Equity owed or not do you reckon?

[Witchathulu]

Following on from other threads about money, the ex, us potentially moving, and the whole mess with my ex, I want to pose a theoretical question.

Regardless of gender, 2 people move in together with 2 dc's. Adult No. 1 is the main earner, and their wages mostly support the family. Adult No. 2 works part-time, and cares for the dc's the rest of the time. A remortgage pays for a new kitchen & some decorating, but the rest is spent on a holiday & other things. Whilst living there, Adult No. 1 paid the interest-only mortgage payments until there was a remortgage, from which point on no contribution was made.

For whatever reason, they split up, and Adult No. 1 is the one to leave the house. On leaving the property, Adult No. 1 does not contribute to the house financially at all, and does not pay Adult No. 2 the agreed maintenance payments, nor for the 1/2 of the child care costs above what Adult No. 2 receives in Child Tax Credit.

While Adult No. 1 has the children for 50% of the time, they refuse (for 5 years) to take any responsibility for the children's travel between school and both homes, nor pays for childcare costs after school on their days of responsibility.

2 years after the split, Adult No. 2 remarries & has 2 dc's with new spouse. New spouse, being the main earner, takes over paying the mortgage interest payments, & fits a new bathroom, new flooring throughout & decorates the entire flat, including decorating & painting the communal hallway.

What I'd like to know is, does anyone think that Adult No. 1 should be paid any equity from the property when it's sold, and if so, how much - should it be 50% of the property's worth on their departure, 50% of the property's worth on it's sale, or are they owed anything at all?

Hope that's clear enough for judginess! I've tried to leave all the emotionally inciting factors out of it, but obviously I'm Adult No. 2.

I may be viewing it simplistically, but this is how I would see it.

A1 is owed half the equity on the value of the property on the day they left.

Balanced against this is the value of the contributions that should have been forthcoming for their share of the childrens expenses / maintenance, so this should be subtracted from the equity due to them.

This is what sounds fair to me, but it may not be right / enforceable in law

don't undestand the remortgage bit? Do you mean that you remortgaged but never paid anything back ie defaulted, or that adult 2 paid this
mortgage on her own for a period before adult 1 moved out?
Who paid the house deposit and was it large?

Right - my mum lent both of us the deposit for the house (about 12k) with the understanding that we would repay her on the sale of the house.
A1 paid 40 interest payments - so didn't pay any of the actual mortgage. He benefited from the first remortgage, but from that moment onward, he stopped paying his 'contribution' into my bank account, so effectively we were all living off the remortgage. I.e.

Nov 2001-Feb 2004 - paid the interest-only payments - I contributed 100% of my earnings to bills.
Mar 2004 - remortgaged, so payments went up - he contributed nothing. Kitchen and decoration, wedding (that was cancelled 3 months before being due to take place) & holiday to Canada, oh, and his dope habit paid for with remortgage money. I only discovered this in 2007 when I went through old bank statements trying to work out what he'd contributed financially over the years.
Mar 2005 - he moved out. Rather than sell, I decided to get a secured loan so that I could pay for an exploratory operation to see if we could find the cause of my mystery illness, and keep the house going until I got a job and a lodger and tax credits, which I did. I was chronically ill & not really up to working, but I did it because I didn't want the kids to lose their home on top of everything else. If I hadn't I probably would have sold for a pittance, repaid my mum and given him half of what was left, but we would have been homeless with no income.

Mar 2007 - DH (then DP) moved in and started paying mortgage interest payments, spent every holiday decorating the place and financially supported DD, DS and me.

He didn't pay any maintenance for the children until last year when DH said enough was enough and we went to the CSA. When he moved out, he did nothing but moan about how he was getting no money out of the house - DH and I paid him £11,000 in August 2007. This was calculated by assuming that had he not been with me, he would have paid about 300/month in rent, so I reimbursed him for anything he'd paid over that amount, plus I reimbursed him for the life insurance he'd paid on my behalf. This came to about £7800. Simultaneously, we had a tax credit overpayment charge of £3200. (I still think that was bollocks, but it was a very fraught time, I was ill, needing an operation, DH had left - I was a mess,) I was going to pay it myself, but the ex said he was so desperate for cash we should give him the money and he would arrange to repay it gradually. I foolishly agreed - obviously looking back I've made some HUGE MASSIVE blunders, but I've never been great with money, and am only just getting to grips with it now.

My point is, is that while theoretically he may be owed half the equity of the property's value on moving out - he's shafted both me and DH in so many ways over the years, that we really feel that he has no entitlement to it, and if anything, he owes us for half the deposit to my mum, the maintenance he's never paid, and for the petrol I've spent over the years ferrying the kids to and fro to his house and school on his days of access, for 1/2 the childcare we've paid for that he's never contributed to, and obviously 1/2 the tax credit bill. Friends have said that we shouldn't have given him the 7800, that he was bloody lucky to get that, but it was all we could do to get him to shut the fuck up placate him.

Sorry for long post.

Sorry, just going over that - it should be June 04 and July 04, not Feb and Mar.

Ha - on the provision that he's entitled to 1/2 the equity on moving out, once you deduct the lost 5 yrs maintenance payments, 1/2 missed mortgage payments, 1/2 the tax credit bill back, petrol for 5 years, 1/2 the remortgage money, & 1/2 childcare costs he owes us £20 000! Will have to check against bank/mortgage statements, but I'm pretty sure I'm not v far out with that one!

Are you about to sell the house?

Sounds like it would be easy to justify giving your ex nothing at all and depending on how much equity there is now in the house it may not be worth him fighting a legal battle with you to try to get more money than you have already given him.

Presumably you want to stay on good terms with him for the sake of the children? For this reason it may be worth having a discussion as to what he feels is fair and why.

In 2007 he accepted a payment of £11000 as a settlement with the provision that he never claimed the equity - however, because he's already threatened to go to court over moving his weekday dinners to the holidays, as we'll be moving too far for them to come down twice during the week to see him, DH and I have just gone over the numbers properly, working out what we would have given him, should he claim that that's what we should have done.
However, as far as I can see, once you take EVERYTHING into account - missed mortgage payments from him, the remortgage, maintenance, including paying him half the equity of the house's worth in 2005, he still owes us just over 37000. Seriously. The man's an arsehole. I don't call that justification, I call it karma.

Will you still have to pay for the travel?

If he's accepted a settlement with the provision that he never claims the equity (presumably he signed something to this effect) then I don't see how he can now take you to court for more money.

oh he'll probably try - which is why I sat down to work it all out, just so that when he goes to try I can turn around and tell him to fuck off politely point out that actually, he owes us £37,000 if he wants to work it out that way!

er, EFA, we've basically said we'll split the travel responsibilities in half - we'll do one weekend, he can do the other, same for holiday visits. Obviously we'll be coming back regularly anyway to see friends and family, so that's fine, but we've offered to put him up for the other weekend, or if he wants to meet half way that's fine too. We think that's reasonable and fair.

He's entitled to half the equity (after deducting the debt to your mum, and the mortgages - save for the one you took out after separation that presumably has nothing to do with him). You can claim credit to the extent by which you've reduced the capital debt of the mortgage since separation.

BUT: if he accepted £11,000 in full and final settlement (and you have proof that this was the basis upon which you paid the £11k) he has compromised a claim against the equity. See a solicitor.