Don't give up work to be a SAHM unless

[akaemmafrost]

You have a HEFTY private income or can work from home.

I gave up work, usual reasons, wages would barely cover childcare, WE wanted kids to be at home with a parent.

Fast forward. I now have two dc, the father of my dc cheated on me, physically, emotionally and financially abused me.

One of my dc has SN and cannot attend school for the moment.

I've been out of work for 10 years now, I have no profession. In 6 years time our child support will stop as will most of our benefits. I will near fifty having not worked at all for 18 years.

My future is shit. Utterly grey and bleak. All I have to look forward to is a state pension. While my ex earns a fortune, travels the world and has new relationships.

This is reality for me. So think long and hard about giving up work to stay at home because no matter how shit your job is it's preferable to my future don't you think?

And it was all decided for me by a man who decided he hated me and didn't want to be married anymore and a child being diagnosed with significant SN.

It's that simple.

The law is very clear that the work undertaken by a SAHM is to be taken into account when dividing marital assets.

However, courts and solicitors cannot divide assets that don't exist. They cannot order a man to support his ex wife if he doesn't earn enough to do so. They cannot order that a wife remain in the marital home and the DH pay the mortgage if the lender won't agree, or the DH cannot fund that and somehwerte new to live or the DH wants 50/50 residence of the DC.

The law is not the problem. The courts are not the problem.

As people keep saying talk to a solicitor.

I did last week and was shocked by what I have rights to.
I am going to use it to try and help my husband I come to a sensible agreement. While I have ended up in a bit of a financial mess by trying to help sort his stuff out I have woken up to things soon enough to sort things for me and my (our) daughter. So want to try and sort things amicably; this is what is right for us, I hope.

But there is legal aid and you will be surprised by what you are entitled to.

Are you still living in the same house? This might sound underhand but you need to get copies of all of his bank statements/different accounts. That way if he suddenly starts "hiding" money then he will still have to give you a share of it.

Good luck. The solicitors appointment was horrible, they were nice but I couldn't believe that I was in that situation, you always assume it happens to other people not you. But I feel so much stronger for doing it. I feel like I am starting to regain some control and my own personality back instead of the nervous, grey, half person I seem to have become over the last few years.

Some of the stories on here are sending shivers down my spine... I had been feeling a bit sorry for myself, regarding my own situation (and I don't know anyone in RL in the same position), but it's true that there is always someone worse off than you.

for everyone who has shared.

It's simpler for me. I simply can't cope with caring for a child with ASD, two other children (including a dysfunctional teenager), while running the home with very little practical imput from DH. Can't do it. Don't have the energy. I'm a teacher and a full-time teaching job plus three children plus caring for a big, messy house and being there for my 80 year old mum and occasionally for my husbands elderly parents (who live around the corner) would make me psychologically and physically ill.

I accept that going part time leaves me financially vulnerable now and in the future. So be it. I'm hoping I'll never starve and I'll always have a roof over my head/access to health care. Until recently I felt fairly unafraid at the thought that I might one day have to live on benefits if DH left me. Since the Tories have been in government my peace of mind regarding this has been diminished.

halfling there's no point being scared.

Do someting to protect yourself.

Ensure your DH continues paying your pension. Ensure he is insured against death and critical illness.Ensure your skills remain high. Ensure that all marital money is not spent and is invested wisely.

What Wordfactory said.
And if you can't do all of those things, do as many as you can. Any decent and sensible dh has to see that if circumstances make it difficult or prohibitively expensive to keep your skills or professional registrations up to date (nb this is something else that pisses me off and which would be different in Feminist Utopia) then it is all the more important that you have the family finances structured in such a way that you would not be up shit creek if he left you.

akaemmafrost thankyou for starting this thread and I am so sorry you have such a vile unsupportive xh and have so much on your shoulders.

The issue you have raised though is one I often think about in terms of what advice I want to give my teen DD

Its nonsense to suggest this is a SAHM bashing thread when its clearly been asking people to have an awareness of how things can unfold. I wish I had been able to read this years ago.

I grew up in a single parent family with no money around as DF didnt pay much maintenance. It wasnt a life I wanted for myself and I did not want to have DC and potentially end up in the same boat.

I discovered I was pregnant at just 30 with a solid loving man with whom I had been living almost 4 years and who had frequently talked about wanting DC in spite of knowing I didnt. Although I was shocked at first I quickly embraced the idea of having a baby.

What feels relevant to this thread is I gave up my job (not really a career)without a second thought to stay at home with our DC and I loved it. Yes we made that decision although it never occurred to me to do otherwise but I expect if it had I too would have said "oh its not worth it after paying for childcare ".

Our life took a drastic change of direction when youngest DC was a baby and it gradually changed my XH from a good, loving reliable family first man to something very different. He then underwent some kind of MLC and left when DC were 13 and 10 yo.

Apart from a PT job for a couple of years I had stayed at home and found myself mid forties needing to get a job. I took a ECDL computer course, attended all the govt funded back to work workshops, job clubs etc going. Finally I got a job in retail just over a year ago. The wage is poor and its very hard work but I am relieved to have it and hopefully as I have been recently promoted its going to provide me with enough to live on when child maintenance etc stops.

For me looking back I am staggered at how I blithely assumed I would always be married, that my XH would never leave me that things would always be fine. Those of you SAHM who are enjoying it, who feel its absolutely whats best for your family dont feel this thread is criticising you but more at least consider what could be the outcome were some of whats been described on here to happen to you. If you feel uncomfortable doing that then all the more reason to do so. Lots of people do stay married but as I hit my late forties the number of breakups around me is astounding.

In short the detail of OPs situation may not be common but overall its far from rare.

I am very fortunate that I am in a strong financial position. Posters like autumnlights should be careful what they say. I had a top flight solicitor and we did have to sell our house and I did accept a 50/50 split . As someone said upthread each case is considered on its individual merits and within that family law has a huge breadth of interpretation so dont assume anything.

What I shall say to my DD I have no idea. My DM infected me with bitterness about being a single parent but actually did nothing to equip me or advise me on how to go about marriage and children. All I can think now is to how to convey to a lovestruck DD the harsh realities of life that I failed to consider until older,wiser and experienced.

Anyway akaemma again a great thread and FWIW you sound incredibly balanced and strong given what you have on your plate

Another point to make - don't feel you have to use personal savings to move/travel/support yourself when you are together. My ex was trying to talk me into moving to the other side of the planet, which would have meant me selling MY house, using MY savings and uprooting me from my friends. I felt, at the time, that he would have a better chance at career over there and he would generally be happier (hated the UK weather and said it changed his personality). Thankfully I realised it was only me sacrificing everything and put the breaks on. I can imagine that a few women might be charmed into doing similar, but please don't - keep your nest eggs!
Now I am in the situation mentioned:
'Would he really wreck his own income to spite you? He'd be on benefits himself then - not even that if he did actually just quit'.
Apparently this happens much more often than you would imagine and is exactly what my x did. And I have heard of similar stories. He actually really really enjoyed contacting me to let me know that my efforts chasing him through the CSA were absolutely futile as now he only needed to give me the minimum £5 a week from his JSA, and then lectured me about how I should stand on my own two feet from now on. I got two payment from CSA before this happened.

Ex has gone from relatively high flying media type to apparently jobless and unable to get a shop job. He is also relishing the fact it has made it harder on me and for the CSA who he seems to think have a personal vendetta against him.
If I hadn't had my head screwed on I could have scarified everything I now rely on and ended up miles away from my friends with no money and a man who is happy to pretend to people he hasn't even got a DD and that we never even had a relationship. And yet he seemed so perfect.

I wouldn't give up my professional wage (and pension) for anything, having seen my mum left high and dry pension-wise after my dad left her when they were in their early fifties, although the rules on pensions have changed since then.

No-one thinks it will happen to them. But the statistics say otherwise, with a 50% divorce rate.

That's not to say I didn't take a couple of years out to care for my first child (as has my husband for our second), but I'm glad it was a short period, easily coverable on a CV which didn't damage our career prospects too much. It can be just as hard if not harder for a man to have a period of prolonged childcare on their CV.

I'm glad as my husband then lost his job and I needed to go back full-time anyway; having two careers means options for which we have been grateful in the recession.

Posters like autumnlights should be careful what they say

I can understand why there are numerous threads all over Mumsnet from people who avoid the Relationships forum like the plague. Doom and Gloom ad infinitum. That's the thing about the internet though.. people come on it, generally speaking, when things are shit, and when they need advice, or want to whinge about something. Myself included.

Do you see many threads from people saying how grateful they are for their children, their partner, their lives? Saying how content they are, how they have no financial troubles, are in good health and happily wed? No. Not many.

That's why the internet can be an odd source of comfort sometimes.
We google an illness and then believe we've got an inoperable a brain tumour. We have an argument with dh over something, head over to Relationships board on Mumsnet and see that yes, all men really are bastards. That's why leave the bastard is an old Mumsnet in-joke.

I remember coming on to Mumsnet to ask about Mirena and found a very long thread about 'the bastard' Mirena with horrific tales of side effects. 90% of the replies catalogued awful side effects, hospital visits, pregnancy etc.. in real life, I have 5 friends with the coil and no ill effects. I almost changed my mind about getting a Mirena after half an hour on Mumsnet reading posters experiences with it. The internet magnifies 'issues' massively, so the untrained eye might imagine that all is unwell, when the majority of people are actually fine.

Marriages don't always work, but most do. Two out of three. I think we need to keep that in mind. It's a fact, recorded. Google it.
Obviously we all need to make choices to protect our financial independence. I've just started sahm'ing again after several years of working and have increased the amount I save, added more to pension, increased our life insurance cover too. I am not going to spend my life in fear of 'what might happen' and possibly that's because the absolute worst thing possible did happen to my Mother, also a sahm, when my Dad died suddenly of cancer shortly after an out of the blue diagnosis. Everything looked fucked at the time. But slowly, things turned around. And now, nearly 30 years later, she's still in the smaller house she downsized to after his death, and content. She would've been better off financially if she'd met someone else and remarried, but she didn't want to. Dickensian poverty isn't always the inevitable end result for sahm's who've lost partners. Women are stronger than that. I'd hate for my daughters to enter marriage scared of what might happen and I'd be just as proud if they decide to be sahm's as I would if they continued to work.

The real problem here is not the fact that women want to be stay at home Mums. The real problem here is that society doesn't value stay at home parents. Perhaps the solution is not simply to bully all Mums out to work, but to recognise what they do at home and give them financial assistance to do so. Someone has to look after the kids. Why the hell can't it be one of the parents?

are marriage statistics divorced from reality? :

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1989124,00.html

I totally agree with keeping some kind of toehold in the job market. It made it a lot easier (psychologically as much as anything less) to leave an abusive marriage.

I have found that post-divorce my career has taken a hit anyway, because I am less geographically mobile. It's not just the fact I don't want to uproot DD (though I don't), but especially with court-ordered contact in place, I can't move away to where the work is any more, not without lengthy and expensive legal battles. My career has always relied on mobility and frequent travel and I just can't do it. So I'm working p-t in a job I'm over-qualified for and barely keeping afloat financially (I had 41p in my bank account yesterday till payday. Actually, that's not +41p, that's 41p left before my overdraft was exhausted). That's with degrees up the wazoo and an unbroken employment record for the last 16 years. So keeping your job doesn't mean being on Easy Street post-split, by any means - but the future is still a bit brighter than it might otherwise be.

autumn, you're boxing shadows. Nobody is telling you to stop being a SAHM. They're advising people to take financial precautions if they make that choice. You're doing exactly that. Why do you feel so got at?

I don't feel got at.
I'm just shocked at the double standard. That it's ok to say it is 'folly' to be a sahm or that they wouldn't be one cos they'd feel 'downtrodden' etc.. (quotes from this thread). If I was to say, for example 'I wouldn't want to be a working Mum because I wouldn't leave my dc's with a succession of teenagers in some grim day orphanage' there'd be a totally understandable uproar.

and I speak as someone who has left my dc's in a day orphange I mean nursery when I was working.

Well I liked your post autumn - I thought it provided balance to an already excellent thread, but that your contribution only improved it still further

I agree that the work SAHPs do should be valued; I'm sure most of us on this thread do. But it seems even more of a mountain to climb to get society at large and governments to recognise that than it is to stay in the work force... :(.

I am 43 and married for the 2nd time. In my first marriage the fact that I had my own finances enabled me to be able to walk out of the door. To me retaining my career/ job meant choices.
As a result of this in my 2nd marriage I have kept my career and chose not to be a SAHM, my DH did take the role of SAHD for 10 months when DS was born.
This was not something I was comfortable to do myself. Also I was the breadwinner during that period and he had lost his job due to an accident. Aside from that it was important to me never to be dependent 100% on anyone. Probably says more about me !
I think as DM's we owe it to both ourselves and our children to be able to either return to work when we are ready or be able to make choices in our relationships for the better if need be.

In an ideal world we should never have to consider thinking like this. As we would all be happy in our relationships forever and all our partner's would decent honest people in the event of breakups.

But if I had DD's I would drum it in to their head that a job and your own salary in most cases means being able to make choices. In the times we live there is no reason we have to give it all up. ( someone people do chose to give up their jobs to become SAHP( they are obviously more secure than me ! ) and I am not judging that)

akaemma I think you need to speak with a good lawyer and find out where you stand. Where did the good honest people that we started out with go?

I'm with Wordfactory

Thankyou Juggling. Wordfactory called me 'boring' about twelves pages ago and I've been licking my wounds ever since..

Unfortunately I think there is a slightly anti SAHM element to this thread - though have to admit I haven't read every post.
I think there's much good, thought-provoking stuff here too.
But would be even better if it could maintain a genuine un-biased balance IMHO

Autumn

I take your point about Internet doom and gloom, but your last paragraph is really striking.

"The real problem here is not the fact that women want to be stay at home Mums. The real problem here is that society doesn't value stay at home parents. Perhaps the solution is not simply to bully all Mums out to work, but to recognise what they do at home and give them financial assistance to do so. Someone has to look after the kids. Why the hell can't it be one of the parents!

At the moment almost all the economic, public policy and social signals are for it to be one of the parents - the female one that is. Unless that changes don't know how society can value SAHPs without this in practice making it harder for women to maintain careers.

agreed, Juggling.
This thread has lots of very important, very useful information.
I struggle to accept the innocent 'just-being-helpful-honest' motives of some posters however, because I've seen 'em pop up numerous times in other threads to slag off 'The Housewife' as if she were a Thing, an It, a Problem, a Conundrum to be 'solved' and abolished.

Himalaya, how is it economic policy and how are all social signals in favour of sahp's? I'm genuinely interested in the response, because I've experienced the opposite of this. Most women work these days, most sahm's do it as a temporary thing and not career sahm'ing and the government- well, certainly the Blair/Brown government, gave us CTC etc, childcare vouchers, better maternity benefits, to entice women to return to work. There were far more sahm's twenty years ago.

I've been a wohm and a sahm and experienced far more prejudice when I'm sahm'in than when I'm wohm'ing. It definitely seems more acceptable to sneer at the poor downtrodden wifey than to sneer at the hardnosed career woman who dumps her kids and runs (I don't believe either of those cliches btw)

I think my attitude is that I would rather that a few SAHMs get irritated by feeling that this almost entirely useful conversation has an anti-sahm edge, thn that the important message that people need to inform themselves and protect themselves and therefore their children if they take the perfectly valid decision to be a sahp.

I simply don't understand the logic that is negative about protecting yourself financially for being cynical or represents being scared about what might happen .
I am not scared of my house burning down. It probably won't. But I sure as hell have insurance and a fire alarm.

I don't want my DD to be too stupid to have a financial consequence conversation with her DP before chosing o be a sahm because it would feel negative and most marriages work. And I would be furious with any of my DC for not working this stuff out fairly.
Trying to do it once one of you is already vulnerable won't work.