Mortgage capacity - fair terms

[Totallyaddictedtoshoes]

Copying this over from the divorce board as kindly suggested.

Stbxh wants to buy me out of our family home. He moved out at the end of May. He earns over 3 times more than I do. We have a 14 year old daughter who currently spends 1 night a fortnight at his rental property, she has recently agreed to increase this to include 1 weeknight per week, so we are looking at 6 nights a month with her dad. It’s very unlikely this will further increase.
I’m worried about housing as we need to stay close enough to my daughter’s school (we both work full time so she currently walks). It’s not a particularly cheap area. I am aware there should not be a huge disparity in levels of housing between our daughter’s 2 homes.
I don’t believe I should include child maintenance in mortgage capacity calculations as I will only receive this for 5 years and my new mortgage term will be longer than this. So it needs to be affordable on my income alone.
Due to his huge salary, he will be able to afford to buy me out on a pretty short mortgage term, whereas I will be looking at 20 years or so. We are both 43 and have 3 years left on the current mortgage.
I am hoping to argue for more than 50% equity on a needs based case, however, I’m worried I will be expected to provide a mortgage capacity report based on a full 25 year mortgage term ( which makes it affordable), while he can get away with a term probably around 5 years. This doesn’t seem comparable so I wouldn’t say it would be fair.
Does anyone have any experience in this area who would be able to advise if I have a case? He wants 50/50 split on everything but wishes to keep his 50k post separation savings out of it. Approximately half of this was a severance payout as he lost his job in July. I wouldn’t expect that to be split to be honest, but it does significantly add to his assets, thus making the buyout even more affordable for him.
He is not demonstrating himself to be particularly reasonable or willing to negotiate. He refuses to discuss face to face and has made several requests for my asset/financial info over email as he wants to do the D81 remotely. I’m refusing this.
Any help would be hugely appreciated, I’m really stressing about this.

You really need to see a solicitor. They will be able to advise what the financial settlement should look like once they are in possession of all the facts. If he is not being reasonable, you may have to go to court to get your fair share.

What people are trying to say is that, based on this post, your asset pool is £300k. A 50:50 split would give you each £150k to house yourselves.
The question will be is whether this asset pool is sufficient to split to fund your life post split.

He will contend that £150k can fund your housing needs. He needs to produce examples of affordable homes near the school. It doesn’t need to be walking distance. Even with a ceiling of 230k that is affordable on your income.

Your opposing contention is based on comparable lifestyle and there really isn’t any big lifetime gap between his home and yours.
His case will be that he will be increasing the mortgage by £150k to c£180k.
You will have a mortgage of c£100k. Both are affordable on your incomes. You will have some room to manoeuvre to increase your share but think 20-50k. Which can easily be eroded by legal fees.

In terms of affordability, the following is just spit balling. You need to see his figures and he needs to see yours to understand finances better.
You have take home income of £3500 and he has £7000k. He will be paying you about £1k in child support. That takes his disposable income down to £6K and yours up to £4.5k. That difference is a third more not 3x as much.

Now there is a lot to be learnt from completing your forms in order to see what he is declaring and to understand his latest finances. He has a good understanding of yours form the marriage. But his will have changed and he could be salary sacrificing.

I don’t see what you will gain by not filling in the form. He knows a lot about your income and costs. Since he changed jobs you don’t really know his or how much he will borrow.

Just for clarity my take home is £2.9k and the 3 times as much comment was based on our P60 earnings as in his industry, its usual to be awarded very large bonuses (this year his was £60k).

Im more than happy to complete the D81, please don’t get me wrong. My issue is his refusal to meet and go through it, he has repeatedly asked me to provide my asset/financial info over email, which I have said I don’t feel is appropriate. He has only just provided me with a pension value and a savings value today (with no documentation to validate the numbers). He asked me to provide my info within 2 weeks (after us having not discussed it for 3 months due to him being out of work). I know this is because he wants to be able to state his income as zero which he will be unable to do if he gets this new job (extremely likely and this will be confirmed, interestingly, on the 2 week deadline day he gave me).

Sharing information is the first step before discussions can take place. You seem to want to do it the other way around.

You might want to consider mediation, much cheaper than solicitors negotiation or court. They will help you with the process and facilitate the conversation.