Deciding a fair split

[aLittleL1fe]

Asking for a friend who needs to decide what's a reasonable and fair split in her circumstances, with respect to financial and child arrangements, so that she can put this on the table during mediation. Civil discussion with the ex directly isn’t possible.

She can come up with her own idea of what's fair but wouldn't want this to be unrealistic/unachievable. Broadly the feeling is that it should be in her favour above the 50/50 ‘default’ split for both financial and child arrangements due to power imbalance, abuse and no income of her own. She will need money to continue to look after children and to enable her to find work so that she can stand on her feet in the future.

A meeting is arranged with a solicitor to discuss this, but what are the good questions to ask, specifically? Beyond the broad ‘what do you think is possible in my circumstances’? She'd like to make sure she asks all the right questions and doesn't miss anything important.

Thanks.

Without providing the solicitor with a lot of information she isn’t going to get beyond a rough idea about what is possible.

She needs to use the time wisely to handover the salient information on income, savings, equity, pensions and debt. How does her ex earn a living, is he self employed and could he flex his career to do additional child care. How does your friend intend to have an income? Why can’t she work now and why isn’t she claiming benefits ? If the children are very young then he ability to work is limited. If they are teens then she can work. Do either of them have children outside the family unit. Is he in living with a new partner. Is she living with a new partner.

Ideally your friend should want to sever as much contact or reliance on him as possible, apart from child support.

@LemonTT this is all helpful, thank you.

Agree with above
Also need to consider length of marriage and their ages - short marriage and young is different to long marriage and older

Understanding earnings and assets available is key

Yes all good points. I don't want to post answers to these questions here (ages of children, length of marriage etc) because these sort of details can be outing.