Help with buying house after divorce

[twosmallbuttons]

I'm in the early stages of divorce, and am trying to get my head around what I'll be able to afford once we sell the house. I haven't talked to STBEX about the possible house split yet, just want to get a sense of what's possible. The mortgage is in both our names.

The house is worth in the region of £875,000. We have £270,000 left on the mortgage.
Assuming a 50/50 split that leaves £605,000. I'm guessing costs of selling/moving need to be deducted before we split the remaining equity.

Q1 - Can I only use half the mortgage amount from the existing mortgage to go towards a new property? Ie £135,000? Or will it depend on my income?

Q2 - If a family member were to give me a loan to help buy a property, would this affect the financial order we agree in the divorce? Or should they wait until we've got the Decree Absolute before loaning it to me?

Even with 50/50 childcare you will likely get more of the assets including some of his pension.

Erm, you can get a higher percentage of the equity and pension, there is no rule saying it has to be x%. It is decided on the basis of need. I got almost all the equity of the house but that was because the judge thought there was no way on Earth my career would recover in the long term and exh was loaded, but... it cost me well over £10000 in solicitor fees to get it, so I am not so sure I would put myself through the emotional and financial cost of fighting for it again. Dreadful time.

I also wanted to keep my job to fit school hours, if you have a job that allows you to do that without ending up in hardship stick to it. They are as rare as hen teeth.

With regards to who buys the clothes... I would say it is safe to assume it would be you, I have not seen many men realising the children shoes are too small or deciding they need a warmer coat, you may find jumpers are often left behind during contact, etc. So do not even get in the conflict of trying to get him to pay for clothes, it is better to asume you will pay for the clothes and let him pay for school or extra curricular activities.

@caringcarer that's a good idea about putting the solicitor expenses on the credit card, that didn't occur to me.

Ok sounds like I def need the solicitor. Will it be enough info for them based in what I've put here, for them to give me an idea of what I'm entitled to? We haven't started our form E yet but I think I know most of what his finances are.

Yes, they would be able to give you a good idea after 1 hour or so if you take all information you can. Could you get a copy of his latest pension document statement? Take yours anyway. Take in your latest pay slip and bank statements. Do you know roughly what he might have on savings? Your solicitor will help you to fill in your firm E and he will have to submit his form E to your solicitor for them and he must declare all pension pots even small ones from a long time ago and all savings and bank and building society accounts. Credit card debts too. You will have to put any cars and approximate values, any jewelry. Basically anything that any of you owns of any value eg premium bonds. Your solicitor will talk to you about going part time and why you did this eg childcare responsibility when small and school holiday, who stays home with children when unwell or school closed due to Covid? Think about what you want to happen with children, do you want shared care 50/50 or would you prefer you had them larger amount of time? If your stbexh had 50/50 care what would he do if they were unwell on his care day, could he take enough time off during school holidays to care for them? Is he a hands on Dad or does he leave most childcare to you at weekends? What do you think would be best for your DC? Would they cope with going between you both.furing the week or would dc do one week with.Mum then 1 week with Dad. Give it some thought. Solicitor will want to know what you think is best for your kids. Once solicitor has seen his Form E she will discuss with you if you believe it to be accurate. You also need to provide the latest copy of pension statement. For accuracy you will need to provide a Pension Sharing on divorce transfer value. He will have to do the same. Then your solicitor will probably suggest Pension sharing. I think most couples do this. Everyone I know who is divorced did this and actually all got to get some of their stbexh pension allocated to them.

Is his car worth a lot more than yours. My Exh car was worth about £20k as recently had new one whilst my one was worth about £2.5k. So I got cash adjustment in my favour. He had more ISA than me in savings too. Again he had to give me cash adjustment. I was very surprised when I found out I was entitled to more than half of house and so much of his stuff but like you I went back to work part time when we had children during this time I paid less in to my pension.

Before I saw solicitor I thought I would just get 50 percent of equity in house, keep our own pensions and credit card bills and cars and stuff. I thought we would share furniture. In the end he wanted large TV, surround sound, stereo system and all CD's and DVD's but not much else. This suited me. I was happy with smaller TV and kept bed, white goods from kitchen, lounge furniture, fining room table etc.

My solicitor cost about £1k in total and gained me over £50k. You might find your stbexh gets v angry with you if you tell him you are getting legal advice. My ex was angry and kept telling me we could sort it out between us. One thing to keep in mind, and it is difficult to get head your around, If married for a long time, is that your stbexh no longer has your back and will be doing and saying what is best for him, not you. You have to do what is best for you and the children. I actually found my Exh did buy his child clothing and shoes sometimes. He was less happy to pay half for his Music lessons as he said he did not need them. I argued why should child lose his lifestyle because he had chosen to have an affair. In the beginning he used to pay child maintenance on time every month but over time he stopped paying once new gf came on to the scene. I could not believe he would put going on 3 foreign holidays in 1 year ahead of paying child maintenance but he did.

Thanks @caringcarer again, really helpful. The family car is worth more than mine, but I got mine gifted by an aunt (if that's relevant, it's an old car).
I know what he pays into his pension each month as it's on our joint account statement, but he has all the paper copies stashed somewhere, including those of other accounts that aren't part of the 'family pot' (eg dividends). For our entire marriage I have put ALL my income into our joint account (I know, stupid in retrospect) and have now realised (through going through our statements with a fine tooth comb) that I can't say the same about all his income . On my request we have just started using our personal accounts again and the joint account only for household/DC things but I have been quietly raging for a few days about how unfair this seems and how stupid we were 11 years ago

I'm really really looking forward to speaking to the solicitor now. No doubt he will be horrified when he finds out.

If he is horrified, that will be a sure sign that he knows full well that 50/50 as he has mooted isn't in your favour.

@caringcarer wow that's amazing you only spent £1k on solicitors! Do you mind me asking if this was a fixed rate deal or just hourly?
I was initially going to suggest mediation to STBEX but I wonder whether I should go for a solicitor straight away. The call I have on Monday is a free initial meeting. It's hard to know what to do, when I don't have the finances to fling around.

@arethereanyleftatall yes certainly if I start saying I want a greater childcare split, that will certainly mean I'll get a bigger split of assets judging by the replies here.

I need to have a think about what the DC need, rather than what he wants.

In my experience mediators want to avoid you going to court over the financials. If I had accepted the amount of settlement that was proposed through mediation and what the mediator seemed to think was fair I would be living in a bedsit today.
I went all the way to court and several financial hearings in the end.
It was initially costly getting solicitors involved but after the first hearing I decided to self represent. I am now in my own home and mortgage free.

Regarding costs. I did the first half hour free with a solicitor and she said our case would be about £8k pp if we did it all through solicitors. The costs will totally depends on how much money you have to split. I applied for the divorce online- that was about £500. We then had about 3 sessions with mediators which was about £1k but couldn't iron out the last thing - how much was his pension worth with them as it was out of their knowledge. Plus we needed solicitors anyway to write up the consent orders from the memorandum of understanding from the mediators. I got a solicitor who advised me to use financial advisor/actuary to value his pension. You get the cetv for free but for large pensions that isn't the whole story. Without that, the solicitors writing up our consent orders should have been about £2k each. It ended up being about £3k because his solicitor was useless and they couldn't agree the wording for the court. Grrr. I'm not sure we could have done it much cheaper.

Just to add solicitors charge £200 - £300 an hour.
Try to get a free consultation with a few, this is what I initially did, but I am going back several years.
Up to my first hearing I spent £7,000, hence going it alone going forward.
Mediation itself is not cheap, but you are instructed to try this before proceeding to court.

@crimsonlake that's really interesting about mediation, thanks. I really struggle to fight my own corner with STBX so I'd be nervous about mediation and not getting what's fair for me.

@arethereanyleftatall would I need a financial advisor to value his pension when I can see the amount from the bank account? I don't imagine £120k pension is huge by today's standards? STBX is under 50. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding how pensions work
I applied for the divorce online so have saved myself something there at least.

If it helps I had similar age dc and similar income split to yours. Equity was split 60/40 in my favour, we do 50 50 childcare (properly), I get all child benefit, our pensions cancelled each other out, no savings and he paid spousal for 2 years until I got my career back on track and earned more. We both managed to buy a house with that arrangement and didn't involve solicitors. But it was very amicable. Oh, except his business accounts...but I managed to get some of the capital in the end. We continue to split the costs of clothes shoes misc kids expenses and transfer money back and forth accordingly. It probably all works out tbh! And 50 50 works as well as any post divorce arrangement could for the dc I think. One week at each home.

You would both need to apply for a CETV from your pension schemes. A cash equivalent transfer value. Takes bloody ages ime

I paid hourly rate. I made sure I had all paperwork with me whenever I went. I wrote to my employer myself asking for pension sharing on divorce transfer value. If solicitor writes to employer for you they charge you for every letter they write and phone calls too. The more you can gather information yourself the less they have to do. I got after school club to write how much they charged per child per hour and took that letter too as my stbexh was quereying the cost of after school care. I had always paid in cash out of my salary so he had no idea how expensive every month. It was a bit of a shock to him I think. I got Music teacher to write out invoice for terms Music lessons. I have been told by a few people that the person who earns less does not do as well out of mediation and it is far better financially to go to a solicitor about finances then you could decide what you want about child care and if there is dispute with your solicitor and his solicitor or he could choose to represent himself, you could agree to mediation to agree about residency. Let him explain to your solicitor first how he plans to care for your children. For example if he says he will pay a childminder to care for his children whilst he is at work you could argue why should they be sent to a childminder when you as their Mum wanted to care for them yourself. You need to decide if you want to go back to work full time in which case shared care 50/50 is more realistic or if you want to work part time around school times. As another poster has said it is so hard to get part time work that fits around school hours. If you decide to carry on with part time work you might think having children 65/35 or even what I did every other weekend and one evening in the week. My dh even expected me to collect him from school on day he wanted him and then drop him over to him when he got home from work. My solicitor pointed out if he wanted child on Wednesday evenings he had to collect from school or arrange and pay for after school care then collect himself himself then take him to his swim lesson as on Wednesday, and feed, get to bed and drop to school or before school club and pay for that morning. Once he realised he could not get away with unreasonable suggestions and demands he reigned himself back and got his own legal advise. Once his own solicitor told him what he would lose financially from the divorce, he then wanted for us to give it another go. A couple of years later he actually told me he did not realise all I did for DC whilst we were married. I doubt your stbexh realises either. Will he cope if child is vomitting? Etc.

What is the £120k that you can see online? Is that the cetv? Cash equivalent transfer value?
Thats the 'normal' one to get. I had to get other valuations because it was more than that and also an nhs pension, which, according to my solicitor, are notoriously undervalued with cetv's.

They could only give us a bracket anyway, there's no exact value because you have to discount for utility (the fact it can't be used yet) and tax.

If you can, it's probably fairest just to pension share. (I couldn't because I need the money now to house my children, not in twenty years time)

Its interesting to me that posters are sharing that the less well paid don't do so well out of mediators. I did. Even my own solicitor in the end said my spousal suggested by the mediators was 'at the upper end of reasonable'. I was so nervous that the courts wouldn't pass it. But they did. Phew.

Thanks @Misty9 this is helpful.

@caringcarer he knows what gets paid for DC music lessons, swimming etc so I don't think any of that would be a surprise. It's the physically being present on the same days each week (regardless of what he's got going on at work) that bothers me more. He is reasonably hands on when he's home, knows how to take care of DC, but whether this equates to being able to share care 50/50 I have my doubts.

In the end I had 80/20 care. Ex occasionally asked if he could change his day midweek but I wanted a settled routine for child and it was my.one might I could go out without child so I wanted to be able to plan ahead. My ex went apeshit after our divorce was final inalised when I started dating and suddenly found various reasons why he wanted to change Wednesday to a different day at short notice and even text at last minute on Friday when he should have collected from school as he had child over weekend. Once I had already gone away for weekend an hour before. He wanted me to come back and collect child. He just wanted to spoil my weekend away with new partner. In the end I used to turn my off at 3pm on Friday when it was his weekend. I made sure school knew he was parent with care. As a husband he had not been unreasonable at all except I found he had affair. Once I asked for divorce and especially once he knew how much divorce would cost him he tried to back peddle but I was done. He even rang my sister and asked her to 'make me see sense'. He was desparate to just do mediation and have no solicitors involved. I found out why after speaking to my solicitor. Don't agree to mediation before you have spoken to a solicitor.

The starting point is 50/50 for the equity split but if you have been married quite a while and took a back seat career wise to raise the kids you have a good chance of getting a higher percentage eg I'm getting 60%. If you can negotiate privately and avoid using a solicitor except for the consent order you can save thousands. We are filing online, and just paying the solicitor to prepare a consent order we worked out ourselves

@caringcarer gosh that sounds unpleasant, hope you're happier now.

@arethereanyleftatall I'm not sure whether the pension figure I can see online is the CETV. I guess so? It's linked to our joint account, which is why I can see it.

I think I will need all the money I can get from the divorce, upfront. The area I live is fairly pricey so even buying a 3-bed for me & DC is absolutely mind-blowing to me at the moment. What is the other way of pension sharing that you did, that releases your share immediately?

My divorce was 15 years ago but I think most things are the same except I only had to pay £140 pH for solicit or then. My solicitor got my ex to pay costs for actual divorce. I think she told him I could claim against his business if I wanted to but was willing to just accept he paid costs.