Or do we need new divorce laws

[Justforthisparticularrant]

So I’ve been married for 16 years. Good stable career, pension for 30 years. DH has been self employed. He’s started around five different ventures, always promising he’d need to put work in up front for no or little financial gain. He does so much then it’s onto the new project. He’s not lazy but ineffective in what he does. The promises of his various ventures making money never materialised. He won’t take advice or direction. He’s now doing ok but only in the last five months or so.

My stable income paid the mortgage for a decade and other big costs for our entire marriage. It allowed him the freedom to try out these projects, fail, yet still live a secure comfortable life and raise DC.

Meanwhile, I have battled for the full 16 years for him to take on the domestic load in an equitable way. He’s always done childcare equally and cooking/washing up and laundry has been fairly equal. But everything else has been 90%me for the bulk of our marriage. It’s only the last couple of years it’s been equitable but I’ve had to really campaign and educate him to get there.

But generally speaking, with a bit of nuance, I have been both main breadwinner and main housekeeper with him ‘helping’ around the house rather than taking any initiative and in reality he made it harder for most of those years - creating mess and chaos, ruining things by not looking after them, avoiding planning, sand bagging my attempts to do my best to sort things out and organise them.

It’s improved - but me fighting for fairness in domestic tasks has caused arguments and he’s not happy about it. He martyrs himself a lot - ‘all this work I do…’ etc. He was only working two/three days about four years ago so I pushed him to do more domestic stuff The first couple of weeks of him doing a properly equitable split had him moaning about how exhausted he was, yet six or so years previously when I said the same he minimised it and mocked me given I was only ‘working’ part time at the time. I was actually working 24/7 just lots of it the unseen work of home making etc.

He gets disproportionately angry, verbally abusive and he’s impossible to work with. I’m divorcing him. I’ve had enough and in the last couple of years his behaviour towards the DC has worsened.

I got legal advice and he’s entitled to half my pension. Literally - it will be valued and then half will come out of my pension and a new pension created for him with that in it. ALL of it. Even the 10 years worth from before we met. So despite him not contributing equitably to home making and family raising for the bulk of our time and not being the main breadwinner, he gets half of my entire pension.

I get that this is to protect (largely female) homemakers who work hard at home to support the main breadwinner. But now it’s often women who are the main breadwinners AND the main homemaker.

It just feels so unfair. I’m gutted and feel like this is just another way women get screwed over by the patriarchy.

I've been divorced for a year and we didn't do the full financial disclosure. This was against my solicitor's advice despite the fact that i earn more, she said my exh could be hiding a lottery win etc. I knew he wasn't. My exh didn't bother getting a solicitor, or any legal advice so he didn't know any different. It was all above board, my solicitor advised him to get his own advice but he didn't.

We still declared our incomes and pensions for the financial order. As it happened I had 24k in my pension and my ex had 5k in his so that just confirmed it wouldn't have been in my best interests.

If your husband is as ineffectual as mine was that might be a possibility for you.

It’s totally fair that you get half of his pension. There is a very clear split in home making and breadwinning and you were a team. Although sounds like you were doing way more!

I think people are right. It’s the inequity in my marriage I’m mad about. Not the law. And I’m mad that as women we are STILL often doing the bulk of the domestic stuff AND working quite often.

My younger colleagues at work are always talking about it - they all work full time in good jobs. They also all organise the kids activities, lunches, are the ones to take time off if the kids are ill or need to go to an appointment, they talk about how they clean on Sat morning and their husband has messed it up by Sat afternoon etc etc. I feel like shaking them.

But they can’t see it. I didn’t see it. I thought that because he did his fair share of child care, washing and cooking/washing up I’d got it sorted. Then I got really burnt out and realised I was holding the entire domestic mental load, doing all of the cleaning and never getting time off.

How would they know who'd done the childcare and housework?

Well more fool you for putting up with this useless man for 16years. You allowed this. I mean you can't really blame anyone for you not getting up and walking away? He proved to you over and over and over again how useless he was but you stayed put.

I know this is not going to be easy to accept but try and reframe it?

stop looking at what you will lose through divorce (money in pension)

and start focusing on what you will gain - freedom from being with an awful man. A new beginning.

looking forward is where your happiness lies - not looking back and being angry about something which you cannot change now.

life is so unfair for so many people - but we have to make a choice how to respond to these things.

(1) be angry and bitter and resentful about things that leads to more misery

(2) find the positive side of things and look forwards to enjoy what we do still have - rather than focus on our losses.

I have not been through divorce but have had to deal with some massive traumas and illnesses and life threatening and life changing events. All of them could have (and at one point almost did destroy me) until I learnt to start looking forward - taking things one step at a time, accepting that ‘yes this is really rubbish / unjust / unfair / painful / cruel’ but I can’t change it - But I can change my response to it.

I have lost a lot - but I’ve regained so much happiness by living this way - celebrating the tiny ‘wins’ and ‘joys’ of life rather than focusing on the awful things that have happened that I can do absolutely nothing about.

I wish you well for the future.

Nope, i get it - what needs to catch up is women realising that they've moved on, and are doing all this, but men aren't keeping up. We need to stop believing the fairytale and cut them loose much more quickly when they're taking advantage.

Citizenship classes need to include what you are letting yourself in for in the case of relationship breakdown, so people think ahead a bit more about what they want their life to look like.

How did you protect your inheritance please?

And I’m mad that as women we are STILL often doing the bulk of the domestic stuff AND working quite often.

You say this as if you are forced and have no choice in your life. You do have choice but you make that decision.

There is no 'we' woman. Many women don't accept being the house skivvy and put up with it. If Dh didn't respect me or do his fair share in every aspect then I wouldn't have accepted this from Day 1 let alone enabled him for a decade. In my social circle it's all equal partnerships too.

I totally get why you feel upset at this outcome . As you and others have mentioned, it's not the law that it the issue - the law is always has to be a fairly blunt tool and it is the way it is for a reason. It's your horrifically unfair STBX and how things have played out that is the real problem. I'd try and reframe it as the half of everything being well worth it to get rid of the lazy abusive leech. And anything you earn in future will be 100% yours 😆.

I'd also recommend reading some of Zawn Villines work, she's a great feminist writer who really breaks down the details of inequalities like this and it's really validating to gain greater understanding.

I agree with this. The battle is fought at home as much as it is through legislation.

DH does at least half the house work, probably more. He does more than half the school runs and "parent taxi" trips. Who earns more oscillates. At the moment he earns more, he still does his fair share around the house.

The law can only do so much,.the rest is down to us.

Thank you for your comment.

I don’t think working married women “have it all”, I think they more often “have it all to do”

So now I’m telling any younger women I meet - share the load FAIRLY, and both pay into a pension.

Perhaps you would feel better if you make this your mission too?

Yeah. This is the issue isn’t it. Arses. Arses. Arses. I wish I could bank in time and give my younger self a good head wobble! I held hope for too long and he’s an excellent future faker. Very credible. Does enough to give the sense of change but it’s always just a little.

And underneath it all is a complete contempt and disdain for the tasks of home keeping and child rearing. He’s fine to hang out and look after DC but doesn’t see it as necessary to invest time in thinking about it or planning things (so things are often missed - no PE kit on PE day type stuff) and he wants a clean house and we agreed mutually what our minimum standards were but as soon as it was his job, low and behold, we could suddenly afford a cleaner. He sees it as beneath him.

Grrrr.

The law can only do so much,.the rest is down to us.

Exactly! People just don't want to take responsibility anymore. Always looking to blame someone else. But it's you, you make the choice. Own your choice and take accountability.

I get it big time, absolutely my situation. Fortunately or unfortunately my husband died before we were divorced, but he had changed his will. And now his kids own half my house (which I paid every penny for) and to add salt to the wound I may have to pay stamp duty on the half when I buy it back. A lifetime of being financailly sensible gone. It's one hell of a rainy day. It is all legal, but it hurts. I am doing my best to work through the thoughts - half the house is less than I would have had to have given him if we had divorced, and I do have my life back.....but it is going to take time to work through the pain/anger and sadness, Hugs!

Why not just separate, and not go down the divorce route? Do you think he would be bothered to petition for divorce and be in a position to pay for good legal advice?

I think the trouble is that it doesn't start off unequal. Imo it's very common for things to slide during the first maternity leave, pick up just enough to have the second child then during the second maternity leave it really goes to pot. It's a boiled frog situation and by the time you realise what's happened, you're too far in to just cut it off straight away so you begin a merry-go-round of asking/communicating/pleading/demanding with him to do more which he inevitably dodges because it doesn't serve him to. All while you're exhausted from actually carrying the entire load - sometimes it doesn't even feel possible to do anything other than plod on. Or he does just enough to placate you for a while then slips back. It's great that you have and see other equitable relationships though, I do think that if men have friends who are more equitable, it becomes more normal to them to do their share.

Agreed.

This is a terrible idea, because every year you are STILL paying in 50% of pension contributions for him. A friend of mine did this and when the husband eventually divorced her, all she had done was store up more pension for him. Hideous.

In France, you either marry under "communauté des biens" (joint property/assets) or "séparation des biens" (separate property/assets).

So, under the first, everything that belonged to each spouse before marriage and any inheritance continues to belong to that spouse, but everything else is jointly owned 50/50 no matter who paid for it.

Under the second, everything that is paid for by the spouse belongs to the spouse, even assets or property bought during the marriage. Each income belongs to whoever earned it.

There are various legal nuances to and a couple of other types of marriage that are used in very specific situations, but I think I've given the general idea.

I agree that it feels unfair.
However I do think that we are our own worst enemies - if they are feckless and lazy in year 2 of a marriage and haven’t improved by year three the chances of them improving year on year after that decrease exponentially.

Those saying this is down to women’s choice to stay and they should leave earlier in cases of unequal contribution:

The problem is that once you have kids with someone there are no great options. Leaving means co parenting with someone a bit useless so you’ll still be carrying the load and still have the resentment. Living separately is more expensive so a drop in standard of living. Kids don’t generally welcome a break up, especially if parents have managed to be civil. New relationships/blended families etc gets pretty messy as countless MN threads show.

I’m not saying women shouldn’t leave but I can understand why so many women stay in the hope of improvements, once there are kids involved. And unequal contribution often doesn’t show itself till after kids.

I didn’t put up with it. I fought it. I pushed for equality and ultimately that’s what led to us separating. What I didn’t realise was that I was fighting his internalised misogynistic views on domestic work.

I think it’s easier to say it than do it. Im a generation who were still very much socialised to think that it’s our job. I went to Brownies and whilst the scouts got to camp and make fires, we were taught to fry and egg and clean. I was both encouraged to learn and work and taught that I should clean and cook etc.

I was hoping it was changing but where I work it’s mostly the women of all ages that take the lead with child care and domestic stuff. They hold the mental load and their partners ‘help’ ’them’. It’s mostly the mums that bring the kids to their appointments.

Its social expectations as well as individual actions that are at play and we are trying to undo 100s of years of patriarchal dominance I think. In my case it’s too late. My undoing of the social expectations on women has come at the expense of my marriage.

@Justforthisparticularrant you’re getting a hard time here.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but nobody has it.

You took the man for his word which he didn’t deliver. He paid you a lip service and did as little as he could to get away with it.

We treat people with respect and rules hoping that they would exchange the courtesy and do the same. Unfortunately it doesn’t work this way. Some of the people and even the ones that we consider nearest and dearest will take us for whatever we can.

OP,don’t waste any time on this idle -insert whatever insult you call him-

Find yourself a shit hot solicitor that will go for the jugular and go for divorce asap.

So sorry.

It hurts when we’re so exploited and depleted

Best of luck 💐

That sounds sensible.

This was it exactly. Mat leave meant I took on the bulk and it has taken 13 years to get it near to fair.