Can’t afford to divorce? What should we do?

[lking12]

Hi all, after looking at our finances (though I knew anyway) even running one household our remaining income is only about £400 a month. If I stopped a saving scheme and my pension contributions this would go up to £800 a month. This doesn’t seem enough to divorce and run two separate households as we live in the South East.
I can’t work out the logistics of divorcing!?!

My husband works from home and does the school run whilst I commute into work. The only way I can see us divorcing is if he moves back with his parents an hour away, I put the kids into childcare in the morning which will cost me £100 a week (or slightly less depending which days I go into the office) and have them in the week… And then he has the kids each weekend?
Otherwise is there some magical way we can afford to divorce? Ideally I don’t want to disrupt the kids schools and my job.

you can claim benefits whilst still in the same house - and separated - worth a look.

I suggest you seek advice before doing this. My ex claimed tax credits while we were still married. They were not prosecuted, but credits were suspended for over a year to compensate which left them in difficulty.

My Ex was claiming Working Tax Credit when I filed for divorce, with us as a couple on the claim.

I rang them up when I filed for divorce, and said we were now separated. They ended the WTC. Whether he reapplied in his sole name I don't know.

I also cancelled the DD from the joint account (which I kept open for shared household bills while divorce process went on) for his very small NI contributions. He was furious when I told him. (Though I suspect he'd already got enough years for a small State Pension anyway.) He was even furious when I told him I'd taken him off the RAC when he finally moved out, even though I could have done it months earlier.

This is very true

BOTH partners always come out of divorce worse off. Even the millionaires, even if they might not struggle in reality .

your life style will change, waiting until you have “more “money to make it easier, isn’t really going to help in long term.

you may want to use link above in header of board to ADVICE NOW, and use their guides. Look at how “fair settlement “ works and the 10 or so criteria that apply . Use those to figure how that will impact you and husband, and then as people say think about it in reality in terms of husband potentially being main care giver.

you will find it hard to start with. You will be going backwards in terms of security, financial assets, future plans, but it some ways it is better to get it over with now, and then build back up slowly for yourself .

I waited 10 years of a 30 year marriage for right time. There wasn’t right time. I made my situation worse in many ways. It is difficult, there is a sort of grieving process to go through, and a slow process to accept the reality of the impact it will have in so many ways. But you will get there eventually, and if it’s the right decision for you, then delaying won’t achieve anything.

We had a chat, he wants to wait until the children are a bit older to see if the marriage improves but I’m not sure how he thinks that will magically happen.

As I suspected he doesn’t want to be their main care giver in the week anyway as he doesn’t do any of the childcare admin, school clubs admin, or any school admin and won’t take it on…. so he suggested he either move back with his parents and come to the house for the weekend to look after them or sometimes take them back to his parents when they wouldn’t mind.
He also suggested rather than sell the house we’d ultimately ring fence his % equity as an investment and from that point on I take on the repayments and the rest of the debt/equity is mine.
Apparently his mum and dad were talking about putting some of their money in his name anyway so instead he thinks they might put something towards a flat for him if they don’t want him in the house so we can keep things consistent for the kids (they obviously wouldn’t put anything in his name if they knew we were having such chats!).

He isn’t expecting to move on in his career he’s not changing companies/jobs so he’s on what he’s going to get…. And he doesn’t seem to care (I think adjusting for inflation he’s earning less than when he started this job 18 years ago). But hopefully I should get a promotion in next 3 years which might make different options more feasible in future.

I think we’ll see how Christmas goes and take it from there.
Having our cake and eating it would be keeping the kids in this house but not sure if it’s a silly idea to think it’s an agreement that could last 10+ years of schooling before someone wants buying out?! But it could be worth a try.

Just make sure that if you do do this, you change the ownership to tenants in common and ring fence the amount not the % so he doesn't benefit from the growth in equity from refurbishment etc

If I was taking on the whole mortgage I wouldn’t have money to refurbish only to do repairs anyway!
it’s recently been done so hopefully wouldn’t have to be as significantly done up again as it has been!

How are things going now? I’m in a very similar position to yours and was wondering if you’d managed to work through things any further. I am investigating my options at the moment and just can’t seem to find a viable solution.