Are my SIL's divorce expectations unrealistic?

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In short, my brother and SIL intend to divorce but she wishes to continue being a SAHM. Their children are 19 (away at uni), 14 and 13.

They separated 4 years ago and were cohabiting until SIL started dating a new man. My brother has quite a well paid job and managed to buy a 4 bed flat in the nearby city. It needed a lot of work but is finished now. He WFH a fair bit so has the kids there when needed. He does at times have to travel overseas for work.

My brother has also recently started seeing someone new. So, brother and SIL have started to discuss selling their marital home (SIL is still living there with the children).

SIL has been a SAHM since the children were born and this had been the source of a lot of friction in the marriage as the children got older. My brother had no problem with SIL not being in paid work, but she is a big spender. I have been at their house many times when numerous boxes of stuff arrived from Amazon. My brother eventually set a budget that SIL was not delighted about. She also has some debt of her own, my brother has paid some of it off.

SIL went back to work 3.5 days a week when they separated. This job suits her perfectly and she can sometimes work from home. However, a few weeks ago she started talking about 'burn out' and has now resigned from the job. She has no intention of finding a new job but is saying that she wants to sell the house, that her share should be 70% because she has the children living with her, and needs to buy a 4 bed house in the town we live in (which is expensive). She wants a sum of money to put into a savings account and she wants her new mortgage to be paid by my brother.

They are amicable (at the moment). My brother told me last night that she is now asking him to go to financial mediation because she thinks he is hiding funds. He has told me that he isn't, and has 2 savings accounts and his pension - which she knows about.

AIBU to feel that I've never really heard anything like this? When my exH and I separated, I immediately upped my hours at work to full time and my children were also teens.

Not sure she will get him to pay her mortgage. But given there are children you never know.

In answer to your question OP. No, your SIL is not unrealistic at all.

But whether it is entirely fair is another matter.

While she was at home (i.e. not working) he had the benefit of two full-time workers (two 8 hour shifts covering all waking hours, no sick leave, no holidays off), plus housekeeping/household management, and cleaning and other housework (even if they had a weekly cleaner as well). You know childminders and nannies don't normally do cleaning or household tasks?

How much do you think that would have cost him if he had to pay employees to do it?

You might say that from when the youngest was at school he only actually needed childcare before and after school and during the school holidays, (and for inset days, and for days when the children were off school sick, or he would have had to use his annual leave) but because she was at home he had 16 hours of childcare and housework daily, all year round, and did not have the nightmare of arranging it.
Do you know how difficult it is to get reliable long-term childcare? There is always juggling to cover the carer's holiday dates and then finding a new carer because the last one stopped working or whatever.

So yes, her being a SAHM massively benefitted him, not just in the hours of essential childcare that she covered, but also in taking the mental load of organising it off him, doing all the extra hours, and doing the housework so that he didn't have to do everything in the evenings and weekends like single working parents do.

Yes, likely 60-70% of all the assets, including his pension and the home he is now living in as marital assets. The calculation will be the value of everything into one pot, the % applied, and her share is likely to be the family home plus the relevant amount of his pension to total up to her %. But it depends on the details like savings and mortgages.
Mediation before court is essential.

Child maintenance will be calculated separately.

If she carries on spending and doesn't work, her life will go to shit in about 10 years. She needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

But the flexibility he needs to work weeks overseas for work is being provided by her. She is still facilitating his job even though they are separated

She stayed at home because she wanted to. It will of course be easier.
However, if she really wanted to work the family could have found all manner of childcare from an au pair to a nanny. They did not try to. She did not try to.
Many couples both work and have children.
You can add in housework as hidden unpaid work but most people who work do that themselves too. And no, I would not be at all surprised to find out she did have a cleaner either.
Mental load as people like to call it these days is really organising and planning. Things people do whilst also going to work.
SAHM’s do not have the monopoly on housework and organising and planning.

People stay at home. And many like it. Fine. Good.
But I do get irritated when this transfers quickly into being I only did this because I had to, I didn’t really want to. I really wanted to work but had give it up.
Sometimes that may be so, but often it is not. It is not here.

@GoAdvertFree
If she gets what she's asking for or as I myself would say indulgently demanding,
She should then write the book,
Make loads of money
Then pay her source his inspiration fee for her bestseller

She is taking the pee and being lazy, and wants your brother to fund her laziness! It would be one thing if the kids were little, but they are teens. One isn't even a child for goodness sake!

What has his going overseas got to do with her ?
Absolutely nothing.

Yes of course she wanted to stay at home. Nobody has said otherwise.
That is irrelevant to the question of how much it benefitted him.

As I said before, if he were a single parent, all the housework, organisation, and everything else he would have had to do in the evenings and at weekends. He would have had very little time for himself.

SAHM’s do not have the monopoly on housework and organising and planning.
Straw man argument.

I don’t agree on your assessment of florists. There are people employed by a high street florist, there are people who have spent years growing their own business whether that is owning their own shop and building a good reputation locally or working out of an industrial until with client books that include wedding venues, hotels or corporates.

yes she could get a ‘job’ as a florist again, but I think it is naive to think that this is a job that can’t have been disadvantaged by not being in the workplace for years.

I am a divorce solicitor. And there is some terrible advice on this thread. Go to mediation if he has nothing to hide nothing bad can come of it. Saves on legal costs and ensures an agreed settlement. Nobody on here knows the full picture so can’t give specific advice. He might earn so much that she’s entitled to spousal maintenance, he might offset that against the house, he might give her more of the house to keep his pension intact. So many variables.

He was not a single parent. So no point hypothetically musing over it.
And saying SAHMs do not have a monopoly on housework etc is not a straw man argument.
It is a very real experience for many people.

@GoAdvertFree I don’t think you’re being unreasonable at all -your SIL’s expectations are far outside what’s typical in a divorce, especially at this stage of life.

She hasn’t been a SAHM to small children for years. The youngest is 13. She went back to work after the separation, found a role that suited her, and then chose to resign. That’s not “burnout”, that’s opting out. Courts don’t reward someone for voluntarily giving up income.

A 70/30 split because the teens live with her is not how financial settlements work. Teenagers are not toddlers. They are in school all day, increasingly independent, and one is already at university. Child arrangements don’t justify her claiming the majority of the marital assets.

Her wanting a 4‑bed house in an expensive area, a lump sum for savings, her mortgage paid by your brother, and to remain unemployed …is simply not realistic. It’s not how divorce finances work in the UK. Judges expect both parties to maximise their earning capacity, especially when children are older. She doesn’t get to resign and then demand to be financially maintained at the same lifestyle level.

Your brother buying himself a flat and renovating it doesn’t mean he’s “hiding money”. It means he’s been living separately for years and has provided a stable base for the children when they’re with him. That’s normal.

If anything, he’s been extremely accommodating, he’s continued supporting her, paid off some of her personal debt, and allowed her to remain in the marital home long after the relationship ended.

Her demands sound less like legal reality and more like panic, entitlement, or magical thinking now that she’s dating someone new and imagining a fresh start funded by your brother.

I could get my head around the fact she wants a 70/30 split because of the kids but why she thinks he would then pay the mortgage for her new home is beyond me. And will she get a mortgage without an income - I'm assuming he won't be able to get it in his name as he will be paying his own mortgage and won't have the credit available. He needs to pay maintenance for the kids but from the sounds of it he is a good man trying to do his best,

Financial mediation is fine, it’s standard, but it won’t produce the outcome she’s imagining.

You’re right: most people in her situation would be increasing their hours, not resigning and expecting to be kept.

I agree with your thinking, but keep out of it, she will find out the hard way when it comes to the financial settlement.

From the comments here and all the widely differing opinions, I would have thought a financial mediator is an excellent idea. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear. It may also give them a settlement that your brother can be happy with for decades to come - to me it does sound like she is expecting too much, and while he might feel that is ok right now, it is something he could come to regret later.

So if he's away for a week, he then can't have the children for a week? You can't see why she should be rewarded for being the primary carer? Any crisud and young people can still have a crisus, she's got to be available. You do need to keep out of it though.

How could he? He has a job to go to. I am not sure how he could be at home with them and be at work?

🤣🤣🤣 but you expect her to?

If you sacrificed your career to raise children and support your partners career then it’s reasonable to negotiate spousal support if their earnings are substantial enough to manage it . But it sounds more like she can work but doesn’t want to?

From what you say, her demands sound unreasonable.

Oh come on. A SAHP can be extremely helpful, especially for high earners which it is clear OP's brother is. Trips away, evenings out, early starts. Mental load. etc etc etc.

DH was a SAHD when our DC were small. Not a chance in hell I'd have been able to do the job I did without that - unless I paid through the nose for a full time, live in nanny.

These threads make me uncomfortable because we’re only getting the OPs side of things which is obviously biased to her brother. It’s not really fair to call SIL anything as we don’t have both sides of the story.

It is much easier for one person to progress in their career if the other is a SAHP. I’m on maternity leave atm but my DH has used this to his advantage by working late nights and long hours as we don’t have to split the usual nursery runs, chores, etc for our older children. This is putting him ahead in his job.

I am not stirring anything up. I am interested in other people's opinions because I was very surprised when she quit her job! 3.5 days a week, fitted around the kids (who are 14 and 15), sometimes could WFH. This 'burned her out' after a year.

You are right, I did go a bit quiet when she told me all of this. I would rather be told on here to stay out of it than allow the way I feel to spill out of myself so like I wrote, I shall be stayed out of her way for a while.

It is hard because I really do like her very much. But I have never been able to relate to her (lack of) work ethic. When I separated from my ex.. I went straight to 4 days a week to full time. I had a long commute and unsociable hours at one point and it was bloody hard but I survived.

Getting a higher % of the house proceeds sounds reasonable as she hasn't been earning a full-time income for around 19yrs, which has enabled your DB to excel in his career. The 50/50 split is only a starting point, before other considerations are made.

I don't think Spousal maintenance is a thing in the UK anymore, but she doesn't need it because her youngest child's age enables her to work. But as for expecting your DB to pay for her new mortgage? That's batshit crazy.

She needs to get a job.

My DH's friend's now ex wife got a wake-up call when they divorced recently, she had assumed she would get to keep living in their marital home forever and keep getting a (huge) monthly allowance from him, basically like nothing financially changed between them. She was brought down a peg or two and now has to sell the family home and won't be getting an allowance. She has had to very reluctantly get a job. The only thing I would say is that the payout she got from him was very low considering how well-off he is (from the company he started with her support during the marriage, she also worked there to begin with), and that she gave up a successful career to be a SAHM.

To what? SAH? Now the kids are 14 and 15 (and one at uni) and she had a job that fitted in around them that she resigned from because she was 'burnt out'.

Wish people would read.