My husband has decided that he wants to separate with the view if it leading to divorce. He doesn't want to reconcile, although has said that he doesn't want to file for divorce yet either, when I asked him why he didn't really have an answer.
Our current situation:
*We own our own home with about £130,000 left on the mortgage (a house on the same street just sold for £550,000 but was a bigger plot so I'd guess it's worth about £500,000). The mortgage is currently £1,300 a month. I am not on the deeds.
*We currently rent out his mum's house with the plan to sell it to a family member in November for £280,000. I am on the deeds as 99% owner which he asked me to do for tax reasons
*We rent out the first flat we owned and lived in together which was bought with money from his dad's inheritance and money his mum loaned us that we paid back, that's worth about £80,000. I am not on the deeds of that either.
*One car between us
*I am currently the main carer for our 7yo &10yo, he works full time and wants the kids 50/50 and will put them in after school club if he needs to
*He is starting a new job mid August which will be full time and will mean he gets paid about £5,000 a month
*My job is currently 12 hours a week and I get about £1,000 a month. There are extra hours for me and for September I'm going to ask to move to being salaried instead of paid per hour and to increase my hours. I still need to finalise details with my boss but I'm hoping it'll mean about £2-2.5k a month.
*He is currently saying that he will move out, rent somewhere until we sell his mum's house, give me money from the sale of that to buy a new house nearby. Then I will live in that, and he will live in our current house.
Ok so the questions I have are:
*Am I obligated to give him financial support to rent elsewhere? Not pay all the costs but contribute if he is also continuing to pay the mortgage on our current house. He also wants to me to start as soon as he moves out although my hours are low over the summer holidays because I'm looking after our children.
*I think I would maybe prefer not to stay in this house, I love it but it's also full of his crap and I feel as though I will end up sorting it out while he not here which will mostly be of benefit to him. I guess it depends where we end up renting and if it's big enough for the kids to have space to run around etc. if I did move out would he be obligated to help me in a financial sense?
*I've always heard the you shouldn't leave the married home when you separate but I'm not sure why? If I did leave what would I need to get in place first?
*He has said he doesn't think we should split our assets 50/50 because some of our assets have been gained from inheritance from his parents (mainly the flat and his mum's house). I have put money, time and energy into these places, albeit not as much as him at times, his mum also left the house to him knowing we were married and I helped clear out 50 years worth of belongings and paid for a house rewire among other things. I don't want to be unreasonable here but I feel like 50/50 would be fair.
The most important question:
*I will be getting legal advice before anything goes much further, I assume it's a family and divorce lawyer I need, but when I'm choosing what should I base that on? What kind of things should I find out? What questions should I ask? What kind of price would be a reasonable price, do you pay per hour or fixed fee?
Thank-you if you got this far, I know it's long! Obviously I have been thrown for quite a loop and know almost nothing of what I'm about to go through.