It depends on your circumstances but the advice you get from friends is invariably going to be bad/wrong/ill advised. Yes there are laws and yes courts may or may not award things in the circumstances they are presented, but ultimately the law can only protect you so much and therefore divorce is just as much a negotiation.
If you got yourself into a situation where you could live in the house until your youngest was 18 and your ex had to pay some of the mortgage too, that would be extremely disadvantageous to him and it would be in his best interests both to fight you all the way to a final hearing (the considerable expense this will involve will be a far lower barrier to him because agreeing to what you want would be extremely prejudicial to his interests) and to then seek to undermine the order in the future.
I was threatened with a Mesher Order by my ex-wife. The mortgage on the property was so large that she had no prospect of ever taking me off it or affording the payments on her own. She would have needed the order for 15 years and by the time I got my share (she was offering 25%) I would have been too old to buy anything myself. Now, in theory she could have taken this to court and might have been successful in getting an order, although the odds were perhaps slightly against her (suitable accommodation for her and the children that cost 25% less than the FMH existed that she could buy on her own provided she maximised her own earning capacity). But this is where negotiation comes in. The courts can order what they like but what they can't do is motivate a person to carry on working in a stressful job for no reward. I made it clear to my ex-wife that whilst I would show "good conduct" by continuing to do my job I had no motivation to keep it and would probably get sacked sooner or later because I wouldn't make any effort to be professional, do a good job etc. The real clincher though is that my wife didn't want to be put in a position where she would be expected to maximise her own earning capacity. In theory she was capable of working in a graduate profession earning at least £40k within 5 years so even if she got a Mesher she would have been expected to get me off the mortgage in 5 years, so the order she was likely to have been awarded would have been useless to her. In the end she took the capital and downsized and I kept the pension.
The same applies to spousal and child maintenance. Child maintenance is generally less controversial because it is a fixed amount for the children and only really becomes an issue if a recipient shows bad conduct by spending the money on themselves instead of the children. That's unlikely in practice, as children are expensive! Spousal maintenance is more controversial. Again, my ex-wife wanted this because she didn't want to work. My solicitor basically made it clear to her that if she was obliged to mitigate her own situation and again the point about her earning capacity was relevant. If she chose not to get back into the workplace within a couple of years, that was going to be her problem, not mine. Again, she could have gone to court but I made it clear that in the very unlikely scenario that she got substantive maintenance for more than a year on the grounds she wasn't working, I wouldn't bother working either. The courts again can order whatever they like, but they can't force you to work.
If you want a good divorce, my recommendation is not to do as my ex-wife did and start with the question "what am I entitled to" and then work out how little you can do for yourself. Instead, start from the point of "how much can I help myself" and then seek to bridge the gap between that and your needs. It's very unlikely you will need a Mesher Order until the children are 18 and also not in your own best interests either. It's more than likely you can downsize to something suitable and earn enough to have a mortgage on your own in a much shorter timeframe. There are specialist brokers who can get you a mortgage with UC and CM which won't be available to you when the Mesher Order ends. Downsizing now gives you a much better chance of owning your own home forever.