Ex wife - taking Husband to the cleaners

[irbextbg]

I was married for just over 2 years, have a daughter 3 years old.
My wife has made it her business to destroy me and make it impossible to live a normal life!

OP; your posts are very emotional and you have focused on the injustice of what she has put you through, her past behaviours and lack of character. Interspersed with some actual pertinent facts and information that would substantiate your case to vary the court settlement. It is clear that this has been a painful experience for you and that you need help to deal with the trauma. Please see a doctor about this.

In relation to bringing a case to vary the order, take advice. I am not sure you have the mental strength and objectivity to do this without professional support. The settlement is based on your respective financial needs and that of your child. It won't attribute blame or give you any satisfaction in proving she is a conniving woman. If you seek financial advice, go armed with relevant facts and contentions. Listen to the advice you are given and be clear and realistic about the outcome you want or need. At the moment it is hard to separate out the different issues you are highlighting. They are all important, but some are not relevant.

Be prepared to accept the judgement. The court could have challenged the settlement even when agreed by both parties, if they considered it not fair. That the judge didn't may mean that it had some merit based on the facts presented, particularly given the award of spousal maintenance (getting rare) after a short marriage.

In the long run, your mental health is more important than money.

Your spousal payment seems high. I assume she isn't getting the same from previous husbands - that gets disregarded once they remarry. The new millionaire boyfriend - where does he fit in - if any relationship and be proven then that may have bearings. I would just keep a meticulous diary in case any accusations are made in future. Divorce is costly I'm afraid. More so when there are large assets and feelings of hate!

I think you're getting a hard time here OP. The spousal maintenance seems exceptionally harsh after a 2 year marriage. It looks to me like your solicitor seriously let you down.

Im guessing the courts took into account the divorce settlements for your last 2 marrages?
You sound how i have felt, like its one endless mess and the drip drip worry and injustice of court cases knowing it costing loads, is beyond dreadful! I havnt been involved with the criminal courts but been to family courts 4 times in a year, and dont get me startee on the financial aspect of it!!

So you now have access for your daughter that's fab.
I think realistically divorce does have an impact on your finances. You sounds in a shitty place i would really really consider if going back to courts worth it? Taking into consideration once you start the process you really have no idea how much it eill end up costing.
Personally if i can cope financially i wouldn't, concentrate on your time with your daughter and getting in a good emotional state. Some things in life are more imortant than winning the fight. Xx

O sorry i only just realised it was her who was married before not you.

OP, your story is almost a carbon copy of what my DP has been through. He has been assaulted by his ex and her partner, threatened by both of them, access to his youngest daughter has been all but stopped. She has stolen from him, got him arrested on a malicious claim of assault and has recently gone to the police with allegations of coercive control.

I believe all of this is because she believes she can use this to get the consent order overturned in an attempt to get more money. It was a long marriage; my DP had put far more finances into it than her, but she got 50% plus thousands of pounds of his stuff that she stole.

My DP still has the police issues to deal with and he gets to see his daughter about once every 4 months if he is lucky.

If you can get the money together, fight on. Men can be victims of abuse and manipulation too.

The net if this story is that I lost all the money I put into the house

This doesn't make sense, yo are paying the mortgage so you still own half the house.

IME if the ex is paying for a house in this way then the court order states whe cannot have another partner living there untilt he child is 16.

I'm also not impressed by, "women abuse men too" so what? WHat happens to anyone else is irrelevant.

Hello OP, we're really sorry to hear you are feeling this way.

We hope you don't mind, but when these threads are flagged up to us we usually add a link to our Mental Health resources. You can also go to the Samaritans website, or email them on [email protected]. Support from other Mumsnetters is great and we really hope you will be able to take some comfort from your fellow posters, but as other MNers will tell you, it's really a good idea to seek RL help and support as well.

We also like to remind everyone that, although we're awed daily by the astonishing support our members give each other through life's trickier twists and turns, we'd always caution anyone never to give more of themselves to another poster, emotionally or financially, than they can afford to spare.

Again, havent deemed to the root of the problem.

irb, I know you want to talk about how you feel but my questions might help you with the financial side even if you don't answer them but just think about them. It sounds like you have a final divorce consent order which is not a clean break. It may say if your wife moves a lover in then you stop paying her part of the payments or it may not. It may say you only pay for a few years or not. It may say she should take you off the mortgage. It is worth now you have contact with your child again which is great, that you think about having a good thorough read of the order and some of us may be able to help you improve your financial position, depending on what the order actually provides.

You are at the end of the divorce finance process as far as I can see so the only likely actions on that now will be if you fall on to harder times or if your payments to your wife cease because the time has expired or she has moved a man in etc etc. I was left with having to support 5 children entirely alone and my husband who chose not to see the children and thus not help with them (we both worked full time) so my position is not too different from yours in some ways. I just had to get on with increasing my earnings. Our difference was I earned enough to get a clean break to pay him out of his maintenance for life claims and you have continuing spousal maintenance although don ot have to pay all your child's costs which I have to do including at one point 5 sets of school fees and I am still today supporting two of the teenagers are univesrity 100% 0 their father pays nothing at all and also never has them to stay so I am the one paying for their food in the holidays etc. Anyway you just have to get on with it. Marry a rich career woman older than you are next time and only marry if you marry at all someone who is prepared always to work full time. We discussed it before we married that we would both work full time and that did help.

@viques you sound horrible.

OP, you have my sympathy

I think you are already doing really well under the circumstances, and well done for having regained access to your daughter and for making the effort to make things good with her.

Would you consider seeing a counsellor or therapist to talk about your feelings about all of this? It sounds as if you are getting overwhelmed by all of your (very understandable) feelings, and that this may be interfering with the practical things you need to do. At one point you talked about fighting back, for example, and I just think that if you had an outlet for your emotions then it might mean you can really focus your practical and financial resources on the really important things rather than doing anything silly or disproportionate as a way of responding emotionally! I hope this makes sense, and I wish you all the best.

I also think you’ve done well. Getting access to your daughter was the single most important thing.

I think under the circumstances I’d focus on my daughter. Note all incidences of emotional abuse and poisoning of your daughter against you in a diary while keeping a stable front in front of your ex. Take some time to get your mental health and resilience back. And to gather the finances to fight again.

(MyL without looking back it was something like out of hs 4300 net monthly salary about 650 for the child and 1650 for the mother - it was quite steep and I was trying to find out exactly its wording eg just for a few years or for life for the spousal payments etc and if she was obliged to take him off the mortgage and that kind of detail)

I’m really encouraged by all the feedback and notes on my post.

Xenia, the deal is crazy, £1,350 pm spousal maintenance, £650. Child maintenance. Plus I can not remove myself from the morgage and consequently can’t get a morgage of my own as I am maxed out.

Oh I also found out last week that I have to pay a fine and repay child credits my ex was claiming npand having sent into her personal account while we were together, she knew I earned over £60k a year but didn’t let HM revenue know this. The back payment and fine comes to over £3,500.

It may be worth appealing the HMRC tax credit fine if it was her duty not yours to notify them and if she made the claim and signed the form. If it were just child benefit insetad lots of us claim it even though we have to pay it back because that perserves our national insurance record and in my case I just chose to take it and then when I do my tax return each year pay the whole lot back (my sons left school last year so I only stopped claiming it then). That is fine in happy marriages or couples where they are divorced and single when they claim but not fine if you had no idea she was claiming whilst you were together. Certainly worth an appeal.

£650 child maintenance - 12 months after the sealing of your divorce finances order you can go to the CMS and apply to vary the child maintenance element as far as I am aware. I think if your net pay is £4300 a month your annual gross pay is probably about £85k so 12% of that for one child is £850 a month so I suspect £750 is less than the law requires so do check before you appeal the child maintenance bit. Children cost a small fortune. our full time childcare was £30k a year so the 12% of gross is a bit of a rough and ready tool in practice for many families particularly where both work full time and have massive childcare bills just to enable them to work.

Spousal, maintenance as she does not work I think you said at £1350 is not a king's ransom if you have to pay rent but obviously in my view no one should give up work wehn babies come and both work full time however that is not where you both are. Hopefully your court order says if she cohabits the money for her stops and perhaps it is only paid for a few years until she gets back on her feet or finds someone else rich to keep her.

I have tended to find in life it was a lot easier to take on extra work and make extra money than to cut back however. So longer term I would just concentrate on your career. You need to look at what hte court order says about the mortgage. Eg sometimes it says if they cannot get you off it then you keep equity gains (or losses I suppose) in the property whilst you still are on the title deeds and mortgage. Sometimes it says she has to use particular efforts to get you off the mortgage and she may have breached that. However as she dxcoesn't work unless her new partner or a family member act as guarantor she is not going to be coming off the mortgage as the ledner won't allow it which will stop you buying somewhere else which is pretty awful. My husband got enough from me to buy an unmortgaged 4 bed detached with money over and I was able to remortgage to pay out his claims.

Truth is that there are dreadful people who act appallingly on both sides in a divorce. There are ex-wives who have done exactly as described here - wasting everyone's time and literally making life a misery and there are ex-husbands who have done the same. I am shocked that people are so bitter about others having more money than them that they have no sympathy just because the OP has more money than them. Manipulative and horrible behavior crushes you regardless of how much money you have. It is irrelevant whether the OP is a millionaire or dirt poor. The fact is, if the ex is repeatedly bringing spurious charges against him with the sole purpose of making his life a misery, he has all my sympathy.

Did you go to FDR or Final Hearing?
When does Spousal payments stop?

What was the asset split? Did you have a pension?

How old are you? Sorry for questions but it will help to put it all into perspective.
Sadly many of us have had awful marriages and even worse divorces..due to vindictive Ex's.
However she is likely be feeling victimised as court for either party is never good.
No one feels like a victor.My Ex is bitter but from my perspective he got a great deal as I agreed at FDR to make it all go away.

I think unfounded allegations is the worse however and you will feel trauma as a result. At the time of separation I never considered Ex would have been so awful. He put our children through hell, despite the fact they were older and could express their opinions to him. He is now having to rebuild his relationship with them but the trust is broken. They will never feel the same about him. Ex fought so hard to try to make me penniless, he almost succeeded but in the end he will have money but not much else.
If your Ex is really as bad as you think (often these characters are disordered) then she will not have a good life, despite having money. As we get older we learn its about our connections with people not possessions.

Don't focus on the money lost, you can rebuild.
Focus on getting emotional healing and letting go.See YouTube's for guided visualisations.
Bitterness is an awful trait and will harm you longterm so practice gratitude, find 5 good things in every day..it really works to change your mindset.

Look at what you have, a daughter, a good job, not what you have lost

Some free legal information-

Criminal court doesn't prove that you didn't do what she alleged. It means that the court didn't have evidence to find that you were guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

There is a different standard of proof in civil law proceedings, including family law.

Also a statistically tiny proportion of domestic violence allegations are false. A statistically significant proportion are never reported, let alone successfully prosecuted.

Silverbirch, yet that can be really unfair - just think of all those people usually men accused of things, found not guilty and then they can never work again or prohibited from contact with their chidlren ever without allegations being proven either in a criminal nor a civil court.

Xenia; This has been very helpful thank you very much.

I would again like to thank everyone for all there contributions to this thread, I am obviously not alone. I’ve never used a facility like “mums net” and am so pleased I did.

Really good advise from life begins.

At the end of the day you are her father and she needs you.

Me and my ex always our child first

Split everything down the middle.

Just because it didn't work out between us doesn't mean I wanted to hurt him.

Based on an amicable divorce we both were able to move on
And have great lives.

It was hard but cannot understand people acting any other way.

Good luck 😉

Robin, people get very hurt and upset (my husband got more than half and I suppose he felt the only way to hurt me was 1. going for a lot of money and 2. choosing never to help and virtually nevr have the children, as I work full time and his help was useful (he worked ful time too)., However I agree with you that most parents do manage to agree an amicable arrangement.