Or a personal loan?

Also, there was this in the guardian recently about ending car loans which might apply if you are lucky: www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/09/uk-car-leasing-deal-contract-cost-of-living

IMHO you DO need to get on a plane soon, but it will also be much less stress once you've landed if you have managed to sort your bathroom, clear the house, and get it on the market and given keys to an estate agent before you go.

Or do you have a good friend who would step up in this crisis and help with those logistics while you're in the air? I'd do it for a friend if I was local to the house.

There's nothing on this list that's more critical that you getting home to have your baby safely away from the dickhead dad. Wish you all the best.

I agree with the pp's. Go on mat leave immediately and use the time to get tight-lipped trusted friends over to box up what you want to take with you.

See if you can borrow money from your family to get the floor sorted and house emptied asap.

I would sell the house through one agent from their database, no signboard up.

I think keeping any links here might be a bad idea as he could trash your rental to get back at you.

Clean break and quickly. Who knows when little one will arrive.

Good luck @need2escape you deserve a good life without fear and to raise your child surrounded by love and support.

You don’t need to do any of this. Find a good, friendly estate agent and let them handle it. Your priority must be getting out while you can still fly. You could get all this done and be on a plane at the end of this week. Call in sick at work, who cares? You’ll be gone soon.

I agree with this completely

Go as soon as you possibly can (even if it's next week) and worry about the rest later. You can do pretty much everything from anywhere in the world now

I honestly don't mean to alarm you but your baby could come early

Go while you can

But how does it help OP, at all? All of this is too avoid having the baby in the UK. Going somewhere else in the UK to have the baby is just making life difficult and not achieving the goal in any way.
Perhaps I'm missing something.

In your circs I think that i would hand the car back. I would instruct an estate agent and give them the keys. Instructions about when they can market the house. You can then arrange house clearance from abroad at the appropriate time. Communicate with anyone you can't pay short term that you will clear the debt from house proceeds.

I did this a few years ago at 2 weeks notice.

1. book maternity leave from next week.
2. leave an extra set of house keys with a friend/neighbour/work colleague.
3. book flight for asap checking if you need a fit to fly certificate .
4. set up a redirect for all mail with the post office for as long as you can, having it go to a mailbox or someone else you trust
5. pack as much as you can without it being suspicious, pack a bag including all medical information for maternity in Australia
6. While waiting for when you can go, do some research on storage for all your things. Storage and removals specialists are awesome and work fast - if someone has your keys - they will go in, pack, store within a few hours. They can do this when you are gone as someone else will have a key.
7. cancel contracts that you can cancel.
8. go. Go. Go

Well depending on where you’re going in Aus you could just dump all your winter coats hats scarves boots etc - keep the set you’re currently wearing and 1 non-maternity coat if you like.
Kitchen stuff is almost never worth shipping over in my opinion, unless you have items with great sentimental value.
Be ruthless - shipping is expensive. I wouldn’t bother shipping any cheap IKEA type of furniture.
I wouldn’t worry much about keeping fitted clothing like jeans and fitted non stretch dresses - most women take a while to fit back into our pre-pregnancy jeans and some of us never quite manage it because our hips and ribs widened or we put on 5kg and never lost it.

In your position I’d use a credit card to buy two things: 1. A one-way flight to Oz. 2: a moving company to come and pack up as much of my stuff as possible and ship it to Australia. Do not try to do the packing yourself.

Leave the car keys with a friend to await further instructions.

Get signed on to immediate maternity leave.

Fly home no more than 2 weeks from now, with a folder containing all relevant documents. (Make sure all also saved in the Cloud).

Everything else can be done remotely. Even if you did have to come back to the UK to sort anything out you could do that without the baby, and at a time that suits you. Yes, it might be a hassle and expensive but for now the only important thing is having the baby in Aus and every day you delay makes that slightly less likely.

Good luck!

You're amazing OP!! What you're doing is so brave. It will be hard but you are doing the right thing.

My two cents:

Go on mat leave now

Get a fit to fly note and plan to leave ASAP, you are running out of time and the airlines are very strict

Almost all your problems can be solved by throwing cash at it so I would prioritise selling the house. Will be hard to rent with a half-finished bathroom but you should be able to sell at a lowered price.

Box up smaller things for storage that you really can't bear to get rid of. I would ask a friend to hang onto them if you don't have the cash/time to put them in storage now. Don't be afraid to ask for help!

When the house is sold you can pay people to remove or ship anything else you want to keep.

A lot of expats end up in this situation, all the time, there are solutions to everything once you have some money to throw at it.

In my area you can let through the council with guaranteed rent and they take responsibility for any repairs needed for the property at the end of rental. Given the drastic shortage of housing this might be something to consider. They might be willing to sort the bathroom floor. Here they also ask for rentals for refugee families. Good luck.

I second/third all the suggestions to leave ASAP as you will still be needing a fit to fly letter and I wouldn't fancy a 24 trip across the world heavily pregnant. Make sure you have all essential documents with you including paperwork relating to your house purchase, ask for your medical records for your pregnancy, etc.

Assuming you are not British then if you had baby in UK you'd have to factor in the time for baby to get Australian passport, it's not quick!

You can cancel your phone contract but I suggest keeping your same phone number as PAYG, you likely will need the one time password by SMS for many things like online banking etc so keep your phone number active.

Regarding stuff, one option is putting all your stuff in storage for now if you can't face sorting through it, can leave the big furniture in the house if necessary and include some of it in house sale. Selling the house remotely won't be a problem as long as you have your estate agent sorted and get them on board about your situation. You could use the inhouse solicitor of the agent to keep things simple/save time (though they aren't necessarily the best choice!).

P.S. unrelated advice: I highly recommend wearing an N95/FFP2 mask during your flight to Australia, covid in late pregnancy has negative effects on baby's lung development and flights are prime places to catch illness.

Could you clear up your house enough to have renters for 6-12 months? Might be a bit of income that would come in handy. Then come back and sell it later on?

This might feel stressful now, but not as stressful as having a baby with an abuser and your support network is the other side of the world.

Op some of the house clearance people will come for free, just call around.
We did that when MIL died, they take everything.

So if you box up and forward the things that are precious - bearing in mind about storage at your family home too.

An estate agent can sell the house as it is, it does not need to be finished. Instruct an estate agent, drop the keys over to them and keep in contact via email for now. Instruct a local solicitor.

Don't tell or trust anyone. Tell HR your MAT needs to start now - you are too tired to continue.

You could be on a flight next week. Good luck and well done. You are making the right decision.

Shipped stuff takes weeks or months to arrive so if you’ve bought things for the baby then either they go in a suitcase with you or you return them/sell them/ditch them here. No point shipping over a pram that you’ll need from birth if it won’t arrive for 3 months.

Because we're just assuming Op can still fly, because we dont know how pregnant she is. Im hoping she's still good to go.
Im factoring in options so that if it is too late to fly, she doesn't feel trapped and can use a ferry to a safer place and European passports. Always good to have options on passports. Big picture.

Agree with what everyone is saying, I'd also have a po box in Aus for all paperwork so that there is no official address available if your ex decided to try and contact you.

Just go. Buy a ticket on your credit card and go. You can sort out the rest once you are there. Cancel your phone contract (tell them you are absolutely broke if they try to push you into anything. Say you are in the process of going bankrupt.) Buy a burner to let you connect with anyone you need to talk to in Australia or any friends where you are now, to let them know you are safe. Let him know you are unable to pay your part of the mortgage and want to sell. You might be wise to consolidate all debts into a single loan which has a delayed start point, if that is possible, so you start repayments a few months after the baby is born.