AIBU to think the system punishes hard working women during divorce

[Iris10000]

DH decided to leave us. We have two DCs who are 1 and 4. I will be the main caregiver and he will have them for Saturday all day plus two nights a week after school for the oldest one (youngest later as he was a not comfortable doing her bedtime or attending to night wakings). We both have solicitor as mediation failed. He wants 50% equity and equalise pensions. My plan was to buy him out to minimise disruption to DCs but I can only afford 40%. I will be basically a single mum for 6 days a week and bearing all costs (he will pay required child maintenance which doesn’t even scratch the surface of nursery fees). I thought the system recognised that but solicitor advised to separate the two and said it’s very usual to get 50/50 outcome. I would be devastated if we have to sell and move to a smaller house. DH’s solicitor suggested other towns but I am doing drop off and pick up at school and nursery which are in two different pms es then getting to work. Living half an hr away would not be doable plus I have friends and activities here. My wages are £75k working 4 days and his are £50 working full time. My pension is £100k and his £30k. The argument he has is that he cannot rehouse on £120k I offered him but can on £150k. Why should I be responsible for kids plus his housing needs and the fact he never wanted to progress at work and was happy for me to pay majority of house bills. And now I feel I am responsible for his future.

You’ll feel so much better though @Iris10000once you’re free of him and he can’t sponge off you anymore.

Also, I don’t know how long you were married @Iris10000but your children are still young so perhaps not very long. In a shorter marriage the 50/50 presumption does not always apply obviously, there is more of a leaning towards restoring parties to the position they would be in if they had not married and each party keeping the assets for which they have paid. If you haven’t been married many years you should certainly not allow this feckless, lazy and irresponsible man who neither pulls his weight with parenting or financially to have 50% of everything. Please make sure you get a second legal opinion because your solicitor should be nipping this sort of nonsense like claims he can’t house himself with £120k in the bud. If he wants 50% assets then tell him he’ll need to be paying 50% of childcare costs and 50% of all of the children’s costs (food, clothes, school trips, clubs etc) and actually become a sufficiently competent adult to be able to parent both of his children at once.

Honestly, what a pathetic man to do what he has done, refuse to see both of his children at the same time then try to claim 50% assets claiming he needs to be able to house children whom he apparently cannot cope with overnight on his own!!

I’m gobsmacked that he doesn’t want to look after his younger DC because it’s inconvenient to be woken at night!! Will that change?

No, in many circumstances (not all) it is beneficial to someone who is the primary caregiver and NOT the main earner.

Per the OP the people who are really stitched up are women who are the higher earner and almost invariably ALSO the main caregiver.

Pathetic isn’t it. OP should progress the divorce as fast as possible so that any ridiculous claims that he can’t adequately house himself with £120k when he won’t even have his children for overnight stays can be ridiculed and dismissed as the disingenuous nonsense that they are.

It’s an absolute joke. I was in this position a few years ago. I bought him out, he said he needed a 3 bed house to accommodate his children. I got a massive mortgage, he got his money. Did he house his children? Nope, barely any overnights. He shacked up with someone who had her own council house and kids. The money is being spent on a brand new car and many expensive holidays that my children do not go on. For the rare times my children stayed, they either slept in the sofa or in another child’s bedroom. I knew it would end up this way, but there’s just no mechanism to prove otherwise.

and I did have a Rottweiler barrister, but nothing can be done going up against a system so stacked against working mothers.

I’d love to know the rationale of the 24% of people who’ve voted that you’re being unreasonable, OP : people who apparently think that it’s “fair” that a father who walks out on his children and won’t even parent them both overnight (!) should be able to claim 50% of assets despite you paying far more of the costs of raising the children and doing over 90% of the parenting. And that this man who can’t cope with his own children overnight allegedly needs to be given far more of the house equity than he paid for so that he can buy a house the same size as you need to actually house the children, when he NEVER has both of his children stay with him anyway… the mind boggles, unless 24% of people reading the thread are sponging, feckless fathers!?

i Agree with others change your solicitor and get someone who will fight!

Agree @Iris10000 . It was like this when my shitty ex-H bailed 23 years ago and it is really, really disheartening to see that nothing has changed since then. I went to court, as I literally couldn't believe how punitive it would be and all I can say is that is a bloody expensive business and I'm not sure I'd do it again.

Despite my ex-H earning more than me throughout his working career by a huge margin, he contributed way less than I did as the resident parent. He gave the CMS mandated small percentage of his salary, whereas literally every penny of mine went on keeping the roof over our heads, the DC clothed, fed, childcare paid for etc. By his own choice he saw them every second weekend and even that dwindled after time, so I did all the logistics and daily care of our children. He basically opted out of parenting completely and paid a tiny percentage of his salary. I even bought him out of the house, with the split being 55% to me and 45% to him and he fought me on that too, which if you think about what I put in over the next 18+ years and what he did is still a joke.

I do not understand how in this day and age it is possible for one parent to abdicate financial and parenting responsibility with so little recourse.

Wel said 👏

I would be very cross if I was you OP. Of course he can rehouse himself on £120k. I'm with the pp who suggest you maybe need a fiercer solicitor.

Get his agreement to no overnights formalised with a contact order ASAP. If he’s not having overnights, he only needs to house himself.

If it’s a short marriage (under 5/10 years) it’s not necessarily 50/50, especially for pensions or equity accrued pre-marriage.

You need a new solicitor. I bought out my ex husband and he got 42% of the equity. My solicitor said that I was extremely generous and could have offered him less because I have majority care of the children. But he isn’t a high earner, we live in an expensive area and I wanted him to be able to buy a reasonable house so our children could stay.

Unfortunately I wished I had offered him less because a month after the payout he quit his job, now earns barely anything, and stopped paying maintenance. As far as I can tell he is spending the money on holidays, cars and basic living expenses so he will not be getting back on the property ladder anytime soon.

As soon as the baby is potty trained and when he doesn’t have to pay nursery fees he’ll push for 5050 so no maintenance is payable

This is why I always laugh at the "marriage protects you" threads. Not if you are the main contributor to your household finances. So many women are left holding the baby and having to pay their ex off too. It's not fair and detrimental to the children. If both parties earn and parent equally including post divorce that is obviously a different scenario.

YANBU. He is basically walking away from raising his own children. He's a total bastard.

Can you say that a 50/50 financial split needs to also be a 50/50 child care/residence split? So on the days when he has the DC, the nursery/childcare fees are his responsibility. That's the way it should be.

he was a not comfortable doing her bedtime or attending to night wakings

Is he not even a tiny bit embarrassed being such a waste of space?
Yes sure, higher earning men have been sharing the martial assets bought with money they earned - but that usually has also meant that the mother was earning less because she was doing the majority of childcare.
If a parent is unable to put their 1yo to bed, that's clearly not the case.

YANBU. This is one of the reasons why I don’t intend to ever get married. I have a decent salary and pension and I don’t want to be financially tied to someone else. Especially not to a lower earner when most marriages end in divorce! You’d have to be mad imo.

Agree that men get screwed over by this too, although maybe not to the same extent as women who are more likely to do the majority of the child care as well as work.

This man was not earning more! The OP is the higher earner.

There’s another thread on here where a mother has left her child with his father and announced she’s going on holiday.

Regardless of the wrongs or rights of that situation people are saying the police should be called, that social services will “not look kindly” as its child abandonment and neglect.

Can you imagine anyone telling us to call the police or social services when our feckless husbands walked out? Of course not! Kids are with their mum! But when it’s the dad it’s all “but he WORKS”!

Yes we fucking work too thanks, and a damn sight harder in most cases.

LOL. Given how useless some of these fathers seem to be, perhaps social services should be called if in rare circumstances the children are “left” with them!

But I’m sure that wasn’t what they meant, was it? It would have been that the mother has been neglectful to leave their child with the child’s second parent because how could anybody expect a father, with an actual penis, to inconvenience himself and actually do any parenting?

And meanwhile these parasites act like they’re doing everybody a favour if they pay a measly 15% of their salary towards the cost of raising their children. The mystery is how so many of them manage to get a new girlfriend or wife according to threads on here.

You’d think any woman with an IQ over 70 would run a mile from a man who has already proved himself beyond doubt to be such a staggering waste of carbon.

What a prick. All about him isn’t it.

God knows what I would do, but probably something that infuriates him
and spites myself long term. You sound far more sensible.

well yes, I compared with the usual situation where men are earning more and complaining that wife will take all 'their' money, trying to make a point that this situation is not the same.

The thing is this situation isn’t at all unusual anymore. I’ve been through it, so has another close friend and another one going through the same now. It’s increasingly common for women to be the higher earners but still in 90% of cases they are the primary carer during marriages and after divorce as well, regardless. In fact, research showed that women who out-earn their husbands actually do a higher percentage of the childcare/ housework on average than the women who earn less than their husbands!

Divorce law and the rules around maintenance both urgently need updating to reflect reality and ensure that both parents are legally required to pay 50% of the actual costs of raising the children they create, including housing, childcare and everything else, and that just having been married to someone doesn’t come with a presumption that you should receive 50% of the assets if you’re contributing less in terms of money and care: the law is set up how it is because it assumes that the person earning less will be doing more caring/ parenting to compensate and in a great many cases now this is simply not reality.