Divorce Settlement

[DinosaurCity]

I am seeking legal advice but I was wondering if anyone could offer some knowledge if you’ve been through a similar situation.

My wife and I separated last year. She was the bread winner and could work from home as she is S.E so we decided I would take paternity leave and spent 11 months at home with our daughter. Only earning SSPL.

So I earn approx £20/ph working 34 hours per week and she can earn a minimum of £60 all the way up to £200/ph working 4 days.

She wants us to take a 50/50 split in the divorce application. But I believe this would be an unfair split.

We are going to co-parent our daughter 50% of the time each.

Does anyone know if she will be expected to contribute in anyway give what she earns in comparison to me, or have a general idea if going for more in the divorce is realistic and if so, what did people if you had a similar situation were you awarded/ and or agree with your spouse.

Thank you in advance for your help and advice.

I think to be fair if it was a woman posting the answers would be different - it would be assumed that she had sacrificed her career to support the breadwinner.
OP i think thats the bit thats not clear- other than the 11 months parental leave did your career change- eg did your wife ask/need you to go down to parttime hours to fill the childcare gaps etc? (not sure how old your DD is)

When you see women post the same - partner self employed, woman in a lower paid role doing all the "life admin" (including lions share of house work and maintenance) to allow partner to grow successful business - it's always she's entitled to more than 50% as she has enabled partner to build the business by taking care of home and children and having a less stressful role (potentially part time) that gave her flexibility to do so.

I'm struggling with why it's not the same for OP and why he is seen as grabby.

OP, have a look for other threads posted by women to see what advice is given where there is a significant gap in earning potential (alternatively repost but change details so you're the wife).

My understanding is the starting point is 50/50, earning potential is considered and one party may come away with more than 50% given their reduced eg pension etc due to taking a lower paid role to support the high earner. All cases are individual and outcomes can't be predicted.

The 50/50 split of assets would include pensions so the lower earning spouse would benefit from the higher earnings of the other person. If your ex has a large pension you could potentially offer for her to keep more of that in exchange for more of the equity. A 50/50 split is of the overall asset pool and doesn't mean each individual asset has to be split 50/50. Your pension would be included in the marital assets to.

Just checking that when you said 50:50 split that you ask for your house deposit of £50k back before the split is done?

34 hours doesn't sound like full time but actually 35 hours can be 9-5 with an hour for lunch.

This is what I work. I leave the house at 8 and am back at 6. Ten hours a day out of the house does feel like full time.

If op had come on here saying he was a sahd and had been fur 19 years to support his wife to get to where she is the answers would be different

hiweber that’s not the case
he he took 11 mths paternity ( same as most women) and simply earns less.

so there is no argument of income disparity being due to tears of sacrificing earnings while raising joint children etc . They’re just 2adults who earn different . And I do always say the same the other way round!

as stated he may find he gets slightly higher share of equity but they’ll need to assess all assets inc pensions on both sides, and op unlikely to get spousal unless op ex earns hundreds of k a year

I knew the "double standards" would come up. The OP took less than a year pat leave. If they're going 50/50 there's no reason he can't up his earnings or train to do so. It might be helpful if the ex was to agree to shoulder some additional costs, eg childcare but they're under no obligation to and nothing would be different if the sexes were reversed. Women posting on here have often been out of the workforce for a decade or more to facilitate the "big job".

What - in the totally different situation where she has for many years sacrificed her career for his? Well, sure.

But that hasn't happened in this case.

The op took 11 months off paternity, that's it. It would be discriminatory if the company compromised his career from that.

No, the ops career choice has been his career choice, and not impacted at all by anything the wife has done. That is the difference, not the sex difference.

OP i think your best bet is to speak to a solicitor about all this. I would pay to see a decent one who you would want to instruct if needed. It was the best £300 i spent when divorcing.

Your salary disparities will be taken into account, but you will also be expected to maximise your earnings too.

I would want it flagged about the initial deposit you put into the house and see if this can be ring fenced during the proceedings due to your ex earning enough to house herself without it (if that's the case?)

What is your wifes usual annual salary? If over 150k you need to go to court to sort child maintenance payments.

Also see if you can leave a £1 annual sposal maintenance payment open, so if she hides SE earnings and then magically has loads of money again in a years time, you can go back to court to claim.

Ignore all the vitriol on here and see a qualified family law solicitor asap.

The court will look at both your needs and try and do as much as possible to meet them given you now need to finance two households.

If your wife is on £160k, I do think she may need to pay some child support or maybe even some spousal (for a while) even if you have the children 50/50. They would far rather use assets and make a clean split, but sounds like you don’t really have any.

Ultimately, most divorces are a negotiation. Actually going through the whole court process is mind bogglingly expensive (10s of thousands and sometimes more), so only really worth it for extremely high value divorces.

You need to go through the process step by step, advised by your solicitor.

There was a thread the other day started by an alleged solicitor that was upset about the amount of misleading advice regarding divorce. IANAL but have been through a long acrimonious divorce and have had my eyes opened to the realities along the way and so I feel I can more easily spot those posting who are probably more likely to have been through the process or deal with the process in some way as a job and could understand where the frustration with people posting comes from.

Sadly divorce expectations vary vastly between the people in the divorce and are not helped imo by solicitors sitting on the fence with their clients...or maybe being too subtle, because let's face it they are a business. Truth of the matter is as you can tell from the variety on the thread, no one knows what you will come out with, not even the solicitor/barrister...it is a game of chicken, you put your expectations, the other side put their expectations and then wait for one side to acquiesce on something...meanwhile the solicitor is still charging.
If you cant agree, you take it before a judge (or 3), each judge will have their own interpretation and they can vary hugely so even if someone had the same identical case to you, you can't assume that is what you will end up with because it probably won't be the same judge who is in the same frame of mind on the same day and listening to the same arguments from the same barristers/solicitors. That is the truth.
I can give you sympathy however for being part of a not very exclusive and rather shit club ☹️

The thing is % are in many ways irrelevant

most divorces come down to needs. If there are lots of assets needs might be met with 50:50, if not that’s when people may get 55/60/65% etc. that may apply here-we don’t know. People saying oh you’ll get more simply don’t know because we don’t know what assets there are or what professions and earnings potential there are.

however, op was also arguing for opinions in spousal ( highly unlikely) and he dies t really have strong case to argue years of sacrifices impacting ability to earn. That the point. He earns less through his own career choices but now exists his ex to fund that choice.

he might, through the process be in a position to get slightly higher equity share but we simply don’t know

The likelihood is 50/50 split of house, savings, any premium bonds, ISA's etc and pension sharing so if your stbxw has a better pension than you you'll get have of joint pensions. Then if you have 50/50 parenting of your DC it will be up to each of you individually to support your DC yourself. Once you divorce you are no longer your wife's worry or business. It won't make any difference to your DD who will live with both of you. Unless you are disabled your wife won't be ordered to pay spousal maintenance to you. The judge will expect you to fully support yourself as a grown up. It is very rare for SM and usually if it was awarded your wife would have to be earning close to £500k a year.

The application of the S.25 factors is discretionary. The lawyer's job is essentially to second guess how they might be applied if it were to go before a judge, with reference to their professional experience and reported case law.

There is no simple formula. I always say that if you put the same facts to 20 different judges you'd get 20 different (albeit similar) outcomes.
There shouldn't be, but there are vast regional differences. In South Wales where I practice the norm in your situation is for the lesser earning spouse to get 60% of the equity. A judge I was before recently called it a "rule of thumb". Also in my region spousal maintenance is almost unheard of. However my colleagues in London, where I used to practice, tell me that it is very different up there.

The lesser earning spouse is usually a wife but the law should not discriminate so the discretion to give you more should apply equally to you as a lesser earning husband. However, you can expect the possibility of an unconscious bias since you are the man.

Please ignore the posters who suggest a lesser earning spouse might get to stay in the house. Or that you might get >50% of the pension. In over 25 years of practise I have never seen either. "Mesher" orders, where one spouse's interest in the property is delayed until the children are grown up, are rare and fraught with difficulties and are very very unlikely where the other spouse would be left with zero capital for a number of years.

The whole picture needs to be known for anyone to give you any proper advice. Eg the pensions, savings etc. there may be some negotiation around a valuable pension to give you more free capital in the shorter term. Please go and see a lawyer (and don't expect one hour free advice, that's both a myth and frankly cheeky. You are seeking and receiving valuable advice, we owe anyone who consults us a duty of care and are liable to you for our advice.