To think friends STBEXH is delusional??

[Paddymcpaddy]

Friend and her DH of 20 odd years are separating - they have 2 school aged kids.

When they met they earned similar amounts but friend went PT when kids were born, earned less for 10 years but now works FT. The DH did little childcare, has a great career earns 3/4x more than she does.

The DH wants to sell the family home and spilt the equity - about £400k each- and then pay some maintenance towards the kids. But they’ll be 50/50 custody he reckons so not much.
HOWEVER his pension pot is close to £1m, friends is £300k as she earned less, went on maternity etc.

He says - we’ll be leaving the pensions out of any financial settlement. The kids will get his if he dies. She’s now worried how she’ll get a new house and mortgage on her salary even with that £400k deposit as they live in London.

I have told her she is MAD if she agrees his pensions doesn’t come into it! They’ve split all the bills 50/50 all these years, which left her without much extra and he put loads of his spare cash into pension and savings.

Should it not be assets + pension + savings added together then divided by 2??? Everything they have was earned when they were together .

Tell her not to be a mug. She’s put her life and career on hold to raise their kids. She needs to get what she’s entitled to!

She needs a solicitor, but yes on the face of it you’re right- she’s entitled to a proportion of his pension savings

It’s not even the ‘entitled’ to - from a practical POV she needs to be able to house the kids, and on her salary is unlikely to be able to even get a 3 bed flat where they are or even in the city.

I did some sums and said if she kept the house, and took over mortgage and he kept everything else it would be about equal. In fact he does have other savings and shares and stuff so he’d be still getting 60/40 prob of their assets.

A friend of mine did this. Split the house 50/50 and not included the pension. Madness.

her friend group all had this ‘view’ that a man’s pension shouldn’t be touched and she was worried they would freeze her out so she just agreed to it.

She says he’s going to be so pissed if as he considers his pension to be his, she’s worried that it’ll ruin their future relationship

Your friend should go for everything she's entitled to.
Re her housing situation, she's not going to struggle with a £400k deposit in her pocket, even in London, unless she's got her eye on properties bigger/nicer than are strictly necessary. This isn't a time for fantasising about big houses and nice lifestyles, it's a time for finding somewhere of her own. She also doesn't have to live in London, she could go out towards Hertfordshire/Watford way. Cut your coat, etc etc.

Her budget would be £600k and yes, cut your clothe blah blah but there’s also the issue of not upending the kids lives by changing schools, and she has a very strong support network where they live but no family. Her job is also dependent on being commutable to the office 3 days a week.
And there no way the DH is going to let her take the kids too far. No way.

I thought including pensions for both parents as well as other assets was now pretty standard in divorce in England? No?
Mediators are the first step so hopefully they can avoid involving solicitors… in my experience the only people who benefit when lawyers are involved are the lawyers.

My FIL and MIL split recently. She got the house in its entirety and he kept his pension in its entirety.

Get the pension report and refuse a settlement unless this has been provided. No way should your friend accept this deal… The no fault divorce process seeks to split assets 50/50 - what he is outlining isn’t an equitable split.

Agree with everyone - she needs to see a solicitor ASAP and absolutely fight for a bigger proportion of the house. When she was working part time, was she still contributing 50/50, even while doing 90% of hte household and childcare? She's absolutely CRAZY to even consider walking away without a bigger slice of the house or a chunk of his pension and she will be disadvantaging her DC too. it's all very well saying they'll get the money when he dies, but they need it now - so that they are not living in two completely different levels of accomodation whiel splitting between their parents and so that they are not consatnly seeing thei rmum disadvantaged.

God I hate men sometimes.

That’s an expensive friendship group she’s paid for! Why did they even know the details of her divorce settlement?!

She just needs to say 'I don't want to agree to anything until I've had legal advice because I really don't know whether what you are suggesting is fair or not and I don't want to say one thing and go back on it if the solicitor tells me I've done the wrong thing'

Then get a VERY good solicitor and let them deal with it. She needs to engage after that only to say 'I'm just letting my solicitor deal with everything'

She’d very much like to stay in their current home and take over what’s left in the mortgage but doesn’t have a £400k to give him to buy him out. She has little savings as it was more tax efficient to have the DH as the high earner put as much into his pension as possible… so she tries to contribute more to day to day expenses with her wages.
Her DH still contributes more though, as he earns so much more.

Trust me - the only advice I am giving is - get some advice! I was just telling her to NOT agree such a mad thing with him.

He doesn’t appear to be worrying about damaging their future relationship.

Yes, he’s very hands on but work comes first and he travelled a LOT when the kids were younger so she was very much working 4 days a week, doing most of the childcare, household stuff too and running around like a mad thing juggling it all.

Pension is definitely included (and savings) and 50/50 is the starting point but not a foregone conclusion. With that length of marriage and their respective financial situations she may be entitled to a larger share of the assets to reflect the fact that her ability to house the children going forward will be less than his. She needs a good lawyer to give her a reasonable assessment of what she might get if it went to court but first she needs full disclosure of all the assets.

Depending on her age it may also make sense for her to take more of the equity offset against the difference in pension pots - this is what I did as I have a good pension but will struggle to buy a new house.

Oh yeah, age is deffo worrying her, re mortgage as they’re both mid 50s now.

She shouldn't worry about "not being friends" with her ex; she's divorcing him!

He's currently trying to swindle her out of half a million pounds by not sharing the pension pot he built up whilst she cared for his kids 🙄

If he's going to be underhanded then she definitely needs a shit hot lawyer in her corner to fight for her.

The 50/50 should be of ALL assets, including pensions and savings, anything less and he's robbing her and what kind of "friend" is that??

She'll most likely be entitled to half his pension, and he to half hers - but his will be more. She needs a good divorce lawyer because he's not being fair.

If her soon to be ex-DH has 1 million in pension funds, it will be worth paying a good solictor to get the right result. Usually the pension would be left alone in return for his equity in the house, so no 400k for him. But they have to calculate all the joint assets to assess this.