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.

Does a 13 year old need/have an after school club? And do they need picking up from it at 4:30?

I suppose this all goes along with children being constantly babied these days.

Sil is a vulture and a shining example of women who rinse men for all they can get.

She sounds quite spoilt. With one DC at university & the other 2 teens, she needs to get a job and support herself. Help your brother get a good lawyer.

No but I’m talking about the past 13 years. If the DH wanted her to go back to work when they were younger then the rest needed to be 50:50.

She went back to work recently and didn't like it, so gave it up. What makes you think it would have been different 10 years ago?

When I met dh I was working as a social worker, long hours, stress etc. dh was an engineer. I earnt more than him for the first five years of our marriage. When we had DS he is disabled, overnight our lives changed. I tried to go back to work part time but DS couldn’t go to nursery and we were putting stress on grandparents. Plus all the doctors/hospital and the worry, it was too much. We agreed I would give up work because dh by then earned slightly more than me and had long term good earning prospects. I looked after DS, managed the medical side, schooling and home life. Dh was all in on evenings and weekends but during the week he focused on his work, he worked late/early if needed and travelled. Ten years later dh earns nearly 3x what he did then he started as a junior and is now a manager. Had he had to do 50% parenting he would have likely lost his job and wouldn’t have progressed as he had. I work 12 hours a week in a low paid role round ds school hours dh earns 10x what I do. The only difference between me and the sahp in this scenario is there wasn’t a choice we had to make a change. So yea I did support dh careers he wouldn’t be where he is now if i hadn’t sacrificed my career.

So she wants two men to keep her??

Sounds great. Sign me up!

I’m not talking about whether she
would stick at a job ten years ago I’m talking about the DH doing 50% of all the housework/cooking/cleaning/covering illness/covering school holidays/doing 50% of all the pick ups and drop offs and everything else that comes with having three small children.

He wanted her to go back to work years ago - the argument is she is lazy and work shy and hasn’t benefited his career at all. But what we don’t know is would she have gone back to work and then knew full well she’d be working full time and doing 90% of everything related to the kids and the house. It’s very difficult to split things 50:50 when one partner has vital travel for work…they are literally not in the country.

You’ll always, rightly so, have your brothers back. But you are not privy to what happened in their marriage.
Has she got a pension? Or has she provided childcare for all of these years so your brother could work and have kids and presumably he has the pension that they were meant to share.
I don’t know of any man, when they know divorce was coming, that hasn’t at least tried to squirrel away what they could in the sneakiest of ways. Honestly, I think it’s human nature.

Some of these comments are wild! I had 3 children very close together, my OH was the main bread winner, worked long hours and abroad at times but guess what? I didn't become a SAHM I worked full time with the first 2 and then went part time when I had my 3rd. I then worked back up to full time over the years. I had to use nursery/child-minder/family to help and on days I was working they didn't go to after school clubs. And I did 90% of everything else as well which I knew would happen. I went to work because I wanted to and I made it work. If she wanted to work she could - the assumption that she sacrificed her career for his is such a stereo type. She needs to stand on her own two feet and provide for her children because she can - she just doesn't want to. Read the Ops posts before posting what appear to be old fashioned and very stereo typical comments about him not stepping up and her doing all the work at home! From what the Op says she asked him to move out so can't have it both ways. Get a grip some of you!

It's the assumption they both have the same earning potential before DC appeared on the scene. In most cases they don't

Why is it do you think that childless men earn more than childless women?
Sexism.
Though to be fair, these days a lot of young couples early in their careers earn about the same. It is when the new parents are older, late thirties or early forties, that the men are earning more.

a high salary which OP brother earned through the dedication and groundwork he put in at school/university/graduate job
And the sexism working in his favour

More fool you for doing 90% of everything at home too. Lucky husband! Go feminism - you didn’t have it all you did it all!

god I hate how this thread has instantly descended into attacking stay at home mums. If he can afford two four bed houses I am guessing his job is well paying. He also willingly had three children who attended multiple extra curricular activities. I’m not saying the ONLY way he achieved was because he had a partner at home bearing the domestic and emotional load BUT I’m guessing it played a huge role. Devaluing sahp is so depressing

Maybe he had to work so hard to progress at work and earn well because he had a wife who was refusing to work. Maybe earning 50:50 and parenting 50:50 was his preference

When I read threads like this it's no surprise that men are increasingly refusing to get married and turning to sex-bots. So many women are just greedy.

But he’s still saying he can’t parent 50/50 because he has a job, even now they are teens he says that.
So it doesn’t at all seem like parenting and earning 50/50 was ever his preference. His wife paying 50% of the bills might have been his preference but him doing 50% of the parenting definitely isn’t.

She might receive 70% of the house, but I doubt she would receive 70% of the overall marital assets once everything, including savings and pensions, is considered.
I think you’re getting a hard time here, OP. Not many people who separate manage to have their ex move out, fund another home and continue supporting the family home at the same level for years. Your SIL appears to view your brother’s earnings as joint money and still wants all the financial benefits of being married. I’m surprised he hasn’t sought a formal financial order before now and has continued giving her an allowance for this long.

Have people missed the part where she wants him to pay her new mortgage so she can keep money in savings?

How old is your SIL? Her age, earning capacity, ability to work and opportunity to build her own pension will surely all be relevant. People on here regularly tell women not to give up their careers and to retain some financial independence, yet some immediately jump from “she was a SAHM” to “she should receive everything she wants.”
The children are 19, 14 and 13, so they are presumably capable of managing themselves for reasonable periods. She has already demonstrated that she can work 3.5 days a week, and if she genuinely felt burnt out, why couldn’t she reduce her hours or find a more suitable role? Resigning with no intention of finding another job and expecting her ex-husband to fund that choice indefinitely is not reasonable.

She's packed in work so she needs a bigger share of assets . Your brother was ill advised not to have sorted out finances legally much sooner. He needs to get valuations for everything, including pensions abd get cracking.

The point is that this particular woman evidently has facilitated this particular man. Which isn't affected by whether other women have done the same in their relationships, or whether there were other options open to the couple at the time.

My DP has a law degree, passed the bar and earns a very good wage. I’m a high school dropout, I’ve done alright for myself career wise but sexism has nothing to do with why I don’t earn as much as him.

You brother needs to get a family lawyer on his case rather than rely on social media advice. A clean break financial order will take into account the needs of the parties, an equitable split of the matrimonial assets , and her earnings potential. Pension splitting is negotiable but some wives prefer to settle for a bigger slice of the value of equity in the home to give them the security of home ownership even if it's a smaller house, without having to work full time. . She is unlike to get a 'life time meal ticket' by way of maintenance once the children have finished their education and are adults. Depending on where the children want to live ( their school and friends are factors) your brother ought to try to settle on 50:50 split of child care arrangements for the younger two children. . He might start by suggesting they spend and 75% of their time with him as he seems to have adequate accommodation.

But it sounds like he's got a new mortgage on his place.

I know so many women like this, OP, who think that they deserve to not work. Obviously I'm not including those with children with special needs or very young children. And time and again we've seen on here women who don't work whose husbands leave them and they're saying, "But I'm a SAHM" when the children have either left home or are about to.

She has also benefitted hugely. She got to not work for nearly 20 years, while he had to work and miss out on time with his kids ( yes MN, most men actually like spending time with their kids)