divorce

[mbu10]

Well quick one i bought my house in 2005
when i married my wife she had a house
which she sold (i advised he to keep as a rental) any way (dunno what she did with the money)
she never paid a bill not one , or mortgage
I paid for every thing gave her some pocket money a month
and she had a job of her own she only had to pay for her car and phone
now after 7 years (so i have owned the house 17 year she was only in it for 7)
going for divorce
will it be a 50/50 split on the house or a 25/75 as she was not involved for the for the purchase of the house 17 years ago .and only started living there after 10 years , and she had a house in the marriage and disposed of it not sure how much she made or where it went .

only reason i am asking as my solicitor is very evasive and not very forth coming

unless the solicitor is not being very forth coming due to wanting to see the financial disclosures first.
It sounds like you need a better solicitor.

Well that has mostly been done , she had expected i would have more money , but it was spent keeping her.
We are about equal on everything
the only thing is my house , ( cannot ask for her anything about her house as 7 years i am told)
so only 50 k in equity , i offer more than half that to just sign the papers and walk away , but she insisted on solicitors , (even half the house is less than i offered her) but since she has been the biggest pain in the arse for nothing now i want to fight for every cent if i do not have to give her even half the house if i can help it, no children, dependants , only 2 dogs and she took my dogs ,
And as she left she said lets just sign a divorce i want nothing , as i never gave anything to it

As far as I am aware the marital home is classed as a marital asset regardless of who owns it and is open to the sharing principle of 50/50

It is but that sharing principle might only apply to the period that the couple were married. So for example if there was £100k in equity at the start of the marriage and over the next 7 years as a result of mortgage payments and rising values there is now £200k in equity, then the split might be more like £150k to the OP and £50k to the ex.

However, needs trump sharing. So if the ex is able to demonstrate a need, then the court has discretion to make a different award.

Also, it might be relevant how the couple spent their money. If one paid the mortgage and the other paid the bills, it's only fair to take this into account. Similarly, if the ex put this house money into a savings account or a pension that is up for division or spent it on joint holidays for example, that's a different matter than say if they frittered it all away on themselves or only had very little equity going into the marriage anyway.

I can only go off my experience, he owned the house and I lived in it for 5 years, it was mortgage free and he had had it for years and years before we met, the judge stated it was the sharing principle, but then my divorce was based on a needs base case as we had a 6 year old child

I only know the theory as I'm still a law student and have no knowledge of practice but I've been taught to distinguish sharing from needs!

BD v FD [2016] EWHC 594:

"the sharing principle applies with force to marital property, being treated as the product of the parties’ joint contributions during the marriage…However, absent some specific justification, the sharing principle will not have an effective application against non-marital property”

I don't know all the details of your case but adding up the accumulation of wealth during your marriage (not just the property but also pensions and savings which would presumably have been quite healthy with no mortgage to pay) then perhaps half the house represented a fair amount based on the sharing principle and this fully addressed needs?

Either that, or maybe your ex should have appealed!

So it turns out that actually the FMH is always subject to the sharing principle. I find that astonishing and outrageous but unfortunately English divorce law is all geared towards the lazy spouse so I shouldn't be surprised!

I got bitten once and will certainly never marry again unless my spouse earns the same or more than me.

Mine was a very complicated case with things in trusts etc, it cost me 20,000 to get divorced 🫣. There was a law student who was able to sit in on the final hearing and it was such good experience for her

i think the case was very complicated and other factors may have played a part in the outcome

I’m not sure, mine was a very very complicated case

Lazy spouse? You have NO IDEA

I hope you get good financial disclosure out of your stbxW, OP.
What the heck did she do with proceeds of her own house sale, I wonder. You'd be entitled to half of that pot of money if it still exists.

Sorry, but unfortunately in the vast majority of cases I've been involved in through study, work experience and my own divorce I've never come across an example of a spouse who got more of the assets or maintenance and deserved it. Cases I've seen generally fall into two buckets. The first are where one spouse earned a lot less even before children and showed no inclination to improve themselves. They tended to get more assets and occasionally maintenance. The second are ones where the couples are relatively equal and are given a 50/50 split and expected to get on with it.

My advice to anyone getting married is that the most expensive mistake a higher earner can make in England or Wales is to marry someone without the same earnings, drive and ambition. For men, especially avoid women who "just want to have babies." Not only are they going to drain you financially before divorce, they will take the rest when you do. And they are the most boring people I have ever met 🤣

Are you an actual solicitor? If you are I’m absolutely shocked at your attitude

I'm a trainee in corporate law. As you can imagine, we look at family law in amazement and disgust. A system entirely built around the feckless and workshy. I have personal experience of it, my ex-wife is still trying to fight my career change because I don't earn as much and therefore pay the workshy scrounger as much as I used to.

That’s interesting you use the word feckless, my ex actually falsely made that statement about me. You are probably not suited to family law, the judge would probably have you removed from the court room with such an arrogant distasteful approach

Have you ever had a job with clients.....

.... oh no, probably not 😂

So you might not have much experience of workplace banter either. Those solicitors who are all nice to your face are doing it for the money. But they're also working professionals, unlike a lot of their SAHP clients. What they really think of people who put more effort into scrounging off their ex rather than getting a job, you might not like to hear. Some family solicitors might be on your side, but quite a lot probably aren't (although they will do a professional job for the money).

This kind of banter is quite normal, whether it's laughing at grown adults unable to support themselves despite having no obvious disability in the family court; criminals who are not too bright and got caught doing something stupid or dodgy employers who get sniffy about paying their staff minimum wage because they're 'paying in experience.'

My first work experience was in criminal law and was quite a shock, when the person I was shadowing called his clients "the scum" and talked about how dumb they'd been to get caught.

Apologies OP for hijacking your post, even if you have got a solicitor it’s worth getting a free half hour consultation with another one, I had one in London over the phone. I haven’t heard of not being able to ask about funds if it’s more than 7 years but I’m no solicitor!, also with financial disclosure you get to put questions to the other side when you receive their disclosure which is where you could be asking about the money from her house then.

it should be quite a straightforward case but expect the unexpected, if there are no children involved that should make it easier, who is living where now? Have you remained in the house?