Rough idea what would be fair in divorce.

[FuzzyFelt85]

Hello all,

Looking for some rough advice, a starter for ten, to get my head around what would be reasonable in a divorce.

My husband and I are separated and sleeping in different rooms in our house. There has been no intimacy for years. I won’t bore you with the details but I can’t bear to live with him or go on like this any longer. I believe we could do this amicably for our children. There is nobody else involved on either side.

Children are 6 & 7. No wraparound where we live and no family help… but I have a school hours job that I currently earn £17k pa in. I could potentially take on some additional work from home (my qualifications lend themselves to this fortunately). I do all school drop offs and pick ups and would likely keep doing this.

Husband works extremely long hours , often gone 7-7. Doesn’t tend to work weekends unless there is a hideous deadline. Earns 90k pa.

House is worth around £400k and the joint mortgage on it is £110k atm.

I would like to remain the primary carer and I don’t think my husband would challenge me on this, he is a workaholic.

I am thinking of asking for 2/3 equity in house plus some maintenance (a few hundred a month). I would like to stay in or near our current village and am happy to buy a basic 3 bedroom semi (where we live is quite cheap). Currently we have a huge Georgian house. There aren’t any other assets really. I don’t think I could afford to stay in this house on my own.

I would be happy to leave pensions alone.. mine in tiny and my husband probably has more but I am a lot younger so have longer to “save up”.

So in theory it could go-

Me - 190k of house proceeds (could by a basic house outright for this around here), my salary plus maintenance and hopefully some child benefit (never had it before).

Husband - 95k equity, keeps most of his salary. (He could easily afford a mortgage).

Could I ask people’s thoughts please?

(i know he’d be happy to continue as we are for ever more, despite him being quite unhappy and having no intimacy either … but it’s me that will propose divorce)

Thanks for reading!

This situation is very normal and a decent divorce solicitor will have seen this scenario multiple times before. The main thing is ensuring that the children are cared for with time and money. In most cases the person earning the least will need to earn more. However the op and dh are not rich. Careful consideration is needed so both parents see dc and no one is forced to move far away. Many working men don’t want 50:50. They prioritise their jobs and cannot get childcare for 7-7 every day. He’s not wealthy enough for a nanny or private school with long hours so how dc are cared for is the most important thing. However I would advise op to get a better job - train to be a teacher?

Assets in trust are usually well tied up. Many responsible trustees wouldn't release funds if they would be going to somebody other than a named beneficiary and they can simply not agree to it. In many cases they don't have to pay out, or even if they do have to pay out income they can simply switch to capital growth rather than income investments.

Once your children are older I think it is fair to assume that they would expect you to get a better paying job. It isn't reasonable to work PT in a job that suits school hours forever.

@angela1952 I agree it’s not ok to be part time forever but op could become a teacher and that’s definitely full
time and she would earn double. It’s a better long term career.

Definitely sounds ok for you 🙄 How come you get to buy a house outright/work part time/have maintenance on top, all
whilst he has to be content with 1/3 of the assets and a mortgage? It doesn’t seem
very fair to me.

I agree that sounds great in theory and it is a good long term career but we all know from Mumsnet threads that teaching doesn't suit everybody and it can be a very stressful job.

Also, although the hours are in theory school hours, it does involve marking and preparing outside teaching hours, also parents' evenings and inset days etc.

I'm not sure what her PT job is at the moment but she did say that she'd been offered more hours. Of course she may not like her job, and it may with a job without prospects.

Don’t underestimate the pensions.,., we know a couple who divorced, she got the house outright, and he kept most of his pension, Most! So his pension had a higher value than the house!

Lol, tell me you don’t understand the value of childcare without telling me!
Because…
Their children are too young to look after themselves. So, how it works is someone needs to look after them. That role is unpaid, but valuable. To accommodate this both parents contribute, often one looks after them and the other earns an income which is shared. Sometimes, the couple can decide to both have an income and pay someone else to look after the children. This particular couple haven’t chosen that, for their own reasons, probably that with the ops salary being low, there isn’t a great financial difference after paying childcare, and probably because they have decided they would like to bring up their own children. It’s fairly common, and both options are fine. This looks set to continue after the split. Ergo, maintenance is due to account for both the extra costs with looking after the children more (they eat food etc) and also because whilst one party is looking after said children, they can’t be earning anything. If they do earn anything, they need to start paying a pension which they currently have nothing in. Does that help you understand, I tried to write it simply?

@angela1952 I suggested teaching as op is a TA in a school already. That suggests she likes dc. No, it’s not for everyone but she would get decent holidays unlike her ex I suspect and it does provide a decent pension.

Get legal advice. You can certainly take more equity and leave pensions alone. But that doesn’t affect maintenance, he would still need to pay that.

It's more likely you might get 50/50 on equity of house, 50/50 on joint pensions, and if your s2bx only has 1 night midweek and eow as men sometimes do you'd get quite a lot of maintenance. Your stbx might want DC for a couple of weeks over summer, a week over Easter and Xmas as he'd be on holiday then. It's very unlikely you will get spousal maintenance as courts only do this if one partner earns £150-200k and other partner on very low income.

I see people write spousal maintenance is unusual often on here, but I got divorced in 2020, we saw a mediator and a solicitor each, all 3 said spousal due. Him £90k, me £10k, kids 9&11, me 5 contact days, him 2.

Spousal maintenance isn’t a clean break divorce and both can go back to change the agreement and it binds people together often prolonging disputes or featuring new ones. Sorting it out with solicitors, it’s more likely to feature but it can lead to constant stress.

This
In some situations, I think that the man gets a raw deal. Women wanting claims to exhusband's pension etc despite having years of potential earning ahead. Seems unfair to me.
I appreciate that some women get nil( myself included) & that's unfair too but there needs to be a happy medium

Sarcastic and unnecessary response

OP, what assets did you both come into the marriage with? Could some of his pensions and savings pre-date the marriage, and did he contribute more equity into the house than you and how long have you been married?

I don’t know where they live but at least in England it doesn’t matter what they had entering the marriage unless it’s a very short marriage/relationship but as they have kids who are 6 and 7 they will have been together 8+ years.

I would advise putting the hoping to be amicable idea to one side. My ex was quite amicable until we got to the money part. Then his amicableness somehow deserted him. I suspect if he had got to keep everything he would once again been quite happy and smiley.

I disagree. I think it was a necessary response to a poster who didn't realise that staying at home and looking after children does have a "monetary value" when considering asset split in divorce.

Thank you. That’s pretty much what has been advised to the trust ‘owner’ however a bit of convolution went on with income from the capital investments. What was supposed to be loans was never formally documented and the other party is using that as leverage.

in her mind she worked out that he kept the trust and assets and she kept the joint home That’s why I recommended the OP see a professional from the outset for advice..

😉

Are you claiming CMS in the meantime?? I mean you're not together so....

The pension sharing is only shared out from the time they were together when one party was doing childcare and the other earning and putting in to the pension. Future or past pension isn’t included. I have no idea, none whatsoever, how you wouldn’t understand that that was fair.

@Mauro711 It can matter. Standish v Standish in the Supreme Court judgement has changed the position of pre matrimonial assets in some cases but it’s complex.

Thanks, I stand corrected. I wasn't aware that the pension sharing is only pertaining to time together when OP was not working and raising the children.

I’m not a T/A in a school !

Thanks for all the advice everyone. We have no family support on either side, so nobody to collect children from school.