He wants to divorce and continue to cohabit

[tellmesomethingtrue]

Is this madness?

Joint mortgage
Two young kids

What do you want?

I personally would hate this. However if you think you can make it work then each to their own!

If you did decide to go down that road I would highly recommend having an in depth chat re: expectations regarding buying food/products, cleaning, bills, personal space, finances and childcare.

Yes

What happens when either of you met someone else?

Why does he want to divorce?

And future partners, entertaining friends, people staying over.

Seriously this set up will age quickly and badly…

How would this setup be different from just being in an unhappy marriage?

Absolute last resort, disaster in waiting

Don’t you think he’s cheating? Because I would with this arrangement

Oh god no! He still thinks you’ll cook and clean and he can date outside the house. He is turning you into his housekeeper and childminder.

Who wants the divorce and why?
What do you want?
Sounds like marriage without the sex and freedom to date others to me.

Cake and eat it?

I can only imagine you'll become the housekeeper. Or maybe you earn more money and he wants to benefit from that.

Value yourself. He should leave. Or sell the house.

My guess is that he feels a shred of shame about cheating on you, and is worried that he will be judged. When he goes and actually spends the majority of time with his mistress, he will feel fine because his children are being cared for by you, and you won’t find a new partner.

You’d be better off married with your eyes open or divorced but no wool being pulled over your eyes.

By the way, he will tell everyone the divorce was your idea.

Terrible idea. You get to continue being his skivvy and he gets to do what he wants.

It’s a nope from me

Who would have his kids all the time whilst he dates … and can date as a single man as you are at home taking care of business.

who would cook and clean

do the washing, shopping, clean the loo

oh that’s you op

oh and when you want to date he would unfortunately be unavailable (coz he doesn’t want you but no one else can have you).

divorce and separate your life and move on… he has kids and parents too

Fuck that. Sounds like he wants the freedom to do what he wants with who he wants, but still have the convenience of having another parent around all the time so he doesn’t have to do it himself and he doesn’t want to lose any of his house and money.

Ahhhh......mine thought we could do that. Nope.

Maybe I was out of order packing all his stuff up and dumping it at his parents' but I'd already had the admission from him that there was someone else.

Exactly.

I'm already housekeeper and do the lions share of childcare as I work less hours.
I want to divorce because he cheated.
He thinks it's reasonable to go through the divorce and still cohabit so we can sell the house when the fixed term is up and I'll have I increased earnings as kids will be at secondary.
I don't want to live with him during the divorce, let alone afterwards!

It is indeed madness. Unless you can split the house into two flats.

Exactly this.

Madness.

Well there’s two separate issues.

first the actual separation period - many couples cohabit during this time rather than rent etc. both of you will be advised not to move out while you work through divorce and finances

second, post divorce - no one in their right mind would cohabit then

how long until fixed period mortgage ends?
can you go back full time now ? Unlikely to impact your settlement as you’ll be awarded based on expectation of full time earnings anyway

Please don't. I used to be an adviser (benefits, debt etc) and had a few clients in this situation and it was so messy. You're going to have to carry on negotiating finances, cleaning, laundry, shopping, house maintenance, gardening with him - plus the awkwardness of social interactions/guests etc.

As well as the who does what thing that many others have noted...
How would you split your marital assets if you divorced but continued to cohabit?
What about pensions and the marital home? Whose name is it in?
Unmarried people have no legal claims on assets, even if they have contributed towards them for years.
Sounds well dodgy to me.

I can think of few things more stressful.