To expect financial support from my husband

[PoisedUmberCrab]

….during mat leave.

background - just finished mat leave with
DC2. Situation was the same with DC1.

both work full time typically and contribute 50/50 towards mortgage, bills and all other expenses.

during mat leave my salary was 46% of what I usually earn (ie less than half). DH expected me to continue paying 50% of mortgage, bills expenses. His rationale is that he was not earning any more than usual.

this has left me in a hard position financially whereby I borrowed from my family to get by.

AIBU to think that he should have increased his contributions whilst I was earning significantly less than usual (and looking after our child on mat leave for a year).

Please tell me you are joking. What a pathetic excuse of a man. Why are you with him? Selfish bastard.

Hold on. Your husband has a minimum of 3 income streams and still demanded you pay your 50% share for bills etc?

Your husband is not a good man, you are better off out of this marriage as he doesn't want to look after you or his children.

I can't imagine being married to, let alone having kids, with a man NOT supporting me and making me "borrow" money. This would be automatic divorce.

Congrats for taking that big step!

I have been gathering numbers…..

His pension pot is £35,000.

his flats each have £30,000 equity but unsellable currently due to cladding issues.

His company has £70,000.

His current account: £20,000.

wasted time and memories: priceless….

That’s OUR current account. You’re married, so you co-own it.

Well no communication is rather pathetic. However you need things written down for moving forward I.e he is responsible for the children's bath/bed on sun and tue for example. When he enters the house, leave, go to the gym, a friends for coffee, whatever......but get out of the house. He needs to learn he doesnt get to just opt out of parenting.

You need copies of everything.
Statements, assets, savings, equity- everything you can think of. Take photos and copies and get a trusted friend or family member to store things including passports, birth and marriage certs, vehicle documents etc

playing devils advocate (against myself!) - his thinking is that, given my good salary, for the first 6 weeks of full pay (and whilst pregnant for 9 months) I should have saved more to cover the remaining weeks of my mat leave where I was paid half my salary and then statutory maternity pay (and then 5 weeks of unpaid leave).

For reference, during this time (pregnant and on mat leave) I have been paying half the mortgage, half the bills, childcare, student finance loan, my own bills. DH thinks that because my salary is good, i should have been saving more so during mat leave i could continue to pay my 50% share. As he earns “less” in terms of regular salary (see above re dividends etc - he has a good accountant), he doesn’t see why he should help towards my portion.

I can’t remember if I mentioned above but the deposit payment was given to him (us!) by his father. For this reason I feel uneasy in demanding he gives half to me.

You’ve made a good start. But I bet there are other, hidden investments.

Ultimately you may need a forensic accountant. When you are interviewing prospective solicitors, ask whether they are used to working with a forensic accountant.

Because hes a selfish materialistic wanker..... simple.

@PoisedUmberCrab If it was a present to both of you then I don’t see the issue. You should stop seeing it through his mindset. You’re a married couple, not business partners.

Of course, he's unreasonable, and a stingy bastard.

That said, you have to take some personal responsibility, engage your brain, and stop being a passenger in your own life. Yes, you're divorcing now, and that's great. But think about your previous um 'unwise' decisions, so you wouldn't get tangled with another bastard like that.

All the finances, maternity leave should have been discussed before marriage or at least before having kids. If he was a dickhead with the kid no 1, what on earth possessed you to have a kid no 2?

Then the 'he says this, he says that'. Fuck what he says. Why do you even pay attention to it? No, 'all of the wives he knows' doesn't cover 50% of the expenses on mat leave. No, he doesn't get the bigger share of the house. No, you won't have to pay him maintenance (that's a funny one). And so on.

Don't be 'nice' and 'amicable'. With a man like that, it will never work. He might play nice until the financial settlement is done, and then he'll revert to his usual dickhead self, and will try to control you as much as he possibly can. No doubt he'll threaten to 'take your kids'. Citing his better living conditions, maybe your mental health or whatever he can come up with. All shitheads like that do. HE WON'T. Take what you possibly and legally can, don't listen to whatever bullshit he says, and hire a good lawyer.

And for the love of god, next time use your brain.

He's behaving as if you're business partners with a shared enterprise, rather than husband and wife with a shared child.

I think you have been financially abused by him, with a bit of coercive control thrown in with his threats.

Have you called an domestic abuse charities or Women's aid?

Get every penny you can.
Keep texts and careful notes of his involvement with the children, if any.

We are here for you.

WHY do women put up with this shite! Show him this and tell him to reimburse you. TOSSER!
And if he doesn't tell him tell be doing 50/50 childcare in a separate home. See how he likes that. Honest to God I despair.

Keep this in your mind. Every time you worry about being awkward or asking for anything in case he gets nasty or tries to use the DC as a weapon, cast your mind back to the moment he told you not to contact him and walked out of the door without so much as a backward glance at his children.

He is going to get nastier than he is already. He’s going to try and use every dirty trick he can think of to bring you to your knees and make you regret deciding to take control of your own life. How dare you leave him?! I can guarantee he’s currently more outraged that you’ve dared to leave him than he is upset that your marriage is over. So get that solicitor and don’t be afraid to use them because he’ll have spent the day plotting how to leave you with nothing.

see whilst I don’t disagree he’s clearly a dick whose choice was it to have a year off? Yours or his? I went back to work when full salary pay ended at 20 weeks (main earner so no choice) - anything longer is a choice and you should have had the discussion beforehand how finances would be dealt with during that period. If you had gone back to work earlier who would have paid the childcare fees?

Agree with this.

If DH had sweat blood to earn that deposit, or put it down from savings from his single dats, I might have a tiny bit of sympathy for him on this one issue. But it was a present to you both

You do realise that both of your pensions are marital assets and whilst 50/50 is the starting point it is only fair if one of you doesn’t have to house feed, clothe and look after 2 other individuals for the next 18 years Plus the damage to that persons body and career

Stop thinking about fairness and concentrate on what you are entitled to
Just because something is in his name, like his savings, like his pension (and your personal pension, savings etc) it is all a marital asset to be divided up.

Just as an example
If the marital home is valued at £350,000 less the £150,000 mortgage the asset value would be £200,000

Your Pensions is £50,000 His pensions £150,000 so another £200,000

Your savings £0 his savings £50,000

His car valued at £20,000. £10,000 left to pay on it = £10,000 net value

When you married if the rental properties were worth £100,000 each and both had a £75,000 mortgage on them that is a net value of £50,000 he maybe gets to keep. Now they are each worth £100,000 more. The mortgage is the same so that is another £200,000 to go in the pot.

Then there is furniture, jewellery etc and other incidentals say £10,000

So marital pot is worth £670,000 at 50/50 that is walking away with £335,000

At 60/40 in your favour as you have been financially abused and have 2 children to look after that is £402,000 as he gets to keep £268,000

You could take the marital home, your pension plus adding £92,000 of his pension to yours. All the savings and the furniture and jewellery

He gets to keep his car, the rental properties and £58,000 of his pension

I would start by getting as much documentation together of what exactly he has and where it is .

Don’t settle for less if you think it is going to be easier.
It won’t be easier. He will be a dick over every single penny and a good divorce solicitor will earn you more than settling for half the equity in the house which just on my random calculations you would be walking away with £302,000 less

Have just seen your update OP so apologies. He's obviously been financially abusing you and you sound as tho you have your family supporting you.
That is everything.
Just view this as short term pain for long term gain.
Your children are young and they will survive within the fold of your own family.
If need be borrow money to get the best forensic accountant given there's a lot to go after here and max out your demands. Good luck op 💐

You said yourself that he has a good accountant. You may well feel uneasy about taking 1/2 the deposit but you'll feel more uneasy when he fucks you for CM and you can't afford to provide for your child. This guy is exactly the scumbag who would do it. He's already doing it paying himself a low salary and taking dividends and insisting you pay 50:50 on your reduced income. You had his child and he hasn't bore any of the financial hardship of that. The money is not ringfenced and therefore is 1/2 yours. Usually,I would say that, morally, he should keep his deposit but in this case absolutely not.

I see these types of posts all too often. A marriage is a partnership where you share everything in my opinion. You've shared your DNA to create children. You've shared and sacrificed your body to grow his children. So why on earth wouldn't you share something so meaningless as money.

I am also on mat leave currently, with no maternity pay. We have always shared money and my husband completely trusts me to spend what I need to on our children. I work like a dog trying to be a good mum and so if I want to treat myself, I do (usually a single coffee a week or a book from Oxfam!) I'm never frivolous with our money and we have total respect for each other when it comes to monetary decisions

Don't be kind OP, you know this man will f..k u over! Take him for everything you can get...for the sake of your children.

Get ANGRY for their sakes. Everything you get right now will benefit them. He owes them, and you of course.

Sometimes it helps to focus the mind if fighting more ferociously on behalf of someone dear to you.

What the f is wrong with men (usually) being unwilling to share when their partners are expecting their child? I can never understand how someone could allow their other half to borrow money to make ends meet during a time when they are LITERALLY growing another person inside them and earning peanuts for this privilege. That’s my tuppence worth. YANBU at all, he is. You need a joint pot for everything household and child related. Otherwise just LTB.