To ask how you think this divorce may look?

[Questionstoask]

• 3 children under the age of 6
• DH earns £260,000 per year roughly. This has increased since our relationship began.
• Married for 2 years
• Relationship of 10 years in total
• Property equity of £400,000
• SAHM since our youngest was born
• House deposit came entirely from DH
• DH works abroad for 1 week per month.
• savings of approx £100k.

I know I need to speak this through with a solicitor.
Extremely likely DH will give near enough full custody to me (6 days per week).

Looking for thoughts and experiences of anyone else who’s been in a similar position.

You are preaching to the choir!

Not necessarily. I earn north of £200k but because my employer only does pension contributions on the statutory minimum (wages between £6 and 50k), if I hadn’t increased my own contributions I would only be putting in 3,500k per year of employee + employer contributions.

And then grossed up at your highest rate. I hope you’re maxing AVC.

Is there any way you can stay out whilst retraining or getting back on the career ladder? I know it doesn’t sound great but with 3 dc and not a huge amount in assets to be a SAHM then it sounds like you might want to be a bit more prepared

Yes, an extra 20% goes into the pension but the other 25% comes back to him via tax return. So £4k per year statutory, which really isn’t enough to build a massive pension.

And what I do is completely irrelevant to the op - I have significantly more, but that has more to do with over contributing early on in my career rather than big tax breaks later on, though I did manage a few good years before caps were introduced. And speaking of pension caps, at £260k it wouldn’t be tax efficient to contribute more than £10k unless he has can carry forward allowance from past 3 years, which very well might not amount to much if he has been on high wage for a while

very very possible to have peanuts in pension, even on a high salary, if you have left it too late.

You'd be getting circa £2k/month in child maintenance plus your share from the split. When did he buy the house? Was that during the marriage or before?

You need to get a good lawyer if you're sure about splitting and wanting to remain a SAHM as that is a significant drop in your income

Remember that it will be counted as a short marriage so his solicitor will argue against 50/50, I certainly wouldn’t expect more. The courts when considering maintenance will expect you to return to work once youngest is in school possibly younger. In all honesty a privately negotiated settlement is likely to be better than court settlement as it’s such - short marriage

Get a job then you won't have to worry about housing the children?

And what do you mean by seeing what position you're in before making a decision? If you want to leave him you should leave him. It's not fair on him to stay with him just because you want to be a SAHM whilst he funds your lifestyle.

Lol I’m a family lawyer but thanks for the lesson 😂

4k is nothing. My legal separation and divorce cost nearly €40,000. Mainly because I had the crappiest ex ever, who, even though he had free legal aid, and a solicitor and barrister, and an agreed settlement, decided he didn't get enough in the legal separation, decided to sue me, and my solicitor and barrister. Which meant I had to get a different solicitor for the divorce. Family law is even worse in Ireland and when I finally contacted Women's Aid, the lovely lady form that fantastic organisation, who came with me to all the court cases after I finally got divorced, told me that Family Law here is not fit for purpose. While my ex has stopped bringing me to court, he is still bringing the Legal Aid Board to the High Court and this is 10 years after we divorced and nearly 14 years since the Legal Separation! At one court case which I had to bring because my ex was refusing to sign a passport form for one of our children, my ex was arguing with the judge, who said there is a court order in place stating that he had to sign the forms for the children's passport so why was he refusing to sign? In the end I got an order dispensing with his signature altogether and my ex was almost thrown in jail for fighting with the Judge! Oh and I can't understand the way every woman in England seems to get half of her ex husband's pension! My ex was able to cash in his pensions from various jobs so he had no pension pot, whereas he is entitled to some of my pension! And after the separation he literally gave up his job so he could prepare for High Court cases against the solicitors, his and mine, and also so he wouldn't have to pay any maintenance! Sorry for the rant op. I hope your divorce is a lot simpler!

Some very ill informed 'advice' here. A lot is a stake, you need a solicitor for the country you live in.

I forgot to say that as I was the one working full time in a pensionable job, I bought him out of the house, which I had bought before I met him. He then lived on that money, instead of buying a house, and gave up work to avoid paying maintenance and pursue his court cases!

You can’t have been a SAHM for that long if it has only been since the youngest was born and you have 3 kids under 6.

I love how posters point things out as fact which they know nothing about.

I know plenty of high earners who don’t have high pensions because they’re so confident in their earnings that they say they’ll invest elsewhere, and then don’t.

He's bullshitting you @Questionstoask
Being soft won't help if for example he claims poverty and can't pay maintenance. Take every penny you can it's your family's future.
Get a clean settlement get the house sold and buy another one etc.
I wouldn't trust a word he says. ‐‐talking from bitter experience of being gullible--

Assuming you're in England and you have been together consistently for the last 5+ years, not splitting up and getting back together, the courts should count your whole relationship length in deciding if it's a long marriage or not, so PP's comment about you not getting 50/50 seem unlikely.

You've said there's about 500K in non-pension equity. and 150k in his pension.
so total 650k in assets. If you got a 60/40 split (not uncommon in divorces where the woman has given up a career to look after kids) you'd get about 430k and he'd get about 220k. He could keep the pension and take 70k in cash. But only if that would be enough for him. He might prefer to split his pension in order to give himself enough cash for a deposit too (so ~330k in cash and 100k in pension to you). It's worth at least talking to a lawyer.

I'm not so sure about all these claims on here that you need to get back to work ASAP. With three at that age and him presumably just having the kids every other weekend, childcare costs could be crippling. If you can, you should plan to retrain. But you're going to have been out of the work place for 7(?)+ years by the time you return and then you're going to have 3 children to accommodate through everything, so earning unlikely to be go that high for the next 12 years or so, whatever you do. Still, getting yourself in a situation where you can start pushing once the youngest is in secondary is smart. Will help you give them more in secondary (when their heads might be more turned by their dad's wealth and profligate spending) and set you up for the next phase of your life as they all spread their wings - it probably seems far off now but in some ways it will seem to go in a flash.

See a lawyer. I’d say it’s unlikely you’ll get enough of the equity and savings to buy a mortgage free house, though likely that you’d get a period of spousal maintenance to cover a period where you get your career going again or retrain, and with SM you could get a small mortgage. This is what happened to me in similar position to you after my first divorce. I retrained as a lawyer and am now a partner in a law firm. After my second divorce, despite the fact that I earned 6 figures by then I also got 15 months of spousal maintenance, reflecting the fact that I had been the one to put my career in the slow lane and support our family by having the baby (I was married to a woman so either of us could have had the baby, but she wanted me to), and subsequently working part time when the baby was in the pre-school years.

But you need a family lawyer. Try to avoid court. Mediation can achieve great results and far more flexible than any court order can ever be.

I also disagree with those saying you won’t be expected to work immediately. My first divorce was 20 years ago and I had a 1 and a 3 year old at the time. It was made very clear that I was expected to work as much as as possible as soon as possible - and that was back then. I had been out of the work force for 4 years (was made redundant while pregnant with the first child) and only had 2 years’ work experience before that.

Was your husband on 260k per annum? Because this makes a significant difference. Realistically with a current newborn she won’t be able to work immediately and won’t be expected to. Within the next few years, yes, but not immediately.

This will be a case that is entirely focused on the relationship-generated needs of the primary carer. While it’s a short marriage, there are three children, whose welfare is the courts first consideration. It’s not a case about 50/50 division (ie the sharing principle) because it’s a short marriage with unequal contributions and in any event 50/50 would not produce a fair result and would place the children in hardship. The primary carer will need a house (owned not rented) and can’t get a mortgage at present due to not working. She needs to get a mortgage free property. She will also likely need a period of spousal maintenance to enable her to take steps to get back to work in the next few years. I’d expect something like 5 years with the option of applying to extend the term. I wouldn’t expect a pension sharing order given the unequal split of liquid capital, young ages and short marriage.

I am fairly confident in this as I worked as a lawyer in this area for many years and now teach would-be solicitors how to deal with these cases. It’s discretionary so there’s never a right or wrong answer but this is what I’d expect and if I was sitting as a judge, what order I would make (assuming of course all figures given on asset value were accurate and husband doesn’t have a load of other assets stashed away somewhere).

ALOT of money involved here. You NEED to search out a specialist lawyer. Even a barrister.

Did he agree to 6/1? That’s horrible for the kids, they’re so young they need more than that.

The short marriage is a red herring, courts look at total time living together.

Can you stick it out long enough to retrain OP?

On his salary the CMS due is about 2k a month

This is the most sensible post on here.

Except for the UC. Your own house doesn't count as assets, and that's all she'll have. So she can just go on benefits and have to work as soon as they make you (is it something like 15hrs minimum when the kid turns 3?) and live off that and his child maintenance payments.

Equally she won't pay much for childcare. For every £1000 she "spends" on UC, she only has to actually pay £150. Of the 3 kids, ones in FTE. Ones about to start FTE, and the baby gets free nursery hours in a few months. Half terms and school hols she's going to have to pay for childcare, but again, at 15% of the normal rate.

She can be pretty sedentary for about 3yrs and get a little house out of it. But then it's going to be a bit of a wake up call. She's got 12yrs of maintenance for 3 kids, then another couple of years falling down to 2 kids, then another couple with just 1 kid. Assuming Dad never loses his job, gets a lower paid job, or sets up on his own and fiddles the figures so she gets £50 a month.

£260k is a good salary, but not with three kids, someone who doesn't work and this ridiculous lifestyle they both seem to chase after and can't actually afford. Let's not forget dad needs to be housed out of this little pot too...

Yes at the time my husband earned the equivalent of £260k in today’s money. My youngest child had just turned one at the time and as I say, I’d been out of work for 4 years.

We had been married 5 years. We had about £200k equity in the house and no savings (my husband’s ridiculous spending over saving was a tension in the marriage). I got £150k of the equity and SM of £1k a month limited to 2 years, as well as the £1.5k CM he had to pay. I got a £100k mortgage and bought a 3 bed house for £250k. I went to law school and started my training contract 2 years later. SM stopped then. As it turned out, getting into a decent career asap was a good move since my exH lost his job 5 years later and never paid another penny of CM (despite subsequently getting another job).

Ah okay. How did you get a mortgage if you weren’t earning? Was it based on the maintenance payments? So you did get term spousal maintenance (ie not open ended). To clarify, that’s what I think the OP would get too but with a newborn I really don’t see how anyone can expect her to immediately go back to work. I think it would be expected within a few years though. I’d expect term maintenance and enough to buy a house. Which doesn’t sound a million miles from what you got when you divorced. I’d definitely not envisage her getting spousal maintenance for a long period of time.