Stay at home mum getting divorced, need advice

[LittleMissMaghribi]

Hi everyone, I am possibly looking at the option of divorcing my husband and first need some advice.

I am a Moroccan national with Moroccan citizenship. I married my husband at the end of 2015 and we had 2 sons whilst I lived in Morocco.

My husband applied for a settlement visa for me which was granted this month and I am now in the UK.

I went to my cousins house rather than go to my husband, and I don't have any income, benefits, or job.

My husband has a job that brings in around £35,000 a year before tax.

He doesn't own a home and has about £15,000 in assets (mainly savings with about £4000 in stocks and shares) and about £10,000 of liabilities (mainly credit card debts), so a networth of about £5,000.

If I divorce him, will he be legally required to pay any of his salary to me during the divorce proceedings, so I can pay my own rent and expenses? And how about after divorce?

He also has a pension of about £20,000 if that makes a difference but is nowhere near retirement age (we are both early thirties).

After divorce, would he be required to share his salary with me and roughly how much do you think he would have to share?

My visa conditions state that I cannot claim benefits, so would not be entitled to government support, and I am not sure about if I would be able to find work. I have a degree in sociology but don't have a lot of work experience.

Since my sons have British nationality, I am looking at changing my visa to a parent visa, since I don't think I can stay on a settlement visa if we divorce. Would I be entitled to benefits?

Does anyone have experience of being the stay at home mum without an income during divorce and were you entitled to some of your husbands salary in the divorce proceedings (before and after), and was it enough to live on without additional income from benefits or work?

Please let me know your experiences in how the finances might work out in such a situation. I am a bit stressed. We are not really getting on at the moment and I need a plan B for how I can live if we can't live together going forwards.

Also, we are not currently living together. I am staying with a relative. Am I better off living with him and does that increase my rights during a divorce if we share a house? in the case of a divorce, if we are renting a property, does it matter who's name is on the rental documents, and would he be the one required to leave or me if he pays the rent, and would he still need to pay the rent for me and our sons even if he moved out?

Please let me know what my rights and responsibilities are.

Thank you for your help.

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What job did you do in Morocco?

If you really want a life for you and your sons in the U.K. you should establish yourself in a job as soon as you can and certainly before trying to divorce your husband.
Immigration for spouses is intended do you can live together as a family, it won’t really support you to live here if you’re not already settled here.
My advice would be to take control of your own life here and get a job or a qualification.

Realistically, its looking like living with an adulterer is one of my only viable options

Ive never worked in Morocco. We are a traditional society so my father took care of me all my life and my husband a little when he came here.

I had a good education in a private school and went to University, but never worked after I graduated.

Morocco is different to UK, women are not really expected to work, although things are starting to change now.

Op, you may be entitled to half of what came into the marriage after the marriage, you are not entitled to anything before he married you that he had, and with such a short marriage it is unlikely you will get spousal support.

Likely the best you can hope for is child maintenance. There is a calculator on line. As he's a relatively low earner with other kids, I'm afraid it will be peanuts and not enough for anyone to live on.

As such any decisions you make will need to be based on how you can support yourself and your children. He isn't going to do it, and any money he's forced to pay will be so low it won't feed them never mind home them.

You have two options, either get a job or go back to Morocco I'm sorry. Finally, divorce in the uk is not punitive. No judgment is cast. It's irrelevant if he's cheating or not. It does not impact the settlement, of which there will likely be none other than child maintenance.

If you go back to Morocco I do not think he can be forced to pay, but that's about Moroccan law, not U.K. it would be very difficult to force him to, never mind expensive, and likely nearly impossible.

What about £10k, which is what I would earn with a full time job on minimum wage

Of course it's low, but it's a shit load more than he's going to pay you

To be honest OP it sounds like you'd be better off setting yourself free from this man and going home to start again, where you have the security of your family.

The UK is not always kind to single mothers not born here, and you may not be entitled to the same housing and unemployment benefits as a UK citizen. And once your children start school you would be entitled to even less and would be expected to obtain a minimum wage job.

This country is going to the dogs sharpish, and it looks like things here are only going to get worse.

I am really sorry but if you break up there has to be a pretty good chance that your husband will tell the immigration authorities that it was a marriage of convenience in the hope you'll lose your visa and be sent back to Morocco so he doesn't have to deal with you.

As others have said, spousal maintenance is extremely unlikely as you've been married a very short time and he has never supported you financially. Whilst adultery can be a grounds for divorce it doesn't entitle you to anything extra.

Child maintenance is only payable on what he earns, if he doesn't earn none will be payable.

I’m not a solicitor but when someone gets divorced in this country adultery has no impact on how finances are split - just google divorce, adultery and finances for proof from solicitors websites etc.

If you cannot receive benefits due to your visa and short time in this country, then you would only have CM to rely on and anything further would have to be earned. You really do need to get proper advice on this but I would imagine you will need to show you can support yourself to be able to stay. At least you have the option of returning to Morocco.

FWIW my job post divorce earned me 12k a year approx (the amount expected from a NMW job). Anything is a start, and not everyone owns a car so you might just have to tighten your belt until things get better financially for you.

Agreed. I’m hoping this thread isn’t real, it’s hard to think someone could be so naive and have two children in such an odd setup.
There’s almost no support available, and £10,000 isn’t enough for one person to live on in London, let alone 3.

In your situation, I would go back to Morocco. Perhaps I don’t understand what the challenges are of raising two children alone there but it sounds like you’d have more emotional and financial support. If your husband is not interested in a family life there is nothing to stay for in the UK. My ex partner hasn’t paid me a penny of maintenance in 14 years and you will hear of many other British women in the same boat. A life on benefits is not something to aim for, it’s a safety net for when working hard just isn’t an option.

£35k isn’t all that generous to run one household. Not sure how you think it will stretch to two. He might have to give you something but there’s no way he’ll be able to support you. You will need a plan B.

Also, if he’s still with his ex wife and they have children together who he supports and he didn’t want you to come here I think you have to accept that yes, you were a holiday wife as you put it. He sounds horrible and you and your children deserve better.

I think your only option is to go back to Morocco and to your family. A life here is simply not financially viable. The UK cannot possibly afford to subsidise citizens of every other country to raise their children here. The only thing you are going to get at all is child maintenance, and it's practically impossible to make a man pay even that if he really doesn't want to.

I am sorry, but by following a husband who hadn't proved he could and would support you to the UK you took an enormous gamble, and you lost. Really your only hope of staying here would be for whatever family you are staying with now to look after your children for free while you work all hours, and even then without any employment history and no subsidisation from benefits it's likely to be a grim, close to the bone existence.

Go home.

It's not even to stretch to two, it's to stretch to three. He already has three kids to someone else. Hence why he probably can't afford a home and lives in a house share. He's skint.

If he’s got 5 children, your amount of CM won’t be high. I’d go home.

I thought the UK was a place for womens rights and protected women and children from destitution and controlling and abusive husbands, but it seems like the divorce and immigration laws favour the UK national and bread winner massively

I think you're mixing things up. We are a society who believes in women's rights, we believe in equality and strive for it. But with equality comes responsibility. As women we are equal to men so we are equally responsible.

Yes we provide support for women in abusive marriages but this is not we simply financially provide for the woman it's we enable her to get out and have a refuge to go to a. Safe haven. We also provide financially for our citizens, and if you had been made a british citizen, or resident for a specific period, then you too would have been provided for, but clearly we do not provide financially for other countries citizens who haven't been here long and are just on a visa . I don't think any country does.

The law does not favour the bread winner as you put it, but the law ensures you can't marry someone and then after a short time divorce them and they have to then support you for ever more. The law is about ensuring fair play irrelevant of gender and having men and women treated as equals.

You are in a very weak position. Cheating makes no difference to divorce finances. It is almost impossible to force an ex to pay you if they don't want to. Some men pay nothing and get away with it.

It would be difference if this man was rich, but he isn't, and he already had children with another woman before you met him. There is only so much money to go around, and very little of it would go to you.

If you cannot work to earn enough to stand on your own two feet then you might have to consider returning to your parents, getting divorced, then planning your future. Good luck.

I don’t know about Morocco but in the EU the other parent has to pay child maintenance even if they live in a different country where the kids live. I live in Finland but have a child with a British man. I gave birth in the uk, we all moved here at some point, childs father decided to move back to uk but he still has to pay me and does pay me cm. I don’t think it’s like “eu law”, I think every country who has signed and agreed to that “law” or whatever you’d call it, has agreed to follow it if you understand what I’m trying to say.

Also you’d probably need his written consent that you can move back to Morocco. Mother/father can’t take kids away from the other parent without their permission. At least that’s the case in EU and a lot of other countries. Again I don’t know if Morocco has agreed to that.

If I were you, I’d probably consider moving back to Morocco. Child care is very expensive in the uk so you might go to work just to pay for childcare and not have enough left for food and rent etc. especially if your children are under 3.

but it seems like the divorce and immigration laws favour the UK national and bread winner massively

No. British law is entirely different to the laws of the USA which can skew perception of what is right/wrong when it comes to finances and relationships because of the amount of Google and media related information out there.

Even for a British national it is rare to get spousal maintenance. British law takes the view that if you can work, you should work. The rare occasions where spousal maintenance is granted tend to be high salaries/company owners where the spouse was instrumental in the success of the business/career as a supporting spouse. We're talking here about families where the high earner was pretty much never around so childcare wouldn't have been a fair or reasonable option for the children. There are other examples that I'm sure a professional could walk you through.

You really need to drop the idea that spousal maintenance from a £35k a year job is a realistic expectation. Frankly the law doesn't care where you're from, it just doesn't ordinarily award spousal maintenance. If you want it granted you really do need a bloody good professional to argue the point and get it agreed in court.

Your husband's only financial obligation is to your children. He has to pay child maintenance. However take one look at the MN boards to see the tricks non-resident parents get up to to deprive their children of money. A decent non-resident parent that pays their fair share towards raising their child is not the norm. If he's so inclined, he can play many of the avoidance tricks to make his income appear lower for smaller payments or none at all.

You mention he has other children, this will reduce the amount of money your children are entitled to.

As harsh as it sounds, you almost need to forget about your husband's earning potential if you wish to live apart from him and work out how you can earn money to support your children. So...

1. Get a job that pays enough to support the three of you
2. Stay married to a cheater
3. Return home to Morocco

By all means keep fighting for him to pay child maintenance but definitely don't rely on it.

This is nothing to do with your nationality beyond the fact that you aren't entitled to benefits which is entirely right because you haven't paid a penny into the tax system to earn those benefits, nor are you in a vulnerable position of being an asylum seeker or disabled to the point of being unable to work.

Child benefits aren't payable to you if you leave the country. Morocco is neither part of the EEA nor is it a country the UK has an agreement with on these matters.

To be brutally honest, you sound like you had a pampered life with your parents and bought the lies that your husband sold you about an even better life here in the UK. You really need to stop believing that the world owes you something and create something for yourself.

clearly we do not provide financially for other countries citizens who haven't been here long and are just on a visa

Agree.

You might get a small amount of maintenance but this would stop or your husband went self employed and you’re not entitled to any benefits as part of your visa. You’re in a very vulnerable position.

I think your best bet is to investigate your options for going back to Morocco and getting him to pay child maintenance. There is some preliminary info here. Presumably any maintenamce you get will go further abroad.

I think you have a skewed perception of what he can afford on his salary in the UK. I'm not surprised he is in shared accomodation. After tax, national insurance and pensions contributions he probably earns £2000 a month. He would be lucky to rent a 3 bed property in London for less than £1500. The bills on that property will be about £300pm. That would leave £200pm for food, travel, clothes, everything - assuming he pays nothing to his ex which is unlikely. He simply can't afford to rent a house for you to live as a family even if he wanted to.

I can't imagine marrying and leaving my country for a man I've seen so few times. Never mind having children with him.
You do not come across well, your husband is meant to support you, not benefits, and I can't believe his controlling nature has only become apparent in this last month.
Did you not discuss the house before you moved?

I’m surprised you think £35000 is a large salary-you clearly aren’t used to running a home here. It sadly doesn’t go far and will never stretch to finding two homes!

Who is funding all of the living costs of you and your children currently? I presume they wont be happy to do this indefinitely?