Separation or divorce? Help please!

[Daisyinbloom]

Hi needing some advice here from you wonderful people! My situation is DH left Feb last year with au-pair (long story), and now 2007 has dawned and I want my life back! We are selling the family home as can't afford to keep it with him not here. To be fair to him he can't pay what he hasn't got. He pays nothing towards 2 DS but has them for half the week (okay with me). We have negative equity in the house, but have to sell due to huge mortgage. I want to finish with him permanently.. BUT - do i divorce or get separation agreement? We will both come out of this with borrowings because of the house, so i want to keep costs down. Has anyone any experience of either, and how much did it cost?
The other point is that I desparately want to now be in control, after a year of living in limbo (waiting for him to come back as he promised, etc etc, then realising that he wasn't coming back and actually I didn't want him back anyway). What information do I need to get before I see a solicitor? Eg pension claims etc. I really really need to keep the costs down here as I am broke! But this fear of "what i need to organise" is stopping me going to get help right now! Can anyone help please?

sorry not much help but i can bump. Also maybe you should bump in day when more ms are about for legal.money matters.
Sorry you are having such a cr-p time.

First of all, you may qualify for legal aid (now called public funding.) You can check by looking at the legal services commision website calculator.

If you do qualify, you then need to find a legal aid solicitor. There aren't many about these days, as legal aid essentially means working for a loss in many cases, so the sooner you find one the better.

All good family specialists are members of Resolution. Check out www.resolution.org to find a local specialist who does legal aid.

Is there no way you can stay in the house if you get housing benefit to pay the interest? How about switching to an interest only mortgage? If the negative equity isn't too big, it'll obviously decrease if house prices continue to increase, as predicted.

Even if your dh has the kids half the time, you may still be able to get some maintenance out of him if his income is less than yours.

Are you claiming tax credits?

When you go to see the solicitor, take your origninal marriage cert. along, as this will be sent to the court when the petition is issued.

It would probably be better in your circs to do a divorce rather than a separation deed.

Oops! I mean maintenance will be payable if his income is more than yours.