Horrible divorce in progress, my husband is determined to punish me for divorcing him and therefore if I express any preference over anything he goes all out against it, even if my preferred suggestion makes sense financially.
He is older than me and decided to retire early when he realised I was serious about the divorce (given his ever increasing unreasonable behaviour) thereby giving himself a much lower annual income which he assumed I'd be ordered to top up to equalise our standards of living via spousal maintenance. So far there's been no indication from solicitors that I'd be expected to subsidise him following the divorce being finalised but of course on a low income he'll minimise any child maintenance payable to me as the resident parent.
He will not be able to afford to run the family home on his pension income and insists it must be sold. We also own a smaller holiday cottage which we had planned to move to when we both retired and it would make sense for him to live there initially, then sell it if he wants to move somewhere else but he's refusing to move out of the family home until the divorce is finalised which is making things stressful all round and not a good atmosphere for any of us.
I can afford to run the family home and we still have a teenage child at home for another few years plus older siblings coming home from University. The children want to stay in the home for the foreseeable future if possible. I'll be working for another 5-10 years so it would seem reasonable to plan to stay here 5 years.
I'm happy to have the family home properly valued and then "buy" him out by signing over other joint assets to him and possibly taking a mortgage for the difference but because he sees this as him being "thrown out" of the family home, he has seen red over this proposal and is hell bent on preventing that happening. It's enraged him to the point of physical aggression at times.
Selling both houses and buying replacement properties for each of us incurs many extra expenses which could be avoided if we kept them for the time being.
How likely is a court hearing (to be held regarding valuing and splitting our assets) to end in them agreeing with him that the family home must be sold, just because that's what he wants to happen ?