Anyone with experience of financial division in divorce?

[Antoniabegonia]

I am divorcing my H after a long marriage. Own house valued at £170 k.

We have had separate finances, savings and bank accounts for many years.

I have savings of £19k comprising of a legacy from my mother, payout after a car accident injury, lump sum from my ex employer. None concerning H.

H also has savings and assets but I think he has 'hidden' any cash some time ago, but it was his money and I do not wish to take anything from him.

H says an 'investor' (his ex fiancé) will buy me out of the property for £85k and with £15k of my savings I can buy a small house. H will be staying in our property (3 bed detached)

If H decides to claim half my savings will a court allow him to do this or not?
A. Because he has not contributed at all to them, and
B. Because he will be more than adequately housed but I will need all my savings to be housed in a much smaller property.

We will pension share.

Tia

i don't think anyone on here can answer you.

Im not a lawyer (yes I know i'm on a legal thread) but there is no mention in your post about earnings, children (and ages if there are any),whether one partner has reduced earning potential due to looking after children and so on. All these will be factors. Also, as example, you may bargain to get a much higher % of house equity and give up share of pension. If its a long marriage there may be more requirement for some form of spousal maintenance.
No one can tell from your OP. Its not necessarily 50:50 done the line on everything. If you are looking o pension share I would suggest a solicitor is essential in assuring your are looking at correct estimates of future income from it.
DO you have a solicitor?

Plenty of women never earned a penny and then claim 5% or even 100% of their husband's savings on a divorce. It therefore works the other way round too. It does not matter in whose names the assets and debts are they are all lumped together and divided. Very very often inheritances in England are included in the joint pot because that is needed to ensure children are housed. It does not matter if you won the lottery or had a £100k bonus or whatever in a long marriage it is family money. occasionally an inheritance might be kept separate but do not assume that is likely.

is there any reason you do not want to stay in your current house? To decide your percentage we would need to know things like roughly what both you and your husband earn. if there are children and their ages, who the children will live with after divorce and what assets other than the house there are (sounds like just your £19k savings) and what mortgage there is on the house and if you are in England or Scotland.

My ex got 60% of our joint assets including my life savings and all my shares as I earned more than he did. I was able to remortgage to buy him out of the house and the children chose to stay with me. We had a clean break as I could afford it. Instead if you earn less than he does you might get more than half the assets and maintenance from him until the pensions kick in.

No solicitor at the moment. We are both retired. Very similar pensions although his is probably more.

Children not dependent and grown up. I will get a solicitor for the financial agreement but as it's so straightforward at the moment I am doing it myself. I have always worked so no issue with spousal maintenance. H has assets totalling £15K. Also hidden savings but obviously I don't know what they are. He also had an inheritance and a lump sum from his employment. I've never seen any of this or know his financial situation. I fully expect him to lie about this so I am not wasting time making a claim on his assets or money.

It's a very simple divorce in theory.

Given you are going to have to pay legal costs etc to buy the new place I think it is unlikely you could not both keep your savings you £19k and he £15k (plus whatever he has hidden). £4k is not worth people arguing over in these situations. Try to take sure he or his ex pay the legal costs of transferring the house into his name.

Hope you are right. They most certainly will be paying costs for the house transfer as I am having to carry the cost of buying and also of moving belongings etc and buying some new furniture.

The trouble with hidden savings is that unless you can give the court some idea of what they might be, the general approach is that it cannot take them into consideration in deciding what is fair (and beware, 'fair' in the context of a long relationship tends to mean 'equal'). Therefore the court is unlikely to take your husband's savings into account.

It IS likely to take yours into account on the basis that if you could have divorced when you started keeping your finances separate. By not doing so you have largely indicated that you still regarded yourselves as mutually dependent. It would follow that what is yours you share, no matter where it came from or what you did with it.

BUT if equality is what the court is aiming at, it is unlikely to sanction an arrangement where he ends up significantly better housed than you. The obvious way to sort that out is to allow you to keep your savings whether or not that actually means you get more than half of the accumulated matrimonial assets.

So the answer is, yes the court could split the savings 50:50 but if he keeps the house and you can show that the effect of you only getting 50% would be for you to be worse off in housing terms, you might get more.

Can I suggest you go for a mediation session? Lawyers all over the country offer them and they can save tens of thousands.

Yes and it sounds like there is very little difference between your savings £19k and his disclosed savings £15k so I doubt anything other than you each keep your own is going to be the result.

Thank you huppopapa. That makes sense and it is what I am hoping for.

We haven't discussed the division of finances yet but I know H is very underhand and spiteful. He tried to tell me his sports car was of low value as it was a cat D write off when he bought it, which is a complete lie as I've seen the paperwork.

I'm really hoping that a court will see the housing situation for what it is and allow me some equality at last.

I'll look into mediation because the financial side is where it's all difficult if H starts being vindictive (likely). I'll also make sure it's legally binding.

And there are also the costs of moving house and costs of buying a new property, none of which H will incur as his ex will pay to buy my half of the house.