Advice on financial order/clean break

[Rtmhwales]

My future ex husband is Welsh. I am Canadian. After five months of marriage he decided he wanted out and told me to go back to canada, which I’ve done. Only after I’d returned home I discovered I was pregnant. The baby is definitely his.

We are in the process of trying to sort things out. Luckily Canada and the UK had a reciprocal enforcement agreement for child maintenance so I’m not terribly concerned with that.

However my ex keeps bringing up something called a clean break order. Today he’s emailed again about this order asking if I’d consider looking over what his solicitor draws up and he will pay accordingly.

We don’t have this kind of order in Canada so I’ve started to research it and it looks like I could claim against his future assets, pension, inheritance, spousal maintenance as my pay will take a hit while I’m raising our son etc so I guess I can see why he’s so keen to get this sorted.

Before I agree to any of this what do I need to consider? I’ve said I won’t sign anything until the baby is born and access etc is established and he’s signed something in regards to child maintenance, but I’m really worried I might misstep somewhere here because it’s such a weird concept to me.

You need to take proper legal advice (ie not on the internet) from lawyers in both Canada and the UK. You may well have a choice of forum for the divorce, and whichever you choose may be influenced by wherever you’d get either the best settlement or the one most easily enforced.

No one can answer the question you have posted (in part due to the paucity of relevant information), so do yourself a favour and take that advice.

@collaborate - fair enough, this has been nothing but a headache and now having to draw it out over two countries is even worse. I’ll just not sign anything in the interim.
Do you happen to know if he can even file for divorce in the UK when the baby isn’t due for five months? I can’t file in Canada whilst pregnant because the baby has to be born, paternity established and child support/access in place first so I’m stressed he’s going to push the issue first in the UK and can’t find anyone who seems to have dealt with this before.

In the UK he cannot petition for divorce before you've been married 12 months. However it sounds like you won't be able to issue in Canada until after that anniversary has passed.