The situation is this:- last year I left my violent husband taking my children with me and moving into rented property. The finances are now on the verge of being sorted out over 18 months after I first filed for divorce. My ex has refused to move out of the former maritial home and there was no way that I could make him as it was in joint names and I have also had to continue to pay half of the mortgage due to it being in joint names. This coupled with extortianate rent adn the fact that my husband wouldn't contribute to food etc while i was with him has lead to me getting around 10k in debt. The house has been valued at 135k but does need some structural work doing to it.
My ex earns approximately two and a half times what I earn, has approximately 15k in savings and is 51. The proposal that he has put forward is this:- I get the house and 19% of his pension. He gets his savings, the remainder of his pension, both policies, which at the moment have a surrender value of 12k but in 2014 have a redemption value of 56k and I give him 3k. The maximum that I can lend is 70k taking into account my salary, tax credit payments, and maintenance, if i take on the house 56k of this will go to paying of the existing mortgage, 10k to settling my debts,3k to him, which would leave me with 1k to pay my solicitors fees(!!) and buy furniture that I need and get repairs done. The other added problem is this, my tenancy is up on my house on the 31st July and it is not being renewed due to the owner of the house wanting to move back in. There is little or no property in this area, I was incredibly lucky to get this house and would find it well nigh impossible to get another. There is no one with whom we can move in, so I am very soon going to be homeless. If I accept the offer I can be back in my old house by the time this tenancy is up. If we put the house on the market I have nowhere to live in the mean time. If I move back in with the intention of selling, I feel that this would be dreadfully unfair on the children as they love the house and where it is and have freinds in the street, two of them have lived their all their lives till I took them away. My solicitor is leaning towards acceptance, because she feels that if we go to court it will cost about 7k, and could take up to 6 months for a decision to be reached and I may not be any better off. My ex needs to buy a house and becasue of his age can only take out a 9 year mortgage and has been quoted as £900 for 76k so his solicitor is saying that he needs as much capital as possible now which is why I am beig offered a share of his pension which I will only get when I retire in 20 years. This is why my solicitor says accept because a judge would think that this way we both get a house. In 9 years however, he will have no mortgage, a house adn still quite a large pension and 2 nice endownments to look forward to and i will still be saving up to get the eaves fixed!
So, sorry for being so long, but what in hells name should I do? Accept and think that at least we have a roof over our heads or turn it down and risk being no better off at teh end of court proceedings, or maybe even a lot worse off. I don't have time for more offers and counter offers becasue of the tenancy thing and of course getting more into debt every month, and of course he knows that I will be homeless soon wit the children and won't move out until everythign is finalised.
This is probably going to be really long when I read it back but even if no one can be arsed reading all the way through it (and if you have got this far my heartiest congratulations!) it has helped me get it straight in my mind typing it all out.