Do I have to sell family home ?

[SingleMumOfAnAdultChild]

My husband and I separated 5 years ago when our daughter was 13. He forced me into selling the family home because he wanted his share. He had a third and I had two thirds of the proceeds of sale because our daughter was living with me full time. She’s now turned 18 and he has told her that I have to sell the new house and give her her share. He gave me £500 maintenance a month towards bills, food etc. There’s nothing in writing to say this was the deal. Is he right ? Thanks

Whose name is on the deeds of the house you live in OP? Have you got all the legal documents from when you sold the family home and bought your current home?

I think some posters are being very niave. If there was nothing drawn up, everything is still fair game.

Granted, youd hope a judge would see that after 5yrs they are financially independent of each other but there have been threads on here and other forums where situations like this are coming back to bite people. Go look at the UK divorce facebook pages.

If you sold it and agreed on who had what share then that’s that. You don’t need to sell to give a share to adult child.

You need to seek legal advice. The property you purchased in your name, is your property, not your daughter's. Unless you signed documents stating you'd sell your home and given your daughter proceeds once she turned 18, then your husband is talking bollocks. However, as you aren't divorced, legally he has a claim over your current home (and any other assets) as you do his (as well as savings, pensions etc). You can divorce him without the need for solicitors, yourself. You apply for a 'sole application', to proceed with the divorce. Your husband can't refuse the divorce, yes he can make it difficult so you have to take other steps, but he can't stop the divorce. The law changed in 2020, to prevent people from stopping a divorce by 'refusing to sign'.

No, that is scaremongering. A judge will of course take account of the fact that on separation the parties split their assets as they were at the time and will not allow the DH to claim further against the OP. If it went to court, the order I would expect would be dismissal of all claims against both parties (granted, I don’t know if either of them have a gigantic undeclared pension but seeing as most people don’t, I will presume these people don’t either).

Let me guess @SingleMumOfAnAdultChild was your exH a controlling piece of shit.? sounds like he’s still controlling you.

1. what did daughter say? Is she expecting some lump sum? I’d be disappointed if she’s prescribing to this (essentially financial abuse) bullshit.

2. what does he think her share is? A half of your home to account for the extra third you had from the family home? Since when were kids beneficiaries of house sales during divorce or separation 🤣 how much mortgage has she paid? Her name on the deeds? He’s delusional - tell him to jog on. It was a fair financial split based on you having DD full time

3. you can absolutely divorce him. Him not divorcing you is no excuse. If he did you’d still need a solicitor so the ££ doesn’t ring true. Get a solicitor and get it done. Jesus Christ on a bike.

in the uk your being married doesn’t matter if you have seperate finances. If you don’t then he can only enforce you to sell a property through divorce. While you’re married and live in the house nobody can force you to leave.

It’s not just a question of getting divorced.

whilst it is possible to get divorced without a financial consent order, it really isn’t a good idea…

https://amicable.io/divorce-without-consent-order

If you can’t afford a solicitor get an appointment with Citizen's Advice.

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If you aren’t divorced then your finances have not been separated in the eyes of the law and the division of capital now will be on the basis of your respective needs now. As your daughter is now 18, in the eyes of the law it’s not either of your responsibilities to house her, so I’d imagine that if you can’t agree what to do with your mutual assets (which includes both your houses), a court may well order 50/50. So you get 50% of the value of his house and he gets 50% of the value of yours. Same for pensions etc.

The longer you remain married, the more the uncertainty about how things would be split. You really need to get a divorce pronto. Self-represent if you have to, but do not continue living a life where your ex has any say over what you do with your money.

Sorry but this is just incorrect advice. There is plenty of case law involving couples who didn’t get a financial order at the time they split, where one party ends up worse off in the end as a result, than they would have been had they done it when they actually split up.

OP, is your daughter in full time education? I am not sure but that used to be a thing before having to sell up in a divorce, not sure if could buy you some time in order to sort out a solicitor? Forgive me if am wrong.

Can you please cite me some case law where the couple did agree a financial settlement and implemented it and then later the court required the spouse with care of the child/ren to pay even more money to the other party, requiring her to sell her home (her only asset).

Yep, calmly ask him for an up to date pension statement, then see if his demands change.

Even if you think you can't afford to divorce, you can't afford not to.

They haven’t agreed a valid financial settlement because they haven’t gone through Form E (full financial disclosure) so any agreement they did have is open to re-arrangement by the court (or agreement) following full financial disclosure

…to give an example, how about the decision of the Supreme Court re the green energy guy who became very wealthy post-divorce? They had got divorced but had not agreed a financial order at the time. In subsequent years his business became very successful and the ex wife applied for a financial order. She got £300k, which was far more than she would have got had they done the financial order at the time they split, when they had little money between them. Wyatt v Vince [2015] UKSC 14.

In this case, the OP hasn’t even got divorced, so the position is likely to be the same or worse, as regards financial provision which needs to be agreed now. The daughter is no longer relevant to the OP’s housing needs, as she is an adult now.

So you genuinely think that if this is the only asset that the OP has (acquired post-separation, never been treated as matrimonial by the parties) and there was an agreement at the time of separation to split the sale proceeds of the former family home 1/3 to 2/3 that the court is not extremely likely to just dismiss all claims rather than order further provision for the husband? If you really wanted to have fun you could even argue that it was a Xydhias agreement that the husband should not be allowed to withdraw from.
I’m just interested- are you a family lawyer and do you genuinely think that in this presumably small to modest asset case that the court would give the husband more than he’s already had?

The answer is a) he got very wealthy and b) they did NOT agree a financial settlement at the time of separation. Here, they did. They sold the only asset of any value (I presume) and split the proceeds at the time of separation. It is easy to infer an intention that this was in settlement of financial issues and there was no intention for people to come back and ask for more in the future. Since then, they have lived separately and the husband has made zero contribution to the house the OP now owns. The OP presumably (as she says she cannot afford to get divorced) is a person of very modest means and not at all comparable to a wife going after her now multi-millionaire ex and still only getting a small fraction of what she'd be entitled to if they were still together when he acquired his wealth.

Yes I am a lawyer and I have been divorced twice myself.

I think the OP needs legal advice, but the basic principles are that unless you have a financial order, a claim for provision can be brought at any time. There’s another case from 2023 where the couple had been divorced for 30 years, and had a deed of separation from the time they split, which agreed their financial provision. Even so, 30 years later the court was willing to open that back up because it was never turned into a financial order.

Anyone divorcing or separating, no matter how amicably, should get a financial order at the time. Otherwise, there is no certainty as to what could happen.

They're a marketing tool rather than actually giving advice so of limited use.

See my post below. It doesn’t matter if you “agree” things on separation, even if you document that agreement. It can still be changed by the court unless you have a financial order.

What does your 18 year old daughter make of it?

You don’t get any advice tailored to your circumstances in an initial free half hour. Solicitors cannot give advice in those circumstances because unless the client is on-boarded and engages the firm, the firm’s PI cover would not cover the advice. All they can do is give general suggestions as to what sort of information the prospective client should obtain about finances, and general guidelines on the principles applied by the court on division of assets.

Tailored advice for the client’s actual circumstances can only be given once they are a (paying) client.