Divorce - Bank accounts

[LDA123]

Currently getting a divorce and making financial disclosures.

So I don’t consider myself to have “savings” as such but I do have £1,000 in my bank account. Basically, every month I put a little bit of cash towards a future expense - my son’s bus fare is £350 3 times a year for example so I put money towards that.

So it’s not savings as such as will be used against a future known expense.

I’m terrified now in the divorce, this will be added to the marital pot and my ex will get 50% leaving me short for the future expenses.

Any money I get from selling house etc will have to go 100% towards buying a new house, and even then it’s not enough.

Am I allowed a certain amount of money in my current account that is not savings?

Thanks!

Neither of you should hide monies.
I gather your son is not his son?
Can you rent not buy in short run?

Everything each party has, has to be declared and goes into the pot.

How the pot is carved up is decided in the divorce.

What have you offered him as an initial settlement?

For your savings for future events, take the money out & keep it in cash. Its only a small amount in the overall scheme so it won't make much difference to your joint 'pot' that need to be split but will make sure you can use it for your sons bus fare etc.

For most government purposes sums of less than £1000 are often disregarded. But I couldn’t see this on D81 when we did it. To not declare it on forms then becomes fraud and contempt of court, which courts view dimly.
another poster has said take cash in future- but again if you were discovered it could still be seen legally as contempt/fraud (she does allude to this mind) .

I think this is largely then about your morals and risk taking. No one on here should be advising you to break the law frankly.

The other way is to tackle it head on with STBex, explain what this money means to you emotionally and appeal to his better part. Of course if he’s just being a shit bag, or you’ve hardly any assets between you, that’ll not help

sadly, in most divorces, both parties usually end up loosing assets they’ve worked hard for individually, it is actually a very hard one to process emotionally, sometimes more so than other aspects of divorce. I was sole bread winner (against my wishes) in my marriage for last 15 years, it was his unreasonable behaviour that led to divorce, but I still took the bigger financial hit. It is very hard to process that- and that settlements are based on FUTURE NEEDS and not anything to do with past behaviour or little to do with where the assets served from and who had them. Give yourself time to process your “loss” , a few years from now it won’t make a big difference, there are much bigger financial decisons over time, once divorced, that will make that sum very small (not least cost of living, inflation etc)

Ok thanks everyone. I would never hide cash, I want to be completely honest.

Having now seen the Form E and completed it today, I realise everything goes on there so doesn’t matter if current account or savings.

I guess will just see what happens when/if he completes a Form E.

I don't think a 1000 in savings is going to move the needle too much in any direction

It's not savings though is it? It's towards a future expense. So, on your Form E as you can see, it's largely on income v expenditure as opposed to each individual sum of money. So your sons bus fares for example would be down as an expenditure anyway. So it will even out over the yearly income v expenditure...I wouldn't worry about that at all

I think I’m probably over thinking it!

Can you buy the ticket now, and that way the money has been used for its intended purpose.

Things like your son's bus fare would go onto the expenditure form and so be taken into account