STBXH moved to EU

[SuperAlley]

Hello,

i wonder if anyone had any advice. Husband earns 6-figures. I gave up my career to raise the kids so would hope for spousal maintenance in the country. Our house as equity of about 500-700k. Husband says he will leave it all to me. But I don’t get his 500k pension.

is there any chance of spousal maintence if he’s living in the EU?

thank you

Don't worry about some of these negative comments op.

I'm don't think a single poster who has detailed that SM won't happen has any first hand experience at all.

Just see a solicitor and I expect they'll detail that you can get it.

I'm not sure how old your dc are but it is relevant.

For us, we had to fill in an incoming and outgoing spreadsheet. What did I need to look after the dc 5 days a week, what did he need for 2. As I pay for all the kids stuff, that was in my column, except from the 2 days living. My incoming column included my salary, CM from the government calculator and child benefit.

I'll make up the numbers for ease. My outgoing column came to 100. His out going column 50. His incoming was 120, mine was 50. So he had 70 over, I had 50 under. Thus SM was 50. With the caveat of by the time our youngest was 14 I had to increase my incomings and then his 50 goes to 10.

If I was told to hand over 42% of my income I think I would do an easier job!

But why would any one household require 3 separate nannies, simultaneously working alongside each other all day? The PP said her husbands line of work would have required this, 3 nannies working 8 hours a day each. That doesn’t make any sense. Even if there were 3 children, 1 nanny could look after all of them

As to what would OP’s ex have done if OP didn’t exist. A single parent with a six figure salary would be able to afford a nanny to look after both of children with extra money paid for occasional overnight care. I think a man capable of earning £250k plus would have been able to work out a viable childcare arrangement if the OP wasn’t around. Millions of single parents on a lot less manage it. It’s silly to pretend OP’s ex owes his success to her and he’d have had some kind of hard scrabble life with barely two pennies to rub together if she wasn’t around.

I think the 3 x nannies refers to them being needed for 24 hours a day, what with OP being overseas.

These arguments come up often but little respect is given to former SAHPs caught up in divorce. It isn't that the working partner wouldn't have achieved their career goals, it is that the 'sacrificing' parter is now limited in what they can earn between now and retirement. Of course that's a discrepancy that is recognised.

Many 2 partner families choose for one parent to give up work or reduce to PT once children appear. Often driven by the £££ needed to look after 2 kids at nursery. In my case I'm talking about back in 2000 when there were no tax credits or free nursery hours.

It isn’t that the working partner wouldn’t have achieved their goals

But this is precisely what many people have said in this thread. The OP’s ex owes his success to OP because she stayed at home.

Yes. It is so ridiculous to attribute the success of a man to a stay a home partner. So if the man is a failure, can he blame her too? What if he is a moron to start with? Can he be successful if his wife stays at home too?

Yes. I agree that the stay at home partner hasn't facilitated the other partner to gain their high salary - in most cases that would have happened anyway - but they've had the ability to do their job without necessarily contributing as much to their family home life - the one who typically has contributed more, their stay at home spouse is now many steps further back in their own career.

But this whole "sacrificed their career" thing is often a bit of a unicorn too. Most people who had careers to lose are expected to go back to work and rebuild and don't get spousal maintenance for very long at all (and normally don't get it at all), unless they are an older divorcee in their late 50s onwards when it is too late to rebuild (but in these cases spousal maintenance doesn't often happen for long because of pension sharing). Even these examples are rare because a lot of parents don't give up work for long at all these days, most families can't afford for one person to stay at home.

The kind of people who do stay at home most of the time are either people who didn't have a career in the first place and whose own earning capacity means childcare costs more than they can earn (so why on earth should higher earning spouses "keep" them after divorce?) or people whose partner earns an absolute fortune and like the luxury of not working (again, why should they be "kept" after divorce?)

If you had a career to lose, you'll be expected to go back to it; compensation in spousal maintenance is so rare the cases make the news. The reality is it's only those wastrels who never had a career but feel entitled to their ex's earnings who ever get spousal maintenance these days. And the opportunity is - quite rightly - becoming harder and harder to get.

It is somewhat fortunate op, that the bitter misogynists who've littered this thread, don't make the laws in the UK.

I'm not really sure why it's misogyny to suggest the weaker financial party should stand on their own two feet after divorce? Unless you believe that must be the woman (which is unamiguously misogynistic of you).

Actually, the laws probably were written by misogynists. They date back to 1973. In those days if you were a female politician you might hope to make Secretary of State for Education, planning policy for all the little kiddies. I doubt many women were involved in writing the divorce laws. They were written at a time when the carer of children (a woman 99.9% of tne time back then) was considered unable to work once she had children, something our society quite rightly finds ridiculous today.

I perhaps will concede I have a more modern approach than yours though. I don't believe people should be financially tied together after divorce for any reason whatsoever. People forced to pay spousal maintenance are placed in a position where - unlike their ex - they are forbidden from moving on. They must carry on doing a job they might not like to provide another adult an income because that adult refuses to take care of themselves. I spent years being subjected to bullying and control by my ex and I wasn't going to let her dictate what job and what hours I worked (not to mention which part of the country) just to provide her with an income.

My way is increasingly becoming the norm because modern judges understand it is in no one's interests to be bound together. Just have an uneven split of assets and move on.

Ah, bitter. I was spot on. 💪

OPs contributions are being taken into account, that's why she's walking away from several years of being a SAHM with 700K. If the only assets are 700K equity and a 500K pension she's getting over 50%. It doesn't mean she should expect him to continue paying for her to continue living like she has a six-figure salary husband for the rest of her life after they've seperated.

If there is 2 kids then he's liable to hand over 16% of his earnings for child maintenance. On a six figure salary that's 5 figure child maintenance in addition to her 5 figure earnings. That's hugely better off than most single parents!

Quite frankly, if I was already handing over 16% CMS and she wants another 20% or so spousal? If I'm not getting over a third of my salary after already paying out probably 50% in tax, pension etc, I'd simply get a much less stressful, lower paying job!

Bitter about what? I won 😁Or rather, she decided she didn't want to parade the fact that she was a lazy, sponging parasite and gave up just before things went to court (and knew even if she won, it would be a pyrrhic victory if I decided on a career change to a more interesting but lower paid job - with a nice long period of retraining first - which I absolutely would have done).

So my ex-wife got no spousal maintenance and I doubt the OP will either, for the simple fact that they can work and had a career that they gave up (and which they can jolly well take up again). That's the law these days.

Oh, by the way, glad you dropped the "misogynistic" bit from your rant. Presumably you realised you were the one making silly, old fashioned arguments about women being little wallflowers who can't take care of themselves. When in fact there are plenty of amazing, hard working women out there with exactly the same problem that I nearly had, a parasitic, good for nothing, lazy ex-spouse.

Exactly. This is one of the reasons spousal maintenance is fast falling out of favour. It becomes absolutely pointless for the payer to carry on in their stressful job. Whilst it would be "bad conduct" to simply quit a job and a judge might take exception to such behaviour, it's really not that hard to lose the kind of jobs that pay enough to be on the hook for SM. An easy method is to find an even better job and then deliberately fail the probationary period and thereafter make only a half arsed attempt to find a new one. The courts are remarkably consistent in this regard; they really don't expect much from job seekers (normally the ones demanding SM, but it does work both ways).

The main reason courts don't like SM these days though is because they know it will cause endless litigation. If you're a payer of SM and you have a payee ex who can't be bothered to get a job; starts cohabiting; receives an inheritance or does realises they need more money because of - for example - inflation or interest rate rises; or if you are a payer and lose your job, have a career change, have another child, get into debt etc etc all of this can trigger fresh litigation for a variation. And SM is a horrible obligation, it's like having a loan you can never be certain won't suddenly grow in size or be extended (or in the worst cases, can never be paid off) so payers generally are determined to get rid of this horrible obligation so litigation is always likely. Certainly in my case the SM claim was a form of abuse and I was going to fight it all the way and would have carried on fighting it if she had been awarded it.

Spousal maintenance can also - in my opinion - be a way to perpetuate abuse. Payees who spent their married lives being abusive (and it is often the weaker financial party within a marriage who is abusive - which makes sense if you think about it, because why would a stronger financial party relinquish control by marrying their victim?) get to prolong the abuse by refusing to work and demanding money, maybe even using the courts in their abuse by seeking variations. Payees can often force their payer ex to be stuck in a profession, schedule and even part of the country (i.e. London and the South East) by lumbering them with an onerous obligation. In my case, I would not have been able to leave the South East to be nearer my own family if I had been shackled to a career that only really exists in London. Had she gotten spousal maintenance, my ex could have put me in a position where I was forced to carry on living isolated somewhere far away from family in a job that made me unwell in order to provide her with an income so she could avoid working.

It's much easier for a court to divide assets 70/30 and sever all ties. It guarantees the parties can move on, forces people to stand on their own two feet and avoids endless litigation.

I fundamentally disagree regarding abuse. I've seen situations where lower earner wants a job but higher earner won't let them because they want them at their beck and call. Having them SAH makes it even easier to isolate them and make them feel worthless, telling them they bring nothing and how no one else would want them, that if they leave they'll use the money to take the kids and leave them with nothing.

Otherwise, being reliant on spousal is not a good place to be. A clean break can be heavily in the SAHP favour, as it would be here if 700K equity and 500K pension are the only assets, particularly as pensions are worth 'less' due to the fact its so tied up until retirement. It's not easily liquidated. Sure, you could go down a 50/50 then get spousal route - you get £350K from house and £250K pension. Then he can just stop paying or quit/change jobs, then you have to shell out more money you're not receiving to enforce the order. He can claim he can't afford it any more due to job and it gets reduced, or claims he moved in with new partner and her kids so gets reduced because he's 'paying towards them'. Or he ups and leaves to a country where it won't be enforced.

What about if you meet someone? Spousal usually stops when you cohabit or marry. You could meet someone in 2 years time and have to choose between being able to move on and being reliant on that money (or risking that reliance moving onto the new partner who could leave at any point and spousal won't be reinstated). You end up with less in the long run. You're much less vunerable with a clean break. Clean break and you're free to move on with your life, albeit with a change in lifestyle.

@HowcanIhelp123 I don't disagree with you that the abuse you describe does not happen, just that it is not the most common, especially not in marriages.

The most common abuse scenario is very similar to what you have described but crucially the couple is not married. A controlling breadwinner these days tends to know marrying relinquishes control so they don't do it.

Within marriage, it becomes more common for the weaker financial party to be the abusive one. It might be a drunk layabout who won't work for example but it could also be someone who insists on staying at home even though family finances can't stretch that far and the kids are already in school (this abuser type will tend to use economic abuse to control the budget, belittle the earner for not being successful enough and threaten to "take them to the cleaners" in divorce and also tends to use institutions like the Family Court to perpetuate the abuse).

There is no reason these days why a woman has to “sacrifice” her career so her husband can work. There is childcare!! It’s such a ridiculous argument and archaic.

In this case the OP quit her own career and is in line for £700k of property - not a bad result.

The women who lose out from divorce are hard workers like me! I earned more than my ex who was financially exploiting me. He had his own job but squandered our joint funds. He got 55% of our joint assets - I had to give him more cash so I could hold onto my pension pot. I have supported both kids for the past five years (now both over 18 but they still cost money) and he has had no contact. A shit dad.

Hard workers in general lose out under archaic divorce laws. It is considered because they can earn more they can recover more. It is ridiculous and subjects the higher earner disproportionately to all future risks like job loss, ageism in the workplace, health problems etc.

In my opinion assets accrued during the marriage should always be split 50/50 and there should only be child maintenance thereafter. If one spouse won't work and subsequently finds themselves having to rent in a shared house when the kids reach18, tough shit.

@BetterFuture1985 yep, my potential risk of redundancy was not considered at all! Plus I consider I worked doubly hard because working women still shoulder the vast majority of all the “mum work”. I found that after the split I could get an au pair to cover the after-school times when my school-age child still needed someone around. Much cheaper than a husband!

In the end I concluded I completely disagree with the marriage contract and will never get into that again. In days of old it was presented as protection for women but it is not that any more. It is a way to be legally fleeced!

I would favour a system where you take out what you put in. End of.

Seems people don't understand that marriage is a legal contract.

All assets acquired in the marriage are JOINTLY owned (with some very limited exceptions) .

Therefore the answer to this question is unknown. As we don't know how much the jointly held assets are. You are looking for a fair settlement of x with a starting point of x /2... so £500k is only 'fair' if total assets are 900-k1m .. however without that value of X then we can't know.

People saying 'well £500-700k is a good deal - be thankful' . Are talking complete bollocks and have no idea of the laws surrounding divorce .

Get yourself a lawyer OP and get a correct valuation of his pension because £500k is actually quite small for someone earning 6 figures long term.

Completely agree with betterfuture and Torrington !

Funny how the legal contract where you risk losing your life savings never really gets a mention during the hearts and flowers marriage ceremony. Plus there is all the social pressure to “do the right thing” and get married - or there was when I was young. Nobody frowns on “living in sin” these days but they did in the 80s.

We laugh about gold diggers but basically one half of the relationship is always gold digging. Unless you have two very equal careers and domestic contributions.

I was an ex-husband so unfortunately I had to deal with a lot of bias and prejudice to get just 40% of the time with the children even though by the point of divorce I was probably doing 70-80% around the home. I remember my first solicitor appointment and just this assumption that I was male, I earned a decent income and therefore there must be a wife who did most of the childcare and housework. I wish! 😅

It will always be spousal maintenance that stands out as an injustice to me because in the 21st century people are not forced to give up their careers for children. Most people in my family have two parents who work, it was my marriage that was the exception and it was not a mutual decision. After a marriage, the standard of living during the marriage should not be a consideration. Both parents should provide for the children and then they should provide for themselves, not each other.