Need advice for friend who left husband in marital home with kids and now needs a home

[SecondhandRose]

A very good friend of mine walked out on her husband 3 yrs ago. The advice she was given was that if she took the children she may end up in a B&B in London somewhere and she was too frightened to do it.

So she left him with children and went and lodged with her ex-stepfather.

The advice she has been given since then is she can't get any money from the marital home or ex-partner.

She is living from month to month in rented accommodation while the husband is in a 4 bed detached house.

She is on good terms with the husbands, sees the children more or less every day and also still cleans the house!

Is she entitle to get the house sold so perhaps the husband can get a 3 bed semi to release some money so she can get a flat?

A friend of mine is in the opposite situation, dreading her ex-h selling the house she shares with her 5 kids so he can have half the cash, so it must be possible. Not sure how right it is to move your kids like that, but does seem do-able.

If the house is in joint names she has a legal right to move back in. That might concentrate the miund of the husband in agreeing a settlement. That would also helo her get more contact with the children so she may get the house.

However unless she can do that then she needs to start divorce proceedings and try to reach agreement with him and if not get the court to make an order. As he has had the children with him for 3 years that status quo is likely to be preserved and he needs to house them so once that is done any money over she might get. It is possible he cannot affoird to buy her out so he might get the more typical female order for esident parent of other spouse gets say 40% or 35% of the equity once the resident parent remarries or cohabits or the yougnest turns 18.

Difficult thing is he still wants her to go home but she doesn't want to. She has had many unhappy years with his 'unreasonable behaviour' and said she thought she would literally go mad if she didn't leave him.

Her children are now nearly 13 and 11, very capable of understanding the situation and they stay with her regularly when they can. She is in a rented studio flat with very little money.

She doesn't want to rock the boat and get the children off him. She is happy for things to stay as they are but she needs some stability.

Can he afford to remortgage and release some equity to her? Who pays the mortgage at the moment which is presumably still in joint names?

But the problem is he won't do it as he wants her to come back. Although can you believe she signed so he could borrow an extra 30k and put it on the house so he could sink it into his sinking company.