Would really appreciate some support on this. Basic situation is that exDH left me and DD8 last September. It was a horribly unexpected divorce and the financial settlement took months as he tried at every stage to pay the minimum possible. We jointly own the family home, which is a Victorian end of terrace that needs a lot of work. We were due to start a full renovation just before he announced he was leaving, and there are now a huge number of things going wrong with it - no central heating on the ground floor, a faulty boiler and leaking kitchen roof, etc. The terms of the settlement are that I receive all the equity in the house when it's sold along with a sizable amount of cash (which he has already transferred to me).
ExDH has always earned many multiples of my salary; his job is very senior and involves a huge amount of international travel. I work full time too but for a charity. I earn a good salary compared to others at my level in the sector, but it's around a fifth of his total pay including bonus. Our mortgage payment is huge - about twice my monthly net pay. Since moving out he has been contributing about three quarters of the mortgage while also paying for a flat for himself (I don't know the location of this and my daughter has never seen it).
He has pretty much checked out of mine and our daughter's life. He is meant to see her for an afternoon each weekend but is regularly "unavailable" at short notice - he's currently been out of contact for five weeks. He pushed for the house to be sold very quickly, while leaving every part of the process down to me. I secured an offer on the house in March and also found a lovely house for me and DD8 to buy for ourselves. It's much smaller, simple to live in and close to her school. She and I totally fell in love with it. We've been to see it four times over the past seven months, and have measured up for our furniture etc. and gone through a long process of downsizing our belongings.
In August, ExDH stopped paying the mortgage on the house, on the basis that it would be sold soon and he had contributed "long enough". I found this incredibly anxiety inducing as I am now paying the full mortgage out of my savings. I managed to increased the amount of my new mortgage enough to give myself a buffer of a few months before my savings were depleted to the point where the new house wasn't viable.
We got very close to exchange on the house chain and then three weeks ago our buyers pulled out, as they were worried about some cracking that had appeared in the chimney breast of the living room. I've since had a structural engineer look at this, who has recommended that a builder undertake some investigation work to determine whether it's subsidence. We cannot sell the house until this is all sorted, with the worst case scenario being that extensive work is needed. I'm feeling sick with worry about this all the time - I feel completely trapped and every day that goes by all I can think about is my savings pot getting smaller and smaller.
The sellers of the new house have very kindly given me a few weeks to figure out a solution before they put the house back on the market.
This week, as a total wild card, my dad has very kindly offered to take out a mortgage on his house in order to loan me the money to go ahead with the purchase of the new house. This would allow me and DD8 to move into it and start our lives fresh, while the current house is being sorted out and any building work can take place, etc. But it would mean that - for an indeterminate amount of time - we have two sizable mortgages to pay. On paper it's an idiotic thing to do. But I feel completely trapped in this house and so devastated at the thought of losing the new future I'd imagined in the new one. So the options are:
- Accept that the house chain has to fall through, and come to terms with not getting the house that DD8 and I have pinned our hopes on. But keeps the financial arrangements as simple as possible.
- Accept the offer of help, move into the new house and hope that there isn't too long of both mortgages before the existing house is sold.
- Open up the financial settlement again with ExDH and try to persuade him to contribute as least partly to the mortgage.