Financial Settlement - Reasonable?

[Bub1765]

I went into my divorce thinking I was being quite reasonable with my offer for settlement but 6 months on I seem to be getting nowhere. I've had legal advice and got the impression that I'm being reasonable, in line with a court outcome but not excessively generous but my STBXW seems to be expecting a lot more and ongoing financial ties for a long time. I would be most grateful if those who have settled or been subject to a final hearing think this is within the right ball park:

H: 41, earning £102k gross per annum. Net income per month of £3,635 after commuting costs, child maintenance and taking sole responsibility for shared debts.

W: 39, earning £14k part time. Net income per month of £3,183 when benefits and child maintenance added to total. Universal credit element is £671 of this. Was retraining to earn more and recently graduated, has now chosen not to pursue this during divorce.

Children: 3 (ages 12, 9 and 7)

Assets: House £110k equity (£385k minus mortgage and cost of sales); Pensions £190k, Cars around £10k.

Liabilities ex mortgage: Debt of around £8k.

Proposal:

Children: 4 nights with me per fortnight, 10 nights with her. 50/50 split in school holidays. This part has been agreed and is not contentious although I am more than willing to do more to enable her career (but this balance would pay her a decent amount of child maintenance).

Assets: 90% equity to her, 10% to me. I will agree to stay on mortgage for 4 years when youngest is at secondary school, at which point she must either remove me from the mortgage and pay my 10% or sell. Pensions 70/30 split in my favour. Each keep own cars.

Income: Clean break on income. Child maintenance paid.

For context, my STBXW is earning beneath her earning capacity and is unwilling to do anything about it. Childcare would largely be covered by additional UC and I would happily pay the rest but I am much less willing to pay this amount without a clear goal of improving her earning capacity and ceasing to be dependent. I would estimate - conservatively - that her immediate earning capacity is £25k and this could rise to £40k. It could go rather higher with a bit of effort but I won't crystal ball gaze.

Points of contention are that:

1. She wants to stay in the house for 14 years when youngest is 21, me remain named on and contribute to the mortgage albeit not 100% and then to sell and split in her favour. I think this is a bad idea because she won't do anything to improve her earnings now and both of us will probably find ourselves with insufficient capital to buy again in our mid-fifties (unless she got the lion's share of the equity at that point, in which case only I would end up unable to buy but obviously I don't think that would be at all fair).

2. She wants spousal maintenance but because she has universal credit of £671 I would have to pay a lot to make any difference to her income, to the point that I would have a materially lower income than she does. I don't think this is fair on our children either as it would leave me barely able to cover my own costs and much less able to provide for them on an ad hoc basis. My counter position is that I could agree to cover certain expenses (e.g. hobbies, uniforms, school trips) outside of the CMS arrangement.

Would welcome thoughts?

Can you force the issue? Perhaps arrange a frim of mediation and put the written proposals down on paper. Making her walk through the reasoning with a neutral third party may make her see what her choices are.

Factor in a scenario where she progresses her career as well, help her see where it would benefit her.

If she objects to that and is completely obstructive then can you push it to court. If she refuses to engage with all attempts to resolve the matter out of a court perhaps a judge would wake her up by pointing out that people are supposed to avoid conflict in divorce where possible.

@S00tyandSweep What you say absolutely matters, I promise I am taking it all in. Obviously I'm matching that against what I've been told by a solicitor though and I should point out that I was asking whether what I was proposing was in line with what others had settled or had ordered by a court. What I'm actually receiving is more generalised advice from people who - without wishing to offend - don't seem to be any better informed than I am.

The issue I have is that the legal advice I have is pretty good. It tallies with the rare "needs" cases that are reported. If I took her to court, I'm pretty confident that I'd get a similar outcome.

The issue I am trying to understand is what is stopping her accepting the offer given that not doing so is going to mean significant legal costs for her (I'm very well placed to self represent through most of the process) and very little prospect of success. In other words, are there ways I can tweak the offer here and there to make it acceptable without it becoming grossly unfair to me?

Quite a lot of your figures are wrong, but to be fair you won't have the facts to know otherwise.

1. We live in a large town and she has no intention of working elsewhere. Her commuting costs are very likely to be negligible. Currently she is walking distance from her work and it is at the same workplace that she could maximise her income. If that changed, then obviously they would be factored in.

2. She will still be eligible for universal credit and can also get free wraparound care with her employer anyway. Even if she moved to an office role on what I am saying is her earning capacity (£25k, rising to £40k when the children are secondary age) she would still have 85% of this cost covered.

3. We're covering half the holidays each, so holiday cover is irrelevant unless you want me to count the same?

So I get what you are saying but it's not really relevant to our case.

She hasn't supported my career. I know it's a common sentiment on these boards, but given that she's just spent most of the last 6 years at university I don't really think the argument stacks up. I built my career before children and haven't been able to progress it much since.

I got divorced about your age and was ordered to give £ for £ equivalent of pension to equity

@Thisistyresome I tried that but made the mistake of letting her choose the first mediator. This mediator was not legally qualified and was also extremely reluctant to speak up if either of us said something unreasonable. My solicitor described her as a "pro-Mum extremist" when I explained some of what had been suggested.

I've said I'm happy to go back to mediation but only with a legally qualified mediator.

@HeresMyBreakdown I've had different advice but to be honest I wouldn't dwell on this point too much. The pension element is something I'm quite flexible on because we don't even have the pension report anyway. Maybe it will be more like 60/40? Regardless, it won't settle anyone's immediate needs.

Dont be daft! She, as many millions of women worldwide, can work full time and start paying into her own pension pot. The children dont need a part time employed mother, they’ll manage perfectly well if shes working full time, especially at those ages.

I think I'll close it here. I think this chat just reinforces the point that it is too case specific to understand my STBXW's reluctance to settle on the offer.

I think what I will do is propose mediation with someone legally qualified and see where things go. Maybe applying for a financial order with the court in a month or two might focus her mind a bit too.

I think your proposal is generous, she wants the same lifestyle as if she was still married.

I think there will be a battle in four years when you remove your name from the mortgage.

Can you definitely do 50% of school holidays?

She doesn't even need to work full time. She can earn £25k with her current employer part time term time only with a defined benefit pension and free wraparound care. She just doesn't want to.

So you have done mediation, but because the mediator didn't say what you wanted to hear, you want another one, and yet you're claiming that your ex is the one delaying the process 😂

What did the mediator suggest would be a fair split?

I did say split the holidays and then forgot to take it off - so 800/month evened out - although looking, it seems in smaller towns you can get wraparound care for about 20, so we'll knock that off too - it's still a significant amount - and will still cause issues with your 2 hour commute and it not covering up to pickup time, thus restricting her to jobs that will allow her to cover it.

Even if she maintains UC eligibility - you still need to knock that off as a required cost, or you're clearly biasing it towards yourself by only 'allowing' your 'required' expenses, and not hers.

I do note that you put the onus on her to maximise her income - are you doing all you can to minimise your commute costs BTW?

You're already saying that she should 'maximise' her income - but not so much that she has to pay all the childcare, she's only to do that once they're at secondary - so you're already using this financial agreement to control her life years ahead - I think I see why she's resistant to the deal TBH.

I agree there will be a battle in 4 years time. I'll probably need something in the consent order that she covers my legal costs if I have to take the matter to court.

And yes, I can cover school holidays. Including inset days, I have worked out that there are 63 days in the year when children are not at school that are not covered by weekends or bank holidays. I get 35 days annual leave a year and confirmed with work that they will support me taking all of these in school holidays. I can also work from home on the odd day and my parents are quite young and can help out for the next few years until they are all in secondary school.

Whether my wife can cover her half is more debatable. It's possible I would do more than half I guess.

I think you underestimate how exhausting it is to navigate working full time and looking after teens on your own, you are constantly working or sorting things out for your DC and I know a lot of people say 'well I have the same effectively because my husband comes back after the DC are in bed' or whatever but being a (default) single parent is hard. Add on top of that the greatest earning years for women is about 40 and after 50 menopausal with teens forget about it!! I'm exhausted I've been doing it a decade it takes its toll mentally and physically and sadly this seems to have no bearing on financial settlements which I think is outrageous.

I don't want to go into too much detail about the mediator here to avoid being "outing" but it was my solicitor who advised that I should stop working with her. The problem wasn't entirely with what she was proposing but also her general reluctance to solve the issues. We were never allowed a proper discussion about my STBXW's earning capacity. My STBXW would feign upset about the topic and the mediator would move it on unresolved. We also spent around 90% of the 5 sessions talking about how my STBXW could stay on the property ladder despite a refusal to maximise her income or talk about it.

The mediator also suggested things that showed she did not understand basic concepts. For example, she didn't understand how universal credit worked and the ways in which the amounts a recipient could get could change if receiving spousal maintenance or holding large sums of cash in a bank. One suggestion she made is too outing here but would have wiped my STBXW's universal credit out altogether.

I think the lowest point was when she suggested I take out a massive loan and give this to my STBXW along with all of the equity and half of the pension. This would have equated to around 140% of the assets excluding pensions. I'm not even sure if it's possible to get an unsecured loan that large!

I'm not sure she did this with any consideration of the law or the bigger picture but my solicitor was aghast that this woman was licensed. I was advised that with a mediator like this we would go around and around in circles never getting anywhere.

I've had several solicitors/mediators and none of them knew anything about benefits so were completely useless in that respect.

You're still missing the point. If she got child care, most of this £800 would be on top of what she's receiving.

As for my commuting costs, it's train fares and I do pay as little as possible already.

I'm not sure about the "control her life" comment. I'm quite happy to do a lot more with the children. The split is more for her benefit than mine but I've offered to do more. I think if anyone, she's the one wanting to control me to be honest, making sure I'm pinned down on maintenance so I am well and truly job locked and not able to buy a house by being stuck on her mortgage. That said, I don't think anyone is trying to exert control here.

My solicitors were good. The mediator was useless.

@Chewbecca or she never had one

This is all very well but there's a double standard here. I'm still going to be heavily involved in the children's lives and I'm also going to get older and find it harder to work. That's why it wouldn't have any bearing on financial settlements, because both the husband and the wife are in the same boat.

Sounds like op has actually supported his ex to study to better her life chances and now she’s not taking that up rather than the other way

pension won’t be valued £1; £1 vs equity but without proper valuation we don’t know what the ratio is

i think you’re being more than fair

she needs to step up

@HeresMyBreakdown I work full time in demanding exec role in my 50s with teens. Millions do it

why is it ok for op but not his ex ??

Like I said, the pension is not a hill to die on. If she wants a bit more than that for a clean break then fine.

It's more the reluctance to seek financial independence thereafter that is the ongoing disagreement. I think I would feel quite differently about it if she'd pursued a career before children and if her staying at home for a few years before becoming a student was a mutual decision because then I could think fair enough she's lost out and within a few years she will get back on her feet when the ties can end. However, instead she is someone with a track record of avoiding having a career, who decided to study instead of getting a job then decided not to use her degree when time caught up with her and she had to work.

I fear that given the opportunity, she will try and keep those financial ties for a long time even if in the long term it is to her own detriment (e.g. seeking a Mesher Order and ending up on minimum wage with barely more equity than she's being offered now in 14 years time). Of course, in that situation, my own finances will be trashed by being unable to get a mortgage for 14 years and maybe even having to pay her money on top so my willingness to help her in that situation will be less than zero.

I agree with you!