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 truly don't remember. I don't think there was any financial information given, he stalled the divorce for three years by refusing to sign the papers and then - it just happened (this was, as I said, twenty odd years ago). I remember my solicitor saying something about pensions, but then it was never mentioned again. Perhaps I said I didn't want his pension. I still don't. I was just curious as to whether it had always been a thing or whether this was a recent innovation.

Why have you been putting up with it for so long then and carrying him?

But if there is a SAHM she does tend to do the domestic work and childcare (I appreciate there are sometimes exceptions)

So she is facilitating his job/career and running the home.

This is not the case here

No, people just need to wake up and realise that marriage is nothing more than a contract where you sign up to split absolutely everything you own, earn or will ever have equally.

Take the rose tinted specs off. Women are too interested in the big white dress than the reality and enormity of what they’re doing.

Sorry op it's very hard. I think the worst part as you said is him getting your pension prior to marriage.

Sorry OP, just read the full thread.

@Justforthisparticularrant

This is a bit of a strange thing to toss in but....

Do you have children?
Do any of them have ADD or ADHD

It is genetic.

Your description of him makes a light go on in my head.

There may be another way.

You should be able to trust a life partner not to lie to you in word or deed. That's not on you. It's on him.

Regarding the pension, when you are both retired, assuming he keeps a relationship with the kids, at least you will be spared the awfulness of him telling the kids he's poor as you "took all the pension"?

I agrée with you it's not fair op. But I also agree it should be how it is to protect women. I left my leech of an ex after 15 months and he still fought for half my house I bought before marriage- he never paid a penny even when I was on maternity leave. Only reason I managed to keep the house was because our son is disabled massively impacting my ability to work. But again still not fair as I'm paying interest only on the house and not paying into a pension and never will be able to work again now. So ex kept his pension in trade for me keeping the house and has gone on to marry his new victim get a stake in her house and build his pension while not having his work impacted by his disabled child.

I think so many women have been" done over"It seems massively unfair to me that this is happening more and more.Also many women who divorce, have been working long hours and have good jobs ,then suddenly are not seen as a "resident parent"I read of someone who got divorced, and lost the family home where her DH was living with their DC.We always seem to come off worst somehow .Lots of judgement even with our own DP sometimes( Recent case of a wealthy heiress whose parents disinherited her in favour of her DH! unbelievable.She had to go to court in the end.If a man is of working age and well, why the fuck does he need a pension? He can work 40s to 60s no sweat and earn his own surely .Somewhat different to the past where nurseries were in short supply And Jobs for women were less well paid as it was seen as "pin money" to pad out the family income .Thereby they would often be left high and dry

The bit that never makes sense to me is why pre-marital assets are included. Why should anybody have access to a pension that was accumulated prior to you marrying?!

What's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that. We wanted equality. We got it. Plenty of men have been in your position and have just had to get on with it

FWIW I don't agree in it and I fought to keep my pension out my lazy ex husbands grasp - and ultimately won

Absolutely this!

I am always absolutely gob smacked how people (men and women) rant about how unequal their relationship was for decades and how they are devastated now that they are breaking up that their partner gets half of everything. Of course it doesn't feel fair but you have ultimately allowed the marriage to continue for an extremely long time with this dynamic in place so it is reasonable to make an assumption that you had become one unit and thus all assets are merged. The minute you start to deviate from this then it all becomes very messy, especially as breakups are often very acrimonious and it can be really difficult for a court to work out what was actually going on in a marriage and what would morally be fair.

OP your post sounds familiar to me as I have been through similar. It's a PITA but at least you'll be free of him. That's what's keeping me from slashing a cushion every time I think about it. Good luck.

Who will have custody of the children because if it’s a shared care, then your husband is going to have to find out how to plan and order things pretty damn quickly.

A relative of mine, male, went through a baptism of fire once he discovered what it’s like to look after his children half the week for the rest of his life. They split custody, half and half for his two children.

It’s unfortunate that a lot of men, don’t understand just what goes into running a house, working and looking after children.

He’s a great dad now, but the sad thing is is that if he had done what he is doing now, when he was married, I imagine they’d still be together. His wife was truly fed up with his lack of shared care while they were together.

I’m really sorry, OP that you’re going through this. As others have said at least you’ll be free now and 16 years although a reasonable stint of time, in the perspective of a whole life It’s not that long.

In the future, you may wish to set your sights higher. That’s what I did and although he’s far far far from perfect, one thing he does do well is that he’s make lots of money. Then you never have to worry about these issues again.

I agree. The jobs that lead nowhere. The disorganisation. The sloppiness.

I was going to suggest it too but thought I’ll be screamed at for blaming a lazy male on ND.

OP have a watch of Roxy and see if anything rings true:

https://m.facebook.com/ADHDlovevids/

Do either of your kids show any difficulties with following verbal instructions, being late, getting organised? I mean that sounds like most kids, but with ADD/ADHD it’s on another level.

I agree. I would marry the father of my DC but as the house is mine, bought before we were together, there is a huge financial disincentive for me. I'd be risking my financial security and my home. I know people will say I should leave if I don't trust him; the reality is everyone expects their marriage to last, but how many times have we seen posters on here completely blindsided when they've been left for an OW? Yet the way things stand, we can't benefit from inheritance tax allowances etc.

You can change which "régime" your marriage comes under, but it's not post-dated, and you have to show that it's in the interests of the family (I believe usually something like one spouse going self-employed or related to children from a prior relationship). However, it has to be agreed by both spouses and if the solicitor believes that it goes against the interests of any underage children, they have to refer to the family courts.

So I don't think it's particularly easy and my understanding (but prepared to be corrected) is that it probably wouldn't be possible in a situation where the marriage was already starting to go south.

It is fair.

If the genders were reversed and everything else about the scenario unchanged the same split would be achieved.

Equality is equality.

Marriage implies two become one unit with equal access to marital assets.

Why do people enter into a marriage contract then complain about the terms of the contract?

Don’t like it don’t marry.

This.

It seems that getting a financial settlement via the court is optional:

Money and property when you divorce or separate: Get the court to decide - GOV.UK

Perhaps you could get divorced but tell your solicitor that you don't want a legal financial settlement, and hope that your STB ex-DH gets a crap solicitor.

However, it seems to say there is no time limit, so he could come back years after the divorce and go for your pension then - you would have the worry hanging over you.

I believe I have seen the situation of the financial settlement coming up years later on MN. It was causing huge stress in the new marriage.

I am sorry you are in this situation. I experienced similar. Basically you and I should have dumped the feckless twats earlier, it would have been less painful in many ways including financial. We can’t have it both ways though.

I ran into this as well when I was divorcing XH.

yes, I had to pay him off in the divorce. I still don’t believe we should change the laws. I made the decision to marry the man. I recovered just fine post-divorce.

Most importantly, I understand how important it is to protect weaker parties and sahp in marriages. If occasionally that means a capable earner has to pay off a feckless spouse, then I am willing to have been that capable earner. It stung in the moment, but It was a blip in the road of my life.

Sorry to say you should have been better at kicking his arse out of the door earlier or not marrying him in the first place.
I don't think the divorce laws can feel particularly fair, but there is an alternative of not getting married.
Loads of blokes seem to have cottoned onto the whole having a family but not marrying the woman as then they have to share their security as a family unit (sadly for those women who often get left high and dry).

Absolutely not. Changing the law would adversely affect far more women than men.

I'm sorry you married a crap man but I don't think that should mean the laws are changed. If me and my DH ever divorced I absolutely deserve half of his pension for putting my career on hold to do the bulk of the early years childcare.