Divorce 101

[darada]

STBXH and I have been flogging a dead horse for years, and I think it's time to call it a day. I'm 45, he's 51 and we have an 8 year old son. He's a much higher earner than me and I don't know much about his (our) assets. Married for just under 15 years. He doesn't interfere in my finances and pays all the bills. I don't contribute much expect for groceries on occasion (not the big shop). He's not a bad father and I want him to be involved in my son's life.

I don't know much about divorce proceedings. I don't want a nasty fight and I have been to see a lawyer who was a bit useless to be honest. She sent him an email but no response yet. I don't have much money to pay for an expensive divorce fight.

What are my options? I don't think he will be very amicable especially if he senses loss of access to his son.

Well you need to reframe it from you want him involved in your sons life and he might struggle with loss of access

your son is equally your dh son the sane as yours
you have no more ‘right’ to him
you could end up with shared care 50:50 so you might be the one who ‘loses’ out on access

if you start off reframing it as you have your eh is belly likely to respond in a non amicable way

re finances ultimately if you can’t agree you’ll need to do form
e, both complete full disclosure and get yours mediators/solicitors to guide you both to what an outcome might look like

if you start witj

you him out
and only sees his son eow
and you think you should get 80% of assets it will hardly be surprising if he reacts

Also there is lots of information online re divorce process and basic principles I’m asset sharing

its wise to educate yourself using these resources

Not belly! Meant to say your dh is likely to respond in an amicable manner

You may not want a nasty fight but if your partner does you will get one.

I'd suggest booking an hour or a half hour with a solicitor to get some advice for your situation.

The key financial assets in most divorces are the family home and both pensions. You will know your own pension. Try to find out if you can how much the family home is worth and what if any mortgage is left on it.

At this stage your best use of a solicitors advice is to get an understanding of the process and then decide how you will proceed. They won’t be able to give you much idea about how much of a settlement you can get because you don’t know what the family assets are.

The first thing to know is that when you married you agreed to combine your wealth, assets, liabilities and income. This is main legal commitment you undertook and the love, honour and obey was just window dressing in the legal sense.

The divorce is going to sever this financial relationship and establish a co parenting arrangement that suits your child.

Many people are able to discuss and agree a split in finances and co parenting themselves. This can helped by mediation and various degrees of legal support. Two reasonable minded people can do a lot without lawyers. If you can’t agree then you will end up in court where judges have a lot of discretion but will apply the law.

In order to understand what you are negotiating towards you need to know what all joint and individual assets, liabilities and income are. This is the disclosure. You then determine what are fair needs post marriage. Unless you are very rich that will be largely establishing housing and cost of living needs. The key determinant in housing will be proximity your kids school. Basically what will it cost you to buy or rent a 2 bed property near the school. The assets will be split to facilitate this need and to break any financial current and future financial dependence as part of a clean break, if possible. Pensions are usually equalised and at your age this would be a priority.

Coparenting is based on child needs. But the core determinant will be a need to maintain relationships with both parents, their education and community. Child support payments will be based on this arrangement.

Given what you have posted your husband is way ahead of you on financial matters. I would really try to catch up before he has reason (a pending divorce) to start squirreling.

Thanks for the replies. He has a flat in his own name from before we got married. I don't know if I can have half of that?

Why would you want half the flat?

just think about what’s in the best interest of your child and go from there.

He and your son need to maintain a strong, loving connection so liaise with him about how the pair of you will arrange those logistics. Half the week at yours, half at his? One week at yours, one week at his?

His flat will form part of the marital assets available for division

what % of that pot you’ll get we don’t know. Might be half, or might be more or less than halve. you’ll need to work out a settlement but it’s not automatically 50%