ExH spending savings / bonus on new furniture possibly recklessly

[Onedaystronger]

STBEXH moved out in April, he initiated the split but I applied for divorce in June.

He refused mediation after the maim. He's been living with a friend until this week when he has moved into a properly that he (we) previously rented out.

He has asked to come to the marital home this week to collect some furniture and personal items. I realise he has every right to do that.

I was fully expecting him to want to take lots of things- and the best of things e.g. large TV, decent sofa etc..

But he hardly wants anything, and has said he's taking things we hardly use like an old table from the loft, a sofa that's so old it's practically unusable, and three sets of plates, cutlery etc.

He's been unkind throughout the process and I was struggling to understand why he was taking an apparently considerate approach.

But I've realised that he will have received his annual bonus and has a large savings pot so will be using these funds to refurnish the house- no doubt lavishly.

This bothers me for a few reasons:
It leaves me with all the old furniture , more than I need, plenty to split between us.

He is using savings that would be considered within the divorce settlement but which as they are in his bank account I have no access to and he will spend as much as he can on refurnishjng.

He is probably purposefully spending assets in form of cash which could be split on items that he could take from the marital home.

I am a low earner and he earns a great deal of money- well into six figures. I won't go into details so as to stick to my OP but after this is over he will be extremely well off whilst I am using the last of my savings in the hope my solicitor can sort things so I can survive financially (I am 55, poor health, one son XHs step son who is 16). He is trying to ringfence the previously rented properly that he's moved into and make me move out into rented accommodation which I cannot afford.

I'm not sure I can do anything? Any advice would be great. My solicitor is away.

@SpoonyBitchell I believe it is termed a medium marriage. I appreciate what you are saying though.

I am not looking for a large settlement. But without some help I will go under and that's all I'm trying to prevent.

They are in his account not mine. I have access to a joint current account which we both pay into and from which I can pay household bills and some food from.

Thank you @theunbelievabletruth.

We have no children together juts my son who is 16 and considered a child of the family.

I worked part time (school hours) prior to redundancy. I now work full time but my hourly rate is much lower now.

Illness is unlikely to get better and limits my ability to get a better paying job.

But what I feel sometimes gets forgotten is that even if I was well again, and tried my absolute hardest to get a better job there are no guarantees that I'd be able to earn more money. There are a lot of bright hardworking people who struggle to get a well paid job. If it just took effort I wouldn't be so scared.

I am sorry that you are going through this. I think my ex is trying to do the same unfortunately. I am trying to look into representing myself but the system is frustratingly nontransparent and stacked against a lay person.

Sometimes I feel that I have all the information and resources that o need within me. But I need a solicitor to use the specific terminology required and to follow the process. For example, I pulled together my form E myself with help from a friend and masses of research to save money on solicitors time. But he still needed to charge me for 2 hours of time and all he changed was DH's name to "respondent" .

Sorry OP but after only 6 years married all you are likely to be awarded is whatever you put in. Although generally a “short marriage” is accepted to be 5 years or less, the Court of Appeal have been known to vary this and accept a 6 year marriage as a short marriage.

As a result, with a marriage of this length, when dividing things up the main thing that will be looked at it who put what into where. So if your marital home was 50/50 you should get 50%, but if you put more in then you’ll get more back.

Unless your soon to be ex legally adopted your 16 year old son, he will not be considered a child of the marriage in the sense that your husband has no legal responsibility to him, he doesn’t have any requirement to pay any form of child maintenance as he is not legally responsible for your child in any way (morally is another question of course, but that’s not what a court is interested in).

Spousal maintenance is extremely rare in the UK, and almost definitely not going to happen in case of a “short” marriage which the courts could (and as I say, have in the past) decided 6 years is. Even if you can argue for this, it will fixed term and likely a very short term.

You won’t walk out of the marriage with any more than you put in ultimately is the case OP, after 6 years and considering you haven’y had to sacrifice your own pension to birth/raise any children to him you are also very unlikely to get any of his pension. And a home he owned 15 years ago before you met will almost certainly be ring fenced and so it should, because he bought that before he knew you.

@Mrsttcno1 thank you for your input. My solicitor feels this is a medium term marriage and that prior cohabitation will be taken into account.

However, it sounds very subjective.

I actually paid more deposit when we initially bought the house. Not a huge amount approx £20k.

That notwithstanding I cannot survive on my wages unless I can have a very small mortgage or very low rent. It's that cut and dry. So I feel I have no choice but to try.

I realise that EXH has no obligation to provide any maintenance for my son.

He earns an enormous amount of money and to allow me to cope would barely dent his assets.

It's hard to tell on screen but your tone sounds like you are pleased to tell me that I am going to be left unable to cope? I appreciate that it's worth being realistic and I appreciate your input but delivering those facts to me without any semblance of kindness makes for difficult reading.

Your case is very similar to one that has already been through the courts it was a land mark case, this was a 6 year marriage with 18 month cohabiting beforehand and was deemed by the courts to be a short marriage- almost exactly the same length as yours, this was a landmark case you can read about it yourself if you wish.

This case also had an impact on the division of assets as it departed from the previously accepted “equality” stand point, only where some specific factors are present, those factors are:

• Short marriage (6 years)
• No joint children (so your son does not count unless legally adopted)
• Dual incomes (which you do have)
• Separated finances (which you do have as you have said you just transfer to joint account for bills but you do not otherwise have access to his accounts so he can easily argue this one)

All of this determined in this case that it was appropriate for assets acquired before the relationship to be ring fenced and excluded from the “pot”, because equal distribution would not be fair. The same case also excluded the wifes bonus as it was decided that the husband had not made any contribution to the source of the bonus.

From the information you have given the facts of your case seem almost identical and I’m sure your husband’s solicitor will have pointed this out to him, hence he and his legal reps know they will more than likely succeed with this. As your reduced income is not the fault of your husband or the marriage (i.e. you have took time out of work to raise children for example), he will not be responsible for topping up your income.

This is all just my memory of this law as I have been out of studying now for a few years so it’s definitely worth looking this up yourself to check as things may have changed but that is what I remember. And in my experience when dealing with solicitors the more information you arm yourself with before you go to pay them the better because there are definitely some (though obviously not all) who will quite happily take your money hand over fist while knowing they are unlikely to really help you massively.

I do apologise if any of this has come across as unkind, I simple thought that if you’re considering representing yourself (and that’s not a terrible idea), that having some additional information as a start point for you to look into yourself would be more useful to you than any emotions, as it can then inform your argument however you decide to try and argue it, but it also sets your expectations for what may or may not be possible. It isn’t a nice position to be in and I am truly sorry you are, it must be awful for someone who as you say has loved you unconditionally can turn on you like this. It may be worth you looking into (if you’re in the UK), what help you may be entitled to in the form of legal aid but also in terms of UC/housing. X

I disagree with @Mrsttcno1 on the spousal maintenance point. It all comes down to need. If you can't meet your reasonable needs or even meet your basic living costs without SM, then you have an argument for it and may be successful. Also, the fact that the other house was his before you married is immaterial because this is a needs-based case. That asset is in the pot for division.

I am currently getting divorced and advice from my lawyer is that I will get SM for similar reasons to you. Alternatively, STBX could offer me more than 50% of the equity in our house, which would leave me able to afford mortgage repayments without SM. If I were in STBX's position, I'd do that in order to achieve a clean break, but STBX seems wedded to having 50%. Which is fine, but I still need to be able to house myself (and our child). My marriage was also on the borderline between "short" and "medium".

My response isn’t really my opinion or an agree/disagree situation, I’m pointing out a land mark case with almost identical facts to OP’s scenario which has been outlined here. Your situation is already different to OP because you mention “our child”, so you I assume have joint children.

The facts of the case state that it DOES matter that the house was owned pre-marriage and in that case and others since then has meant these things are not included in the “pot” where the conditions are met, and they are in both OP’s case and the landmark case.

What's the case? I imagine it might have been not a needs-based case?

The case is Sharp v Sharp and the precedent it set overlaps into needs based cases- it’s not as simple as one or the other. The OP’s husband’s solicitor will almost certainly make this argument because as I say, the facts are almost identical, and it will be difficult to convince any court differently, although there is always some chance with family law.

One of the main principles from that case was that what was the wifes (in that case as she was the main earner), she got to keep. Upon appeal her bonus was even excluded and not classed as “family assets” because they were not generated by the efforts of both parties.

It absolutely is different in your case, as you say you have a shared child and that changes things massively, the 4 points to satisfy to follow Sharp v Sharp include no joint children.

OP will get the money back that she put into the house and likely similar to you a higher % overall to help, or a short term award for SM, but previous assets of the husband like the house and ongoing money like the bonus if he argues successfully under the same principles of Sharp v Sharp would not enter the “pot” to share because their relationship does satisfy the same 4 criteria outlined in that case whereas yours does not. It’s a difficult situation and it’s one where honestly knowledge is power, I’d not recommend anyone just take my advice but it would be a good idea for the OP to read up on all of these things independently and discuss in detail with her solicitor because as I mentioned, some solicitors will happily take your money blindly. It would be worth OP seeing if they are eligible for any legal aid but also checking for UC eligibility x

Sharp v Sharp (a case from 2017) was not followed in the more recent case of E v L [2021] EWFC 60. In Sharp v Sharp the marital assets for division were £7m - clearly more than enough to meet both parties' needs. That is not the case in the OP's situation. In E v L the marital assets were £5.5m, of which the wife wanted half and the husband wanted her to have only £600k. Mostyn, J, said "there is absolutely no logical reason to draw a distinction between an accrual over a short period and an accrual over a long period."

That is true, however even in that case, the wife was only awarded £1.5 million, not the £5+ million SHE had calculated should be “half” of the assets. This is because the courts decided £1.5 million was half the assets built DURING the marriage- that’s the key point, which still means for OP her husband’s first home is out. The wife was only entitled to “half” of what has been acquired during the course of the marriage.

Worth noting that the Court of Appeals decision in Sharp v Sharp is still the most senior of the two decisions though. But even if OP’s case follows E v L, the very best OP will be entitled to is 50% of assets from during the marriage (presumably the family home) which she has already said will not be enough.

Yes - but in both those cases the assets were in the millions, which on any view is sufficient to meet "needs". Those were not needs-based cases. The OP's is. I think that considerable caution should be exercised when telling a stranger on the internet what she "will" be awarded in court, on the basis of a very limited set of facts.

(I'm a solicitor. Not a family law one. I wouldn't dispense conclusive advice in my area of law over the internet for the same reasons.)

OP you are focusing on the wrong thing.

You need good legal advice, and soon. Other posters have given good replies re: possible entitlement. You will likely have some basis for SM but the duration of your marriage and no dependent children (of your ex's) is also a factor.

I am sorry you find yourself in this situation (I am recently divorced, after a 10 year battle to get there and financially, the settlement has been very problematic to me and very unfair [DC are with me all the time, he doesn't contribute or see them, I've maintained the family home with no input or payment from him for a decade but had to pay him a large sum to buy out his interest] BUT he is essentially out of our lives, and I am lucky to be working and hopefully can start to rebuild our lives / finances.).

I'm saying this so I don't sound unsympathetic.

The issue isn't about the furniture and he is perfectly entitled to spend his money buying more.

What you need to do is move fast on legal proceedings and get good advice. It certainly seems like you have a reasonable chance of SM and favourable division of assets.

But being blunt, you may have to accept that your future regarding housing is quite challenging and not what you accepted. That's unfortunately often the case after divorce.

Op how would you survive if you weren’t married?

I think it would be useful if the OP confirmed whether the length of the relationship was 8 years or 14 years. it’s not that clear.

Spousal maintenance isn’t popular or the best resort these days for a few reasons. Firstly most adults work these days regardless of gender and it just doesn’t apply. Secondly it’s better to get a larger capital share in the form of a clean break as it’s bankable money which can be used to reduce living costs and invested in an asset. Finally in most hardship cases benefits are a preferred option to a more unreliable source of income and spousal maintenance will impact on eligibility for UC.

The pertinent facts in this case are

Negative for the OP

• the marriage and relationship may be deemed short
• there are no joint children and the step children are older teens anyway.
• the OP will be required to maximise her income and if she cannot work claim appropriate benefits and UC.
• her ex may have held some assets outside the marriage

Positive for the OP

• despite a possible short marriage if the OP has a recognised health condition that prevents her from working this will be taken into consideration.
• lower income means she needs a bigger share and her ex has assets that can be used to meet his needs.
• if the OPs child is seen as a child of the marriage then he will be seen as just that

There are a lot of contentious issues in this case and the devil will be in the detail presented to a judge. The OP needs pay attention to what her solicitor is saying and be willing to settle if that is the best option. My main concern would be the whether the OPs LTC is considered a barrier to working. That’s not always a cut and dry call especially if she currently has a job. Those teens could also easily reach 18 before this is all settled.

OP I’m not unsympathetic to your health issues. I just know this can easily become a subjective issue.