Can my husband force house sale in divorce?

[skaw15]

Hi.
I'm currently going through a divorce with my husband. We have a 13yo daughter together, I also have a 19yo son and a 17yo daughter from a previous relationship. My 13yo and my 19yo both live with me in a 4 bedroom house. I have a joint mortgage with my husband, he has moved out and is privately renting a 2bed flat and I currently pay the full mortgage and bills. My husband has our daughter overnight one night a week and once in the week for dinner. He does pay child maintenance.
We have 165k equity in our property, however we purchased it for a low price with no deposit from my family. Could I be forced to sell if I won't buy him out?
Thanks :)

OP- people are not disagreeing with you to upset you. Collectively, the people on this thread have been through far more divorces than you have and they are advising you on what is realistically achievable so that you don't squander ££££ fighting for something you will not get.

This is not about what is fair in your eyes or the cheep house you both bought from relatives. The law says your ex is entitled to 50:50 as a starting point so you will be best served focusing your energy on chipping away closer to the 40:60 split that your ex is proposing rather than a fanciful 12.5%.

So your exH taking on the mortgage and the bills for those years enabled you to study, enhance your career prospects and end up on, as you said, a somewhat better wage than him?

He's also had to pay rent for a year because you refuse to release his money so he can get a mortgage? Ironically you also had a dig and said his DD doesn't stay with him because his place is "basic".

You got his contact details? I want to tell him he's a fool to offer you such generous terms as he has.

Either this is a wind-up or OP is incredibly dim. Had to read to the end to see if she acknowledged any of the really useful feedback she has received or continued to spout nonsense.

Nonsense spouter I'm afraid.

OP you are being ridiculously pigheaded. A 60/40 spilt is more than fair. He has supported you and two children who aren’t his for 10+ years & you think a poxy 20% is acceptable? Yours having a laugh & the courts will laugh you out.

That’s why he’s paying child maintenance OP… you can’t deny him half of what he owns. He is already supplementing the cost of child maintenance because you have her 90% of the time…. The more you post the more you sound incredibly greedy and selfish.

OP are you really thinking about the money or are you fixating on not giving in to him?
Is that why you dislike the suggestions here about settling for his offer? You want to win or worse you don't want him to win anything.

We are now on p10 of the thread and all of OP's posts were on p1. If this is real, she is hopefully rethinking, but I don't think there is much point addressing her now.

There were plenty of other posts by OP, just with an unfortunate namechange.

Ah!

However, @SheilaFentiman there is no sign of a change of mind! OP is digging her heels in, convinced offering 12.5% is perfectly reasonable!

I suspect she'd rather end up with nothing herself if it meant he also had nothing.

So, you bought and paid for the house together - you looked after kids while he worked. It doesn’t seem fair to me that he doesn’t get to use some of his investment to move on. If you have that much equity in the house, surely you can remortgage and buy him out. It is irrelevant whose family sold you both the property - you both agreed to invest together at the time.

Surely it’ll depend what you agreed to when you signed the deeds etc? Just because one of you might have paid more, if you agreed to being joint owners (may be more of a technical legal term) then you’d split it equally. When we bought our house, I paid the LTT as I’d inherited money, and solicitors checked if I wanted to have a clause to show I’d paid more (I said no), so if you’d not requested it then assume it’s 50/50. It doesn’t matter that you bought the house cheap due to it being from family, unless there was a valuation done which shows if you’d been buying it full market value and what the deduction was for YOUR benefit, then it won’t matter.
As for you paying the mortgage, technically he’s paying rent elsewhere. My parents divorced and I stayed with my dad in the family home, until it sold. They were mortgage free by then but my mother didn’t request he pay her rent nor did my dad request she pay towards house bills. May have gone off on a tangent there….he can’t force the sale though, you’d both need to be in agreement over price etc. My mother tried to lower the price of the family home by crazy amounts and my dad refused until a suitable sum could be agreed.

.he can’t force the sale though, you’d both need to be in agreement over price etc.

He can't, but the court certainly can if it's the only way to move forward, and the court can determine the split of the sale proceeds.

How Are Assets Divided In Divorce?

The Court can order the sale or transfer of all forms of property, although the most common is the former matrimonial home. The Court could order a property to be sold and how the net proceeds of the sale are to be divided. The Court can also order a property to be transferred from one party to another.

This. Don't do it, OP.

I know it seems unfair, but when there isn't shedloads of money to go round, both parties have to be housed according to need, not according to want.

I'm sorry to say that it doesn't matter that your son is young for his age; he's an adult. It doesn't matter that your daughter likes the area you live in; what matters is that you and her father are both able to house her adequately. Unfortunately this often means you both end up with less nice houses - because the budget simply isn't there for it.

It's also unfortunate and feels unfair that you bought the house cheaply from your family - but marriage is a legal contract giving both parties financial rights, and people should be aware of this when they enter into it.

In the case of your daughter liking the area you live in (which is presumably also where she goes to school): the expectation would be that you could either buy a smaller house in that area, or a bigger house in a cheaper area. You can't buy a big house in your preferred area, sad as it is.

If I were you - and I know you have had legal advice - I would put the house on the market because pretty certainly you're not going to be able to stay there. You will need to give him his share of the equity, which is likely to be around 50% given the ages of your children (it would be hard for anyone to claim that a 13 yr old needs a SAHP who, therefore, needs more equity to buy a bigger house).

If he does take it to court - which I would strongly advise him to do, if you refuse to sell - then he will win. Save yourself the anguish and the expense.

My ex kept refusing a very reasonable offer and stalled the divorce for 3 years.

Eventually I took him to court and the judge ordered that the house be sold at £X price - and if my ex stalled in any way then the judge would assume control of the sale as well.

We had an offer within days and the house sold in 8 weeks. Oh, and he got an even worse deal than the one I made to him.

Your ex can and should request a court to sell the house op. It seems this is the only way you'll be forced to see how utterly unreasonable and unrealistic your expectations are.

OP you are extremely self entitled and if I was your ExH I’d slam you against the wall in court and get absolutely every penny I’d be entitled to. It’s women like you that financially ruin men just because you think you can use the kid card.. utterly disgusting! I hope you get everything you deserve

HNRWT- with that argument, why didn't you buy from your family alone? why did you need his money/him to buy? that will give you a pause for thought.
only 13 yo counts here. where are the father/s of 19 and 17yo? they should find housing from their father/s and not from this husband.

You’d put your 18 year old on your mortgage? That’s really selfish on your dd to put her on your mortgage. It means it will massively affect her if she wants to buy her own house in the future.

or what he/she says!👏

oh, has this thread been concluded to be a wind up then? if not, there will be no equity after the solicitors have taken their share of court costs. if op is not a wind up, she must be stupid ignoring well meaning and clear advice on this thread. all of it given to her for FREE.

See from what I can read is that you were a stay at home mum when you bought the house together so you must have had the mortgage approved on your husbands wages then? So even getting the house cheaper from your family you wouldn’t have a mortgage without your husbands wage…? He is entitled to half., I presume you’ve taken half of what your entitled to from his other assets so therefore he’s entitled to that from the house which he’s helped pay and house you from when you weren’t working

I am a Solicitor so will save you the trouble of having to go and get legal advice…. YES he can most definitely force the sale of the house if you don’t buy him out. The fact you bought it cheap from a family member is completely irrelevant. With respect, why do you believe you should simply get to keep the house for yourself?

OP you’re crazy.

My male friend has just won 50% of a £130k equity on his house, forcing a sale through court. 3 children under 13. It wasnt even that hard for him to do.

You should have taken the first offer.

i wish i could forward this post to your ex and tell him to go for 50%!!