Divorce - who gets what

[Anna713]

Please could someone give some advice regarding what would happen in the following situation

A and B want to divorce. They have been together 12 years and married for 8 years. They have one child together aged 12. B has an adult child from a previous relationship who has not lived with her since the child was 14. A earns a reasonable salary, works overtime and pays for the mortgage and all of the bills including a car on finance. B has only ever worked a few hours a week since way before they got together. There is little equity in the house, perhaps a few thousand. How would the finances work in this situation? Would A have to maintain B and child in the family house, and still be able to live somewhere else himself, especially as B cannot afford to pay for much in the way of associated bills, let alone any mortgage.

A is unlikely to have to maintain b
b would have to get a full time job and / or claim benefits

if b can’t get mortgage or pay for house it will let have to be sold

both need legal advice

Thank you. That's very helpful. I know we need legal advice asap.

Adult child is disregarded.

B needs to get a full time job - this would be expected at court (unless severe disability for B or child requiring B full time care)

A would need to pay child maintenance at standard rate according to how many days dc stays where.

If little equity then house needs to be sold and both move on. Courts dislike lengthy orders that tie either party in - a clean break is far more likely, especially with limited funds.

Does B have a pension? A may be entitled to a percentage of this.

The house would be sold and the equity split.

Depending on the custody split A may pay B maintenance.

B would need to get a job to support themselves.

Thanks all. There is no reason B can't get a full time job. B does have a small pension fund as does A. A is more than happy to pay child support but does not want to support B if they refuse to help themselves.

There are three critical factors that are not disclosed here:

1. What A earns;
2. What ages A and B are; and
3. What the equity in the house is.

If A earns under £100k they're very unlikely to have to maintain B for more than a year whilst they look for work. If A earns under £150k they are unlikely to have to maintain B for more than a few years whilst they retrain. More than that and spousal maintenance until the child is 18 is possible but by no means certain (and B will still be expected to mitigate their own circumstances as much as possible by working and claiming benefits).

B would normally be expected to work roughly in line with universal credit guidelines. That means 25 hours a week when children are aged 5-12 and full time for children 13+. Things might be different if B is in their late 50s. Then whilst they might be expected to work a little, spousal maintenance until retirement of A could come into play.

What happens to the house depends on equity and B's ability to pay the mortgage. Mesher orders are rare but not unheard of so B might be allowed to live there until child is 18. However, they will almost always need to be able to pay all of the mortgage so these orders don't tend to be very useful for ex-spouses who refuse to work these days. Another possibility is whole house is transferred to B if there is very little equity, with a best endeavours clause (not worth the paper it is written on) to release A from the mortgage. A should absolutely refuse this if offered in negotiation, especially if B is a "refuse to work" type.

b also not sacrificed anything to allow a to rise the earnings - states wasn’t working much before !
b should learn to start contributing financially and supporting themselves

courts will be looking to sever financial
ties ( other than cms) in fastest possible tIme

Op. As an aside. When you're thinking on this and talking to your friends - if you're going to include a sentence about how much overtime you do, maybe also include how much childcare/housework your stbew has done.

This argument used to carry a lot more weight before the pandemic. After the pandemic when people worked from home regularly they started seeing what their stay at home spouses were doing, especially as lockdown started to lift.

My ex-wife must have worked for about 4 hours a day. She would do the morning school run which from getting up with the children to getting home took about 1.5 hours (but there was a 30 minute lull in that when she would sit on her phone). Then she would come home and put laundry in the machine, hang it up and put it away. That took about 30 minutes a day. She would normally do one other job (e.g. vacuuming, cleaning, shopping) for no more than 30 minutes a day. At 10:00 until lunchtime she sat watching TV and playing on her phone. Then she would have lunch and then spend another 2 or 3 hours watching TV and playing on her phone. The afternoon school run would take about 30 minutes, then she would leave the children to it and got back to the game on her phone. Then she would do dinner for the children, another hour on her phone ignoring them and then bedtime.

When she got COVID I had to run the household and do my full time job for a week. I barely noticed the difference to be honest. Instead of breaks from my desk in the day I might hang laundry out or do the school run but I didn't have much time to make up at work in the evening.

And was my house dirty? Clothes unwashed? Children malnourished? No, not at all. Housework just isn't an equal contribution and hasn't been since the widespread ownership of fridges (eliminating the daily shop); the washing machine (eliminating an 8 hour laundry day!); steam irons; dishwashers; pre-prepared food that is nutritious; microwaves; vacuum cleaners etc etc.

Besides which, if housework really was so demanding that it required someone doing it full time, the courts would have to factor that in to the "breadwinner" spouse's needs and give them a budget for a housekeeper.... after all, they wouldn't have time to do it all after divorce, would they?