Sorry, a bit long, but how do you summarize the disintegration of a long marriage into a paragraph. We have two children (10, 12) and have been together in a "long marriage". There is no specific reason/wrong doing for wanting to seperate other than we're deeply unhappy with each other and that is impacting our children.
The 30 second version:
- I am the "high" earner
- I have no visibility of her finances, she is self employed but doesn't contribute to the family income, likely £12k or so per year
- She owns a property from before we married, I have no visibility
- She wants me to move out of the family home
- We have each proposed sharing children 50/50
- She wants to continue to live in the family home until our youngest son turns 18
- She wants me to continue to support her, e.g. pay the mortgage, bills, food, etc
- We have always shared parental and household duties, cooking, cleaning, school drop offs, pickups, admin, bedtimes, bathtimes, etc... I'd argue I do more of this than her, it could get contentious :)
My counter proposal is that:
- I am not leaving the family home until we have sorted out what we're doing, ideally not at all as I am willing to buy her out if possible
- My salary can't pay for two households
- Agree 50/50 parenting and make a co-parenting agreement
- Exchange Form E financial disclosure
- Starting point of asset split is 50/50, each taking independant solicitors advice
- I have stated that I want to have a clean and final break and not ongoing spousal maintenance , perhaps that will require a split of the assets in her favour so she can stand on her own two feet immediately, so be it.
Is this unreasonable on my part?
I think the contentious point is going to be the split of current assets, spousal maintenance and the family home, i.e. all of the $$ part. And if that goes sour, she will start using our children as pawns in this dispute - this is what her parents did - and is something I am petrified of, I just want them to be as happy and stable as we can given what will be a tough situation at the best of times. I feel like I do most of the parenting as she is often chaotic and her plans and mental state changes with the wind, I am lucky that my work is very flexible and I can flex hours and location to suit her rapid changes. While not being with them 50% of the time will be so sad and slightly worrying, I can't see that there is any point in pursuing a custody battle which likely won't be successful and will only turn nasty - hopefully by being apart, we will each be better parents and people.
With only my salary for the household over the last decade, we have often lived hand to mouth. We don't have much in savings or assets beyond the family home, a small penson on my part and some investments. I don't know what she does or doesn't have.
I imagine we will have to sell the family home, we do have substantial equity in it. But she will likely need to rent, as doesn't have enough years of SA income declared for mortgage application and it is a rotten time to be applying for a mortgage.
My understanding of the intent of the determination for ongoing spousal maintenance is based on needs of the household and nothing to with the marriage or conduct in the marriage, which is super frustrating from my perspective as one of the primary reasons for the breakdown of the marriage is that I don't want to support her indefinitely while she refuses to work/contribute meaningfully to the family income.
In terms of her earning potential, we're mid 40's. She could easily ish pick up where she left off in her previous career with minimal re-training and I think quickly accelerate to being a high earner.
The Background:
We initially worked in the same industry, and my wife used to earn more than me. But she always doubted it as career choice and suffers from imposter syndrome. I felt that with time and experience confidence would follow. But this has never been the case, and rather than cement her confidence with professional accreditations and study she decided use that time to retrain in other fields, part time. But has never actually completed a degree, always changing field of study couple of years, for the last 15 years.
When we had our second child, she decided to quit her career, as she hated it, due to the above mentioned feelings, and pursue yet another course of study, this one in the arts with no real end goal/plan - I disagreed and urged her to continue working, but she quit anyway. We hired a full time nanny initially, so she could study full time. She started teaching children arts part time while she continued to study, so I compressed my hours and then applied for flexible working so I could do school drop offs, pickups, running the house, cooking, etc, so she had time and space to pursue her goals, while it was also my income alone that supports our household. I realise I slept walked into this situation, but I always felt that as long as she was happy, then the children would be happy, and we could all be as happy as we could be. But increasingly she is not happy, so none of us are happy.
Over the last couple of years, I have grown ever more despairing; the lack of willingness to work and contribute is one thing, as I never felt like I had a choice in having the breadwinner role thrust on me, but there is much else that is just too subjective/complex/nuanced to be able to fairly/accurately represent and I guess not really relevant other than I've just had enough.