Please..: What %age from sale of house/ spousal maintenance/ pension lump sum could i expect..

[almostspring]

hI, am in the middle of divorce and have a few questions please for those of you who have been through it before:

• I will be getting very little child maintenance as ex has little money at the moment. Spousal maintenance may amount to nothing, but i wondered what the 'normal' amount that could be expected is..

• when we sell our house what %age could i expect? - have read that sometimes wife gets more due to looking after children and harder to work, get new mortgage etc. plus in view of fact that maintenance is going to be low, i think i can expect a higher %age of sale of house..?

• Also want to sort out pension rights now - do i get a lump sum now from his pension.?

really appreciate answers to this, cannot afford £20+ every time i pick up phone to solicitor..

What do you earn & what does he earn? How many children & ages? Could you pay the mortgage & stay in the house? If he's on less than 30- 35000 you are highly unlikely to get any spousal maintenance but may have the equity split 60/40 in your favour to allow for the fact you are main carer for the children.

A lot depends on what you can agree between you - I took over the mortgage & got all 100,000 equity & didn't go to court.

BTW if he hasn't got any money he hasn't got any money - no judge will make him pay what he doesn't have

ok, thankyou, he does currently earn less than £30k, and i earn considerably less at the moment - 2 children under 6

It will be 20 % of his net pay for child maintenance - if he's being a pain about paying it contact CSA asap.

There is no automatic entitlement to spousal maintenance. The starting point for house equity is 50/50. Be wary of solicitors who promise you the earth - the first solicitor I saw assured me that I'd get 100% of the equity. Me telling her that I only wanted what was righfully mine (50 %) didn't stop her.
AFAIK pension rights depend on the length of the marriage.

I'm not legally qualified but I can tell you that you definitely won't "get a lump sum now from his pension", you would have to get a Pension Sharing Order but of course neither of you will benefit from that until he's drawing his pension - years away by the sounds of things

I think though that instead of doing that you could ask for a bigger % of the house equity and take that instead of some of his pension