What happens to the paid-off marital home if we divorce?

[WhatCanIDoHere]

I'd like to know what happens to the marital home in this situation if you divorce.

Jointly owned, both our names on the deeds. Mortgage is fully paid off. DH works; I haven't worked since having children and am 24/7 carer for 2 ND teens (both under 18). Both receive DLA and I get Carers Allowance. I have no money in my own right other than Carers Allowance; everything else is jointly owned. I have a few years of pension contributions from a previous job, but we've been working on the basis that I would benefit from DH's (generous) one, which I would get a large % of if he died.

If we were to divorce, would we have to sell the home to split the value of it between us?

DC would really struggle to cope with another home. They have some quite specific needs and this house meets them all. It's very unlikely I could find another house which meets the same criteria. We couldn't rent since one teen has violent & challenging behaviour which includes property damage. (Yes, we are having help for this and it is gradually improving but it is not likely to completely stop any time very soon.) It would be impossible to buy a house around here with 50% of the money from the sale of this one. We don't want to move away from the area due to friends etc for the DC.

I have no idea how splitting marital assets works in a situation like this.

Are you working on changing this? It sounds very limiting for both you and them. And very sad that one of them might refuse to see their dad, that's not going to be good for anyone.

I do not think that detached and a long way from neighbours are likely to be considered essential elements of your future housing.

I was in a very similar position. House (not quite paid off) 2dc (I with SEN and I became carer)
I got the house in the divorce. Exh got £10k and kept his pension etc
mote consideration is put in if adaptations have been done to the house for their needs. He had downstairs made open plan to keep an eye on DS

Will you be safe if you are living alone with the children? Needing sturdy internal doors because of violence implies that it would be better for you if another adult lived there too. Can you have a legal divorce but continue to live together? It sounds like you get no respite but surely if you divorce there would be even less respite for you?

Been working on the anxiety for years but without much progress. Neither DC will consider meds. CAMHS aren't interested and one DC would refuse to engage with them anyway.

Yes, it is very limiting for me with one child not being able to be cared for anyone apart from me, but it's sadly very common for children with their condition and there's not much that can be done about it. Attempts to get it to change usually make the problem worse rather than better. For many, it does improve with age, though we've not yet got to that point.

Yes, I'd have zero respite if we divorced but I get virtually zero now so that wouldn't make much difference. I would lose help with practicalities at home though, which would be the big downside
of splitting.

I know it is much easier said than done, but are you actively seeking help for your children with this? It sounds miserable and not really sustainable in the long term. Do you never go out without them? What if you were ill or in hospital? Are you ready for the reality of being the only adult in a household like this? And I’m not being facetious, but would a bungalow not be better in these circumstances?

The court will look at both of your incomes and your housing needs and the assets will be split so that as far as possible, both housing needs are met.

If your ex's housing needs can be met by him taking out a new mortgage based on his income then it may be that you are allowed to stay in the house until the children reach a certain age. Your limited capacity to earn/the fact that youyr career was sacrificed to look after the ND children will be taken into account in the percentage split. Some men in this sitution will offer a larger percentage of the house in return for keeping their pension.

You’re putting barriers in the way
nonebifbthe requirements ( 2 separate downstairs rooms plus detached plus long way from neighbours etc) will likely hold any weight to housing needs

what will is:
each have a bedroom
your ability to provide that with fair share of assets
your income ( including benefits)
your ability or restrictions to work
any diagnosed Sen disabilities
your children’s abilities to live independently going forward with the right treatment/support/medications in place

there may be enough in the pot for you to get the house and he keep his pension

there may not

we don’t know

Should say in regards to your requirements

Yes, we have sought and received lots of fairly targeted help. However, for any input to be effective, all adults involved need to apply the correct strategies/approach and DH has not really been able to do that so far.

The more challenging child's symptoms are primarily exacerbated by stress, and unfortunately in the last few years stress levels have been very high due to DH not really understanding the condition and not parenting appropriately (despite much training), very unhelpful wider family dynamics and DC trauma caused by well-meaning but uninformed attempts by others to get us "help" (which wasn't even remotely helpful when we got it).

I don't have any active plans to split, but DH has repeatedly threatened to leave so I thought it would be useful to get a vague idea of how things might work if we did divorce. It would probably be a complete nightmare for me if we did, frankly.

These replies have been really helpful - thanks to everyone who's responded.

If we had an emergency and I were ill, the DC would rise to the occasion because it was an emergency. There would be fallout afterwards, but that could be dealt with. Trying to get them to do the same thing without the emergency would completely fail and the fallout would be unendurable for everyone. They coped when I was unexpectedly in hospital a few years ago, but both had much less severe symptoms back then so it was easier. Symptoms for both (but especially for the more challenging child) are typically massively worse during puberty/adolescence and then improve again somewhat in adulthood.

We did use to have family who could help with care but some are now too elderly/ill/deceased and the others have refused to understand/accept one DC's condition as symptoms have got worse (despite getting a formal diagnosis), so that DC will no longer even speak to them. I've not been anywhere without DC for a couple of years now, which has been tough, but I do have a very good online support network from other parents of children with the same condition. Our situation is not uncommon, unfortunately, and a lot of them have to negotiate it as single parents.

Strong doors can be put onto any house/bungalow. I don't think you'd be allowed to keep all of house because your DC might smash weak doors in another house. A judge would say put secure doors in new accommodation. You might ask for 60 percent of you have most of care for DC.

Ultimately it depends if you and ExH agree what the split should be and are getting court to rubber stamp or are you asking court to decide.
If the former, a court will sign off a fairly uneven split if both sides have legal advice and sign up to it. This happened in my case.

This sounds like an incredibly difficult situation OP.

Perhaps dh could leave but not initiate divorce. Especially if he is able to stay with family.

How many years do you have to limp through before the kids are out of adolescence and calming down as they reach adulthood? Perhaps you and dh could postpone a full divorce until then; at which point you could then move house and free up equity so Dh can do similar.

You say they refuse to be medicated. With respect, if it made life better for everyone - especially them - wouldn't it be better to overrule this. Sometimes parents and doctors should be making these decisions, not kids.

Agree, how old are they? Are they Gillick competent?
you’ve said the dc probably won’t want to see dad once you split but one of the DC needs him local to be able to access activities outside the home.
so not local to see dad, but dad needs drive them where they want?

This.

Typically assets are split 50/50 though sometimes 60/40 in circumstances like yours, everything counts so if he has a large pension you may have enough to keep the house but it’s unlikely you will get a mesher order to keep the house. Of course you could amicably have an arrangement that’s not typical but that’s fine to you both.

I don't have any active plans to split, but DH has repeatedly threatened to leave

Why does he repeatedly make this threat? Is it related to how challenging your children are? Do you actually want to salvage the marriage and stay with him? Living with that uncertainty hanging over you cannot help with the anxiety in your children. I would also consider it emotionally abusive, albeit with the caveat that the household does not incredibly stressful, so it may not be intended by him. Have you had all the appropriate therapy for the pair of you to look after both the children and equally importantly, each other?

Doctors think the less challenging one should be medicated but say that if the teen won't agree, everyone should respect that decision. A significant % of people with their primary condition find no drugs help. Meds for this condition also commonly aggravate symptoms of the other conditions they have so it's not entirely straightforward.

There are no standard meds for the more challenging teen's condition, though trial and error can result in a 10-30% reduction in symptoms for some. They would still need a lot of care even if medicated, and it's common for the stress caused by trying to force meds to exacerbate their other symptoms so much that you end up inadvertently causing serious medical problems.

They are early/mid teens and both are Gillick competent.

Yes, the reason for threatening to leave is because he struggles with how challenging the DC are and how much time it takes to care for them. He wants more of my time & attention. I get frustrated because if he were able to use the right approaches, things would be much easier with the DC and I would almost certainly have more time & attention to give him. But he is ND and I suspect he is just incapable of doing what works, as the thing that helps most is emotional safety and trusting relationships because that keeps the DC's stress levels low. Using specific strategies is also necessary, but it requires a whole worldview change to think in the right way, and I'm not sure he's capable of that.

He's had lots of training but has not really been able to put it into practice because he needs a lot of in-person hand-holding to do that, and most of the available support is organised online, which he hates. I'm as well-trained and knowledgeable as any parent of a child with this condition, but he finds it hard me being the expert and telling him what to do. It doesn't help that he gets a lot of "support" from family who believe that the challenging child's formal diagnosis has been invented by me, and who want DH to walk out on the DC & me because I won't do the things that the family member with narcissistic tendencies wants.

We have just started working through a course for couples who are struggling, but it's been difficult to find enough time without DC to work on it.

I don't want to split for myself but I can see myself being pushed into a situation where I have to choose between him & the DC.

@ALovelyPinkUnicorn DH takes one of the DC to lots of activities outside the house, which I can't do because of the other DC's care needs. If we split up, I would really need DH to stay local so he could keep doing this. This DC would want to keep seeing DH but probably wouldn't want to live with him, even for part of the time. The other DC would not want to see DH unless I were there.

I don’t mean this in a rude way at all. But I think your expectations are a little off.

You want the house with all the equity because you want to not disrupt the children and don’t feel that any other house would be suitable because you want detached and far away from neighbours. And when you have the house, you want your ex’s housing options limited to being nearby so that he can continue to drive a child around. And this is a man who frequently threatens to leave, and who finds the children very challenging, is unwilling to do things which would make life with the DC easier, needs a lot of hand holding, and who neither of the children will want to spend any overnights with?
And you think he’ll agree to all of this?
Even if a court let you keep the house, they won’t force him to drive the child to these activities.

I don't think I have these expectations. I posted because I wanted to find out more about how things typically might work with challenges like ours so I could get a sense of what's reasonable. It sounds like the DV and me staying in this house probably isn't going to be reasonable.

I have assumed that DH would stay local because (a) I thought this typically happened to facilitate contact between absent parents and their DC and (b) half the things he drives that DC to are activities that he also attends in his own right and where he sees his friends, who are very important to him. One of the others is disabity-related therapy which he will want the DC to keep on attending, and that he knows I won't be able to take the DC to.