Fair financial settlement - opinions

[ScoutFinch10]

Hello all,

I am a long term mumsnet stalker, but first time poster. I have found myself in a very difficult place and I am now trying to rebuild.

I will try to give background without being too outing:

My ex wife (same sex couple) and I separated almost one year ago, and since this I have realised the she is coercive and controlling. This has got worse in some ways since the split, as the harder I try to push away the less in control she feels.

She is currently staying with family, I am living in our home with our 2 children. She has them 3 nights a week or so, because she didn’t want to pay child maintenance (I have never actually asked her to). She has recently filed for the divorce and informed me I will be hearing from her solicitor. I believe this has been done/said to scare me. She currently pays her half of the mortgage to protect her equity (in her words). I can pay the mortgage by myself and currently use the money she pays to pay down debt.

I have been looking at mortgaging the property myself to reduce the upheaval to our children. They both have fairly significant special needs and I want to avoid any further disruption to them if I can. She has been pressuring to sell the house if I can’t release her equity.

If you’ve managed to get this far, thank you. I am wondering what people think of the following as a financial offer to her:

50% equity is approx 46k
minus 50% of early repayment charge approx 45k

I can raise 23k to pay her as a lump sum by borrowing extra on the mortgage and I am considering offering to pay for her car monthly. The debt for her car is currently in my name anyway and worth approx 18k.

This leaves a shortfall of approx 4k, but my thought is if she forced the sale then we’d lose that anyway…

Does this seem fair? I am worried about proposing anything and then getting trapped or manipulated by her in some way.

Are you sure of the early repayment fee? 45k sounds awfully high!

You will need to consider other savings / assets / debts as well as income and pension before anyone can comment on whether this is a fair split.

Thank you for replying. The early repayment fee is about 3.7k, and I thought it fair to split this 50/50. I now see it reads as if the early repayment is 45k! I meant her equity to find is approx 45k

Pensions are negligible on both sides due to our young ages. I probably have around 7k and she likely has similar so they’d out weigh one another.

We have no other assets, except the contents in the house. I’ve been paying more of debts/bills to try and offset that she will need to purchase things again, and she had 100% of disability benefits to purchase furniture (approx £1000). Unfortunately none of that was done in writing and was when things were more amicable.

Looks pretty fair if that’s all there is. If you sold the house, you would also have to find conveyancing and estate agent fees which would come out the shared pot so point that out to her too.

Thank you for your thoughts - I hadn’t considered the conveyancing and estate agents fees so I will keep this in mind. She will want every penny she can get sadly, but I am hoping she can see the sense and logic to the offer…

I had also just seen on another thread there is a cost to transfer deeds and equity - is it fair to split this too? Is that what’s normally done? If anyone knows or has any advice around this it would be really helpful. I feel like I’m drowning a little under the weight of everything :(

Yes, it’s usual to split costs. If you were selling, the costs would come out first.
Write down all the figures to sell for her to understand.
EG equity, minus 1.5% or 2% plus vat estate agent costs, minus conveyancing fees, minus any early exit fees in the mortgage, minus any other joint debts divide the balance equally and then reduce her share by the value of her car debt (or ask her to return the car if not willing to factor the debt in).
Then write down the other scenario where you remortgage and all costs are split equally.

This is what I was going to say too.
I'd just write down the various options you have, break down the cost of each, and show / send her this. Unfortunately I don't imagine you can really force it to go the way you prefer, but if she is really motivated by money I expect seeing it explicitly will help push her one way or another.

Wishing you all the best, sorry you are going through this.

Also don’t feel threatened or intimidated by solicitors - they are acting on instructions so you might get letters with unsubstantiated claims, outright lies and demands that something be done by x date etc. it’s a strategy. What’s going to happen? In court, a claim would need to be evidenced, no one is going to cart you off if you haven’t replied in time - they hold no more weight than a letter from her. I received letters from my ex’s solicitor with all manner of untruths. My solicitor always advised not to try and defend it, if it wouldn’t change the financial outcome - just focus on the financial facts that we had that supported our side and ignore the rest.
You could have a one off consultation so you can be sure of where you stand too.
Chances are, if she shows your proposals to a solicitor they’ll send counter proposals, agree it and she will either realise or will be advised that the cost of pursuing much more will reduce what you both have.