Unfortunately it looks like I'm headed for divorce for reasons I won't go into here. I'm hoping I can get some advice on the financials because I want to work out a settlement that is fair to both of us and provide stability for our DCs, 3 girls of primary school age (youngest is 5).
For background, I'm the only earner in the family (around £70-75k a year) and built my career before we married. DW has never had any career ambition and tended to take lower paid admin roles before the children came along and since 2011 has been a SAHM. Agreement was that she would retrain when youngest went to school and go back to work after a couple of years. I know I'm going to get less of the assets and pay child maintenance and happy to do so. (Just to say I think divorce seems fair in England, it's right and proper SAHMs are given time to adapt and I don't need advice from people who are going to whinge about it)! I do want to be fair to myself as well as my DW though.
Child maintenance looks straight forward. £700 a month. Looks like I can let my wife take child benefit and I can pay the higher tax charge too without affecting her benefits.
Problem though. I think a Mesher Order might be a good idea not for the next 13 years but until youngest DD goes to secondary school, when the eldest is 18, my DW can work full time and when we have enough equity to both buy something decent. But looks like the expectation these days is that the house transfers to DW and for the bank to approve it she has to prove she can pay the mortgage that is around £1.3k a month. Through benefits and maintenance she would only be left with about £500 a month for everything which is not enough.
Anyway, I thought a bit of spousal maintenance for the next 7 years would sort that out and happy to pay it because we'll both get a decent lump sum when the house sells and could agree 60/40 split in her favour. Apparently not though because every £1 in spousal I give her, £1 will be taken away in UC. I would have to give her around £850 spousal a month before she was even £1 better off and I can't afford that on top of my own rent and essentials. To get what she needed to pay the mortgage she would need 75% of my net income.
Do I have other options? Capitalising spousal won't help because house and pension are our only assets and having capital would stop her UC anyway. She can't work yet because she is retraining and no point dragging that out part time. Could I just pay her more child maintenance? Or would the bank accept a Mesher where I pay some of the mortgage directly not as spousal but for my own piece of the property?