daft financial settlement offer?

[pinkhalf]

Divorcing husband. I have just got his first without prejudice offer on finance.

Its rubbish, I think. 50/50 on equity, he keeps his pensions, his investments, and his investment in his mothers house. We split debts equally.

Me? I get to keep my pension. 50 per cent of the house. Or I can buy him out for around 170000 to avoid disrupting our daughters life.

I am the main carer for our child who will start school next year - no read sole carer at the moment as he does no over nights. I work part time. I earn a third of what he does, and he works for a financial fund with bonuses.We were married for seven years, but had a realtionship for 10 years before.

So the offer is laughable - but really, is it normal to have such stupid offers? I mean, I assume I'm due more than this. Its not really an attempt to agree anything - it cant be anything that a court would agree, given we have a childand I'm going to struggle to raise a mortgage sufficient to stay in London....

is this just standard greedy high earner bullshit?

He's gone in at what he knows is the minimum.

I can't see that a clean break is any good when we have a 3 year old - really, he can pony up with a lump sum for a clean break if that is what he wants! I want no tie with him - he can fuck off forever. He fought me for some time to avoid paying child maintenance which told me everything in terms of his attitude, and then stopped paying the mortgage after claiming he couldn't afford that either (nb he pays both of these things now, fool). You really do learn about people properly on divorce.

There are no investments except the pensions - he got us into debt.

I suppose I can just wait it out. As far as I can see I can just sit here and make him pay general costs on the basis of his income now. This is stupid and doesn't resolve anything. And it costs him money. I don't get it. It's like he can't let go or something - if he wants shot of me then I'd have assumed a quick offer and bam, done.

The lawyer is excellent but seriously expensive though she's got so many excellent points that I would just have missed and is clearly laying the ground well for court (I can see that she's busy making him look bad (not too hard as this is someone who gets his lawyers to write about splitting domestic items like hoovers and sends odd emails trying to get me to commit insurance fraud!)- however the matter is complex and I've no doubt that I will need some alternative advice to conclude this properly in my favour. And I am told it will take at least another year from the date of issue to sort.

Child access is a big problem after section 47, then section 7 report to come - I think it will be supervised access for quite a while. Ex's behaviour has been considerably less than mint condition towards child. But he wants shared custody - really, I can see that he wants that because its about money. I will just have to wait for section 7 to come through.

Does anyone know a good direct access barrister who can do both finance and child custody cases? I have to explore cutting costs on at least one of these matters and getting some resolution.

www.st-philips.com/our-people/barristers/nick-howell-jones/

direct access barrister I used

(tbt, I was similar in that I earned a lot more than my ex (and for someone in that position a clean break was definitely sensible - that is a clean break from claiming spousal support from each other as we both worked full time). In our case my solicitor said if the older children would efinitely choose to live with me (they were old enough to choose as your 16 year old woudl be) the court would be unlikely to split the younger children from the older and thus it was very likely the children would live with me,. I would not have divorced had that not been so. )

Thank you Deo.
Yes, I have also been told it is rare to split children.
We haven't told them we are divorcing.
Husband is using DS2 as a pawn. DS1 less so but I would not put him past trying to guilt DS into saying he wants to live with him.
Are teenagers supported?

By professionals I mean.

Your offer is better than mine! My husband wants to keep the house without paying me a penny! Laughable!

Anyway...the 50:50 equity is normal. You could claim half of his pension and he could claim half yours. Or you could both leave each other's pensions alone. However....you can ask for maintenance! Esp as you look after your daughter most of the time and he earns more! I don't know if that will enable you to keep the house, but it will help you pay for somewhere suitable! Ask a solicitor for help!

Good luck!

Yes, we decided our pensions were probably worth about the same and had 20 years of full time earning to come anyway so made no claims on the pension of the other and we both always worked full time.

My older children asked me to divorce their father so my divorce was utterly different from most. Nothing has done us all more good.