A right to buy a house over renting?

[dizzyheightshotel]

Hello,
Can someone please give me some guidance on whether my friend is likely to be able to buy a house after her divorce if they go to court? I've heard that courts try to facilitate buying houses, but I'm not sure to what extent that is true.

I think these are the relevant facts:

• Both early 30s
• She has a decent job but works PT
• He is a high earner (£110k)
• 2 young DCs (6 and 3), she is the RP
• There's sadly not a lot of capital, roughly £50k after the FMH was sold (she moved) and he's paid off loans they took out together

Even if she gets all of the capital to use as a deposit (is this likely?), she will need a tidy sum of SM to give her the capacity to raise a mortgage on her own anywhere near where she rents now. Is the court likely to do this, even if that means it's almost certainly more than she would need/get if she carried on renting? How far off does she have to be before the court would bridge the gap, as it were?

All the advice is so vague! Thank you!

I’m presuming with kids aged 3 & 6 it was a short marriage?

Spousal maintenance is extremely rare. At 30 years old your friend is young enough to retrain and be independent. Women are expected to pay for themselves now adsys. The courts have an obligation to consider a clean break.

Your friend of course can buy a house if she has a deposit and a job in order to secure the mortgage. Only a proportion of child maintenance and benefits are considered by mortgage lenders.

Thanks Northern. They were married 5 years when they split, together for similar before that.

If it’s conceded that she won’t be able to buy a house just now, will that reduce her capital needs? She showed me the form E, and it all seems so arbitrary!

5 years or less is considered a short marriage so she will be entitled to less.

Starting point is 50:50. She has a job, but is probably RP so MAY be entitled to a larger proportion of the property.

A friend of mine (male, has not long got divorced). He was in a 9 year (classed as a medium term marriage). EW didn’t work (refused to). Kids were 7 & 10. EW was awarded 62% of the equity and told to get a job. Doesn’t matter if she wanted to buy or rent (although the equity will make her rent free in effect for 15 years).

I’m not a trained solicitor, but....

Both parents need suitable accommodation to house the children (even if the mother is the RP).

Thanks. Her ex lives with his new partner who owns her own home. I agree that on paper it sounds unlikely that she would/should be set up to buy somewhere, but she’s quite preoccupied by the fact that he earns so much more than her.

Doesn’t matter that the EX lives with his new partner and she owns her own home.

Instead of being so preoccupied that he earns so much more (and i’m presuming what she gets of it) your ‘friend’ should focus on herself and what she’s going to do to support herself. The days of men supporting women for eternity are gone.

I get that, Northern. I’m trying to steer her in the right direction, she’s just still very angry. It doesn’t help that she has family & friends telling her what she’s definitely ‘entitled to’.