Selling home first before divorce

[lotsofmumlove]

Has anyone sold their home first and then both bought there own separate houses before getting divorced etc ? I’m interested to hear how it went doing it that way ? Was it ok ?

My solicitor advised against this as until you have a financial order as part of your divorce, each property is a marital asset and either of you could make a claim on it indefinitely

Yeh but why would we when we’ve agreed this is what we want in the first place x

What's the best way to do things then? When I was divorced the first time, my solicitor said to sort the finances out first then the divorce. Admittedly I didn't buy straight away as I moved back with my parents although this time I will need to buy after the sale of our home.

It's all very well saying we agree this now but there are many high profile cases where people's fortunes have changed and they've been penalised by not having a financial separation. Imagine one of you becomes rich 10 years after and the other is struggling and has a financial claim/ or your other half becomes involved with a gold digger who encourages them to try to get half your assets. Of course it might not happen but legally if you don't do a financial agreement as part of your divorce there's always a chance this can happen- even 10-20 years after divorce. Wonderful for you if you have absolute faith in the person you're divorcing but it can be a high stakes gamble

I think it depends on your situation

we did this, we knew it was a 50:50 split and agreed that, there was nothing contentious as we both worked, both had our own corporate pensions and agreed to leave those untouched.

so we sold, bought two and divorce a year later with consent order then

Hi. yes, I have.

I moved out in July last year, home in the market in November, sold in February this year. Fortunately myself and oh spoke about what I would accept (I never planned to touch his pension) and now in the process of buying a new place. Divorce not finalised but it was documented that we had agreed to our terms. My solicitor suggested I went for more but I did what I had planned on my head.

Monies was released back in March/April and divorce still going through the courts.

We sold our family home 7 years ago when we separated. Separated assets back then. Only just got around to divorce (in fact I can apply for my decree absolut from today). Financial consent order with courts now and I’ll wait for that to go through then finalise divorce.

If you've agreed it then why not just apply for the financial order and get it done. That way its all sorted and you're covered against any future claims

I came on today to ask a similar question - we can't sell our house and I reckon if we do sell it, it will be worth less than we thought so the financial details we've agreed won't be feasible. But I want to get the divorce, I can apply for the final order next week, it's like a psychological thing as I am still living with ex and he is still controlling. I came on to ask how bad it is really to divorce and THEN sell the house, THEN get the financial order?

We are literally at the start of paperwork of selling and buying our new houses and I wonder if we did this as well it would then hold everything up for a long time than reasonable

Wow that’s a long time ago did you both end up buying your own places has it all gone ok now though he’s not now true to claim your house etc

Do not do final psrt of divorce till financial order is done and do not sell house till then either. You need to cover yourself and make sure there can be no claims

I'm in this predicament right now, Ex could have applied for financial order in April, I stated to him from the beginning I really hoped when he filed he would follow the whole thing through properly , I had a feeling he might just do final order just to tell people he's divorced from & he's admitted he's considering it

I can't do anything to stop it can I?

We’re in the process of doing this. We’re on good terms, which is important if you’re going to attempt this.

We sold our FMH last year, and bought my property (in joint names) and the mortgage was transferred to this house. The remainder of the funds are split across several accounts in sole names to spread risk and will be used to purchase his property outright (I’m not sure if you can have 2 mortgages in your name if the 2nd house isn’t a BTL so that might be a consideration for you). Once the purchase is completed we’ll look into getting divorced, moving the mortgage to his property (he’s the much higher earner), and putting each house into sole names, as well as splitting pensions and other assets, etc.

As I understand it, higher rate stamp duty is payable on the 2nd property which will be refunded eventually, once the divorce is finalised. There is a time limit on this of 3 years.

You can see how doing everything this way requires a lot of trust, so if you have any doubts about your STBX’s intentions then it might not be the correct route for you to take.

Thankyou , wow 🤩 not sure I understood all that …
but we are selling our marital hope and I’m buying a property in my name only
he is buying a property in his name only

agreed split 65/35

yew I trust him, he’s the one pushing to sell the house this way , the only time he ever mentioned divorce etc was when he we agreed none of us want to waist money on soliciter and wanted to sell the home first . He is also getting some money from his parents to help him move on aswell as equity …
I am also getting help from mine as it’s not enough .

but I may just have a final talk with him / documented in messages , to confirm he is still happy proceeding in this way and happy with what we’ve agreed otherwise not point proceeding for him to then change his mind I’ll get it down that he has no intentions of changing his mind on what we’ve agreed once moved etc.

i know it’s not legally binding but it may support should he for whatever reason turn into a t’’’ lol

I've got a similar split on the table about 45/55 (as I will have our disabled adult daughter with me) but that's based entirely on a certain minimal sale price - so I'd end up with about £200k. What if we don't get that much for the house? How can we then enforce a financial order that was done based on that? I suppose if you do it entirely on percentages and not actual figures then it would work. But in order to leave his substantial pension untouched, I plumped for £200k. So if the house sells for less than we hoped, I want him to take the hit if you see what I mean, as he can afford a larger mortgage.

I'm wondering now if this isn't going to be feasible (although the way the housing market is going ...!!!)

@HangerLaneGyratorySystem what's the value in his pension, the part that occurred in your marriage?

@largeagegapWLW civil service said it could take 2 years to value it so crudely, we’ve worked it out at £12k a year for 20 years day c. £ 240k - why do you ask were you going to suggest something? (He’s 66 so pension in payment since he was 60)

Came onto ask the same thing. House market totally dead, thinking of pulling the house off cos our agreement is based on being able to sell for a certain amount so do not want to be lowballed while things are so bad. But worried about the order of things re: consent order then sale - just applied for a divorce. URGH.

Yes @HangerLaneGyratorySystem Are your accounting for growth or have you added up the contributions paid into the scheme?

Just as an example, my own modest ( as in under £1,000 ) of contributions, both employer & employee, in a short job I had, that fund is now worth over £8,000. Admittedly that's over 15 + years of growth but still.

In my own case I'm investing in an actuarial report because between us we have 10 pension pots.

Because you can’t get the financial order/consent order “sealed” by the court until the final order (what was decree absolute). Yep, you can submit once you get your interim (decree nisi as was) but courts don’t look until you confirm you apply for the final - and you can’t do that until after cooling off period (26 weeks now).

What we did was get our legal financial declaration forms signed (D81, form E) and get our consent order drafted legally by solicitor and signed, as soon as we got our decree nisi (as was called then) . The solicitor then added their names to show we had taken legal advice, and then held onto documents. We were asked to sign but NOT date.
oncecwe got to point where we could apply for decree absolute (final order I think it is now called) the solicitor sent all the docs to the court for “sealing” at time of decree absolute

we sold our house and I bought mine before the consent order was “sealed”, but both were done only AFTER we had pre signed (forcwant of a better word) the legal draft and submitted to solicitors for them to upload to court records

There is obviously a risk to this, but ours was an amicable divorce, we both had clear visibility of the full financial situation and it was pretty much 50:50split, so no incentive for either of us to back out of a pre signed but not yet legal document. We were far more bothered in keeping the divorce cheap, quick and stress free. We divorced for less than £1400 in total and in less than 4 months in total …so in practice we were talking about selling and moving only a very short amount of time before the legal process caught up. I’m not sure I’d do it today when you have to wait the full 26 weeks now, and a less than 4 month divorce is not possible legally anymore. Probably only do it when less than 8 weeks to point to apply for final divorce order,

We did ours on % . We had quite a complex equation we’d come up with between us. I took it to the solicitor to draft into legal speak, and she did it fine, no issues,
it all Worked ok.
I even had to share it with my house buying solicitors as they needed to prove I would have cash to buy my new home (we were mortgage free by time we divorced- in our late 50s). Even my conveyencing solicitor could get what we were doing.

If pension is being paid and is defined benefit , you can opt out of having it actually valued and take other assets in lieu that will provide you with similar income drawdown equivalence
unless you are imposing a pension share on his existing aid pension then you can just explain in your D81 that you’ve agree not to value it. The value is, to a certain extent, meaningless, as you know what his pension is, what inflationary rises might he get, widows pension etc, you can therefore work out its value to you in terms of that not a nominal transfer value to you under pension sharing.

we did this. Both of us were drawing on our DB pensions . Mine was more than his, he had some uncrystalised DC pots, we just agreed between us how we’d split assets to get pension income we felt was fair. Soliton used some legalised words she added into comments section on D81 as to why we weren’t going to get pension “pots” valued . It saved us months and £100 as it takes ages, as you say, and each company would have charged us. Given we weren’t going to pension share as point of principle, it would have been a waste of money and time and effort.

court did not question it at all

Yes, we split everything. We have applied to the court for a clean break split and said all settled, (in other words we don't need them to check out arrangements out) still waiting on the court