Leaving wife

[oldshilling]

I'm a man, I got married young, I never really lived on my own (except uni).

I've been married for 10 years.

We have two children.

The marriage is a sham, my wife has a succession of emotional affairs on Facebook, which she thinks I don't know about (I have found out in the past).

She acts like things are normal, and gives no indication of what she's doing.

I have made threats to do stuff in the past, but she has seen enough times that I don't carry through. There's no point in me confronting her again, because I'd just look stupid having done it so many times before.

What do I do?

Not necessarily- they have been together 10 years......she will have a good case.

Curlew unless there has been recent dicta to the contrary (which I absolutely concede is entirely likely) then unmarried couples are not entitled to more than child support, and a share of whatever they can prove they contributed to monetarily. There have been cases of couples together decades where the unmarried homemaker was entitled to nothing when they split.

Can you tell me what cases you've read recently that have altered this situation? The Law Commission have been advising change for a very long time but no legislation that I know of has been passed.

(Genuinely interested - I did my post-grad research on this area, but it was a decade ago now which makes it legally irrelevant, obviously. If things have changed I'd really be interested in reading the relevant judgements.)

Sorry- I'm not a lawyer and am speaking from a position of compete ignorance, but I thought there and been some "palimony" type cases where an unmarried partner proved that they had contributed to the family money and were therefore entitled to a share. Happy- well, unhappy actually- prepared to be wrong.

Yeah. One of the research studies - by Rebecca Bailey-Harris, from memory (again a decade old, so unreliable! And meaning the study is even older) found that over 60% of the UK population think there is such a thing as common-law marriage, giving some property rights to longstanding cohabitants. There aren't. It's why I wince when women have kids with someone they aren't married to, give up work or go part-time, then come here after ten years because he's met someone else and wants her to do one. They're fucked, basically. Career down the Swanee, house in his name, they've paid for the food maybe from part-time earnings and holidays etc but no mortgage contributions... and then people advise women whose partners want kids, want their gf to work part-time after the maternity leave, but "don't believe in marriage" not to worry because it's "just a bit of paper". It will change in time, but not yet - and it's actually quite hard to set a line in the sand on when reciprocal rights/obligations should begin, as the Australian de facto laws demonstrate. Though I think most of us would agree a decade and kids are well over that line, in terms of natural justice.

Going part-time to look after the family, or curtailing career prospects to make sure the kids have an available parent and to support the other person's career, when unmarried is potential financial suicide.

That's why everything we own is in joint names. But I thought there was case law now. My mistake- sorry. Ignore me....Apart from when I say

"OP- get a lawyer. On Monday"

Though if you can prove financial contribution, you can prove some entitlement. Payments towards the mortgage is the classic example. I'm pretty sure there was also a case where a guy lied to his partner and told her she couldn't go on the deeds because she was under 21 was taken as evidence of a constructive trust (maybe proprietory estoppel? Sorry, too long ago!) at any rate, it proved he knew she thought the house was equally shared and that he had told her that himself, so she was entitled as they had demonstrated the existence of an equitable right (in legal terms, not meaning fairness by the word) to the property. But that's a bit different to most situations. Again, the law changes so fast we had to bin textbooks that were 3 years old so I could be hopelessly wrong, but I've not heard of any new regime. And I will relish it when I can read of one.

The law is so ready for change. I would love it if lawyers could drop into the thread to tell us things are now different. It's so clearly unfair in many situations.

No, Curlew you could be right! I could just not know of the new dicta; I'm not exactly reading the journals anymore.

And I absolutely second the SEE A GOOD LAWYER! Advice.