Hi All.
After a bit of advice, perhaps from those that have been there.
I'm thinking of dissolving my marriage.
I want to arm myself with the necessary info to be able to make an informed decision/have the facts ready.
I'm not trying to stitch him up. I would actually like to split assets but I don't think, in our circumstances it is possible. Some points:
- The mortgage is in my name. I bought the property 2 years before we married. I put in most of the cash, H put in a couple of thousand.
- I cannot re-mortgage to release equity to pay H off. The bank would not offer me enough to even cover the outstanding balance on my current income.
- I would like to stay in the house with the children for several reasons:
- It's less disruptive to them
- We live across the road from their school
- My work means, during the peak season (spring to autumn), I am usually only out "at work" once per week. The rest of the time I work from my home office. H works a full working week.
In an ideal world, I would love to be able to re-mortgage, remove our deposits on the property from the calculation and release 50% of what is left for him to set himself up with. He's done a lot of work on the property and I feel it's only fair he should get his fair share out, it also gives him a more stable grounding for taking care of the kids if and when he chooses to have them, rather than sofa surfing or moving back in with parents etc. Unfortunately, it's not possible. At least not for now. Also, he has a considerable amount of debt and his credit history is dreadful, meaning even if I were able to release the cash, he wouldn't be able to get a mortgage anyway, especially as his business is new and he can't yet prove a decent income.
I've heard of cases where an agreement is in place where the mother stays in the house until the kids turn 18 - which sounds ideal for me, but a bit unfair to expect H to wait that long to get anything back.
I guess my question is, how does it usually work? Will I be forced to sell the house to release his share of the equity? Or will it entirely rule in my favour, freeing me to do the best I can at releasing the money as soon as reasonably possible?
It's hard as I don't want to seem like I'm doing things that benefit me but it genuinely wouldn't make sense to sell. I would probably, just about get another small mortgage but wouldn't get much house for it at all so will end up in a dinky place somewhere, definitely not within catchment of the school as our area is expensive. He wouldn't get a mortgage full stop and I worry that he would just squander the money in the mean time, rather than holding onto it for when he was in a better financial position - although ultimately, that's not for me to decide, it would be his to do with as he pleases.
I've googled and found hundreds of posts along the lines of "the mortgage is in HIS name, where do I stand" but nothing where the situation is reversed.
Maybe I'm just overthinking everything. I seem to have a knack for that.