Divorce general advice please....

[Lemonstartree]

my STBExH and I were married for 9 years. There are 3 children of the marriage. Aged 12, 8 and 5. I earn 8 x his salary. If you take the pre marriage assets his is about £30K; mine about £80K.

He is not able to look after the children overnight as he is an alcoholic, but at present he has access whenever he wishes.

we agree that the kids live with me 7 days a week; we agree not to divide pensions, ) he has his own) we agree to divide the movable assets pro rata - eg, Cars/furniture etc as required.

I will pay the mortgage ( about 25% of my net income) the children's school fees (they are all at private school) about 33% of my net income. He will pay maintainance according to CSA website of £360/month.

To make a clean break without spousal maintainence I am proposing to pay him about 20-25% of the equity in the house. (agreed estimate) and take on all the debts of the marriage.

If we agree this, is it fair ? will it be granted as a consent order like this ? The children's living arrangements and schooling arrangements are preserved. I shoulder all the debt. He gets a lump sum payoff....??? ( and maintains his role as their father obviously)

thanks for any advice

lst x

dont know if it is fair as no figures give but basically you need to make a list/table of all the assets you have together, eg equity in house and then what you have separate, eg separate savings etc. then do the same with the liabilities, ie debts. take away the liabilities from the assets and see what figure you get. then he is probably gonna get somewhere between 30% to 40%.

hope this helps

You will both need to consult solicitors and get a consent order drawn up. As part of that you will both need to make a full financial disclosure. If there isn't a full disclosure or he doesn't get proper independent legal advice he could ask the courts to award him more money later.

I can't comment on whether or not your proposal is fair. As long as the children are properly provided for and the proposals are not clearly unfair the courts will generally accept whatever you and your ex put in the consent order.

You don't both need to consult solicitors. If you are both happy with the financial arrangement you just need one solicitor to draw up the consent order. He/she should also be able to advise you both if it's a settlement that a judge will consider to be fair. As the previous poster says, as long as children are provided and it's not clearly unfair the judge should accept it.

You have to remember that there is no fixed right and wrong when it comes to splitting assets and sorting out financial arrangements. One person will call it one way and another person will call it another way. What's important in your case is that both you and your ex are happy with the split.

That's really helpful thank you.

As we are trying to reach an amicable arrangement and avoid the need for separate solicitors and expense, I wanted to know if we could agree what we were happy with and then have it stamped by the court.

There is alot of back stuff, and I think we will come to a fair settlement

Before approving a consent order the court will want to be happy that both parties have either taken independent legal advice or have had the opportunity to do so and have decided not to.

In some circumstances consent orders can be set aside if the parties have not taken independent legal advice. So, whilst you can use one solicitor to draw up the consent order, it leaves a risk that he can come back later and ask the courts to set aside the consent order and award him more money.

And how likely is that to happen ? If we have both agreed and been given the opportunity to take independent legal advice (tbh its him who wants to do it as cheaply as possible) I will prob get my solicitors advice anyway - but if he chooses not to, how likely is it that a future judge would revisit that decision ( I know there is no definite answer - but roughly 20% or 80% )?

I will make full financial disclosure - Im honestly not trying to do him out of stuff. I just want it sorted.

Thank you so much for your advice

Like Mutt I wouldn't want to put a percentage on it. It depends on so many things.

It is possible that his problems with alcohol would give him a better chance of having the consent order set aside, allowing him to suggest that the absence of independent legal advice meant he didn't understand what he was agreeing to. Your relative financial strength also gives him the opportunity to suggest that he was pushed into the consent order under duress.

I had an amicable divorce, but my solicitor still insisted that my ex got independent advice otherwise I could be seen to taking advantage of him. You also need to ensure that a clause of no further future claim can be made by your ex in the future.

A friend got divorced last year and they managed to do it all very amicably and without having two solicitors. Just one to draw up the consent order. Another friend did the same a few years ago. My experience is that if you start involving solicitors it all starts getting expensive and increases the chance of it becoming divisive and unpleasant.

In hindsight I am exceedingly pissed off that my ex decided to employ a solicitor rather than talking to me. It ended up costing a total of over £23,000 for an argument over less than £200,000 of house and my pension.

You should prepare a schedule of assets and put EVERYTHING down - stuff you own in your own right, what you own jointly, same with debts and liabilities. Put in the Cash Equivalent Transfer values of any pensions (I know they are not the same as cash but it is just to give you an idea).

This will give you a rough idea of what is in the 'pot'. If it came to court, the Judge would try to share out the assets in the pot in the fairest way - which means taking into account your earnings, your outgoings, childcare, career prospects etc. The starting point is 50:50 but so many considerations operate to change this. If you are the children's primary carer for eg, obviously you need more of the available capital now so they can be housed; he could get his share later when they are adults. OR he could agree to forgoe his share entirely. As long as he understands what he is doing.

I can't comment if your plan would be considered 'fair', but if any consent order is accompanied by a full schedule of assets and you have both made full disclosure, then it will be much more difficult for either one of you to later claim that you were misled or didn't understand etc, etc.

I'm sorry your divorce ended up costing you that much, nocake. I would always recommend using solicitors who are members of Resolution as that should avoid the kind of experience you had and keep the costs down to a fraction of what you paid.