@WishItWereSummer Sorry, I've been meaning to reply to this for a few days. Things you should do immediately:
-
Stop paying the full mortgage. Pay half and write your wife a letter telling her it is her responsibility to pay the other half. Also make it very clear in the letter that this is a temporary arrangement until the finances are settled and you cannot afford to pay it on a long term basis on top of your existing housing costs after that. This is important because you don't want to appear to a court to be able to meet your own housing needs and also contribute to hers. Also, often when women like this have to pull their finger out and contribute their fair share financially they often lose interest in keeping the FMH!
-
Also tell her you will no longer be paying her bills as you have your own bills to pay and cannot afford to. You do not want to create a precedent for spousal maintenance.
-
Open a case with CMS and also begin paying what the CMS calculator says. This will make it impossible for a court to try and foist a global maintenance order on you (although this would be unlikely on your income anyway).
Now, onto the case more generally. Your STBXW is obviously suffering from a common delusion of the weaker financial party that their needs will be met in their entirety whilst the stronger financial party will toil all hours and live in a cardboard box. This is not going to happen. Whilst divorce does unfairly reward lazy spouses because it doesn't treat them any differently to spouses who genuinely made a big contribution at home (because it will still look to meet the needs of lazy spouses), in all other respects Family Courts seek to be fair.
What a smart person in divorce does is that they make a good attempt to understand the needs of both parties. In your case that's not that easy to do because there is not a lot of money to go around and that might mean some temporary hardship for you in order to meet the needs of the children but you will get your money back and this hardship won't last 12 years. Probably more like 2.
The first thing to do is work out your respective incomes. Your wife earns £20k, which is £1,467 a month net. She will also receive £626 a month in universal credit, £282 in child benefit and probably around £600 in child maintenance from you. That's an income of nearly £3k a month. You meanwhile will have an income of £2.2k a month after paying child maintenance. So if she cannot afford the mortgage, then you certainly can't! Also, renting tends to cost more than the mortgage these days which further supports your case. Oh, and of course someone as dependent on UC as your STBXW can be easily screwed over anyway. If you had to pay the mortgage, you would of course insist on paying it as spousal maintenance which would wipe out her UC claim 😁But on an income like yours, it is not going to come to that because she already takes home more than you.
Earning capacity is also a factor. If she is working less than 25 hours with a 5 year old, she will be deemed capable of working more. By the time the youngest is 11, she will also be expected to work full time. To be honest she is already going to be on 75% of what you were on as a couple (plus she'll have access to other benefits too as she is a UC claimant) so she is taking the piss asking you to pay the mortgage to be honest.
As for the house, she will have home rights over it even if it is only your name on the mortgage and some kind of Mesher Order might be necessary on a short term basis but she would be expected to have her name added to the mortgage, pay it and have you indemnified. She certainly won't get a Mesher Order for 12 years though. There's a big age gap between your eldest three and youngest child and she might reasonably be expected to downsize when your third eldest is 18 in 6 years time. She might even be expected to downsize in 2 years time as your two eldest become adults. There's also the factor of affordability. Get it in writing from her that she can't afford the mortgage and use it against her if it goes to court. If she can't afford it on her own, the house will have to be ordered to be sold.
If there is any Mesher Order for any period though, make sure of the following:
- Insert a no cohabitation clause. A Mesher Order will prevent you from moving on and might cause you difficulties in future relationships until it is resolved. Make sure she has to suffer the same limbo because it will motivate her to end the order;
- Insist on a 50/50 split on the grounds that your mortgage capacity has value that you cannot benefit from and you should be compensated for that;
- Ensure there are clauses preventing her increasing borrowing against the equity or taking on any other debt of any kind if she is subject to a best endeavours clause to remove you from the mortgage. Also ensure the mortgage is not allowed to be changed from full repayment to interest only.
- Have yourself indemnified against late or missed payments.
Finally, I'm sorry you're having to go through this. Your wife is obviously very selfish and a bit of a parasite. You have to stand firm and don't cave in to her bullying. Legally she hasn't got a leg to stand on.