Questions about fair divorce settlement for home-schooling SAHM

[Grannycurls]

Good morning! My daughter is not on MN; I’ve been a member for many years but haven’t been active for a while. But I’m here again with a few questions.

My daughter and her husband are divorcing, and she has questions about money, living costs, and living arrangements.
She has two children, 5 and 8, and she is their full-time carer, and she also homeschools. She would like to continue this arrangement.
Her husband has built up a business over the past 4 years and it’s going quite well.

They are living in rental accomadation. He pays the rent in full. He’s away most of the day till their bedtime, and at home at weekends.

Her main question concerns financial assets. They have a joint account and he provides quite generously, but he also has a business account to which she has no access. How can she be assured of a fair settlement? She is not named in the business; how can the business assets be shared fairly?
They both want to avoid lawyer fees. What’s the cheapest way of going through with this? What is she entitled to? She does not expect 50-50 of whatever his business is valued at; what she would like is a house of her own for herself and the children. And of course ongoing support to continue to be at home full time for the children. The children are well adjusted; they understand that “Daddy will be leaving” and have taken it quite well.

The other concern is that she has asked him to move out, obviously so that she can continue at home with the kids with little disruption. He says she has to put this in writing. Is this advisable? What could be a secondary motive for this request?

I look forward to your opinions; thanks for any input. If you have questions, ask away.

I might have missed it but I dont recall any mention of the current set up being based on 'his idealism', it seems rather a case of a joint decision. Anyway, she is being somewhat unrealistic if she thinks she can just continue with the current set up unchanged in the post divorce scenario. Time to dust off that CV and start looking at schools.

Or she could just send them to school like the vast majority of people.

There is way too much martyrdom on MN. ‘Sacrificing’ comes up a lot on here and I wonder if the women of MN know that women are allowed to work and be compensated for it now.

If sh was my daughter or indeed my son I would be horrified she could not support herself

So much unnecessary snark on this thread.

I’m sure the husband and wife came to this arrangement of homeschooling etc whilst they were still married, in love etc. Now it’s all changed and expectations need to be adjusted and managed.

the kids are homeschooled. Which means she’s could move with them to an area where she can find work and enrol them in school without too much disruption.

Could she move in with you for a bit post divorce whilst she finds her feet? She will definitely need to get a job. It will be so liberating for her.

I hope that she gets a solicitor and it all gets sorted out quickly.

Indeed. There is also at times on here a whiff of 'if I had not sacrificed my career I would be on six figures and heading up FTSE100 company' when the reality is that you could not care less about your hum drum boring job and you are delighted to be in a position to be a SAHM.

I also think there’s an element of “I had to sacrifice my career.”

Nope, no you didn’t. You wanted to, but you didn’t “have to.”

Your daughter needs a get a job.

She needs to get job and kids go to school, it's not complicated. why should he pay for two households

Well as I said upthread we’re missing the context of assets, wealth and husbands income. If that is substantial then wife may well be a position to have a house, not work etc.

if it’s not then very little chance

I suspect if they’re renting their house, in a cheaper rural area, he doesn’t have the millions in assets it would take to provide her with a divorce settlement that would buy a house and give her a passive income to live on for the next 20 years or so.

she won’t get spousal maintenance because that’s very rarely granted. If he is a very high earner she may be awarded it for a year or so to give her time to get on her feet, get a job, get the kids in school etc. but she will be expected to work and support herself.

usually people’s main asset is their house. But again I would guess his income isn’t that high, or they’d have bought a house at some point. It would be unusual to carry on renting when a mortgage is usually cheaper. Unless they are in zone 1 London or some such where buying is ridiculous. But o/p have said they’re rural as city living is expensive.

She can't live on fresh air. If her DH continues to support her lifestyle financially that's fine but that could change at any time. If not she'll have to support herself which means getting a job. This all sounds very naive and head in the sand to me.

@Usernamenotfound1 i guess we don’t know as op not coming back to clarify.

im presuming there’s not millions in wealth but who knows? If there is and he earns hundreds of thousands then it’s perfectly possible to be awarded long term spousal . I expect that’s not the case here but unless op comes band and gives more details all
we can do is guess and make assumptions ( which may be incorrect!)

Everyone getting divorced should say "show me the money". That and child arrangements are pretty much all that divorce is about.

And getting a job to support yourself.

You must be surrounded by some awful women if they ‘have’ to have some help in their lives.

I actually did the polar opposite of this.

I left my ex husband with his money, because it largely came from inheritance that I didn’t feel was mine to take.

I also have my own money, so don’t need it.

OP wants to stay home with her DC and (from her account) her ex wants her to stay home with their DC. If they are in agreement and there is enough money for it, that's a luxury she can pursue. If there's a LOT of money she may be able to do it even if he doesn't agree. The need to work is very much based on your access to wealth.

It''s not the choice I'd make. And if there's only just enough money to make it work I think it's foolish as very precarious and mortgages your future. But it's not something she necessarily has to do.

That's horribly mysogynistic.

Built up a business is very vague OP. Is it a big business with plenty of assets, staff etc or is it that he’s basically earning a lot through a limited company one man band type set up? If you look on companies house you will be able to see the assets the company held at the last year end which will give you a very rough idea.