How can I keep my home?

[Qwincy]

My husband and I are divorcing and are joint owners of our home in which I am now living with our two children.
He wants me to sell so he can have His share of the equity and buy a new home. I don’t want to sell, my children have lost enough with their dad leaving, I feel I need to try and keep our home as it gives them stability.
He is currently paying half of the mortgage with me as we both are named on the property.
Has anyone else been through this and can tell
Me any advice? I don’t have any spare money so can’t give him the half equity he wants.

Hello, I know exactly how you feel. I stayed in the property me and my ex brought together. We also have 2 dd's together. He stopped paying the mortgage the day he moved out. He pays maintenance. I carried on with the mortgage payments. It's neen 10 years now. He is still on the mortgage and when my youngest dd is 18 (5 years), I know he can enforce a sale. He has wanted me to sell from day 1 but I couldn't afford to move elsewhere and have never been able to lend more on my current wage to buy him out. He then refused to divorce me until I sold. So still married. I will just wait until my youngest dd is 18 now. The advice I had over the years is, he would have to apply to the courts to push a sale, however you have dc's together and if it's in their best interest to stay, the judge can make that decision.

I thought I would lose my house when I split with exp but the mortgage provider was great and really helped. Call them up and see what advice they have for you.

A court would not force your husband to continue to pay for half the mortgage unless he was an exceptionally wealthy man, so you would have to take over the mortgage somehow, someway. Maybe get your parents to pay half and have the money repaid when the house is sold when your youngest child is 18. or ask the mortgage company to accept a much lower payments from you, such as interest only? The court can put a Mesher order on the house so that you and the DC can remain in it as their main residence until they are 18. If there is enough equity then the house may be sold and you get somewhere smaller for the kids and you. Basically your H can't be expected to house both you and himself, so worse case scenario is you would have to sell up, and rent.

Thank you everyone
I’ll have to go to bank and solicitor and see what they say. I can afford the mortgage on my own, but I can’t afford to give him his share of the equity - which I understand he needs to have a deposit on a new house.

What's the pension situation? If he has a significantly better fund than you you might be able to trade equity for leaving his pension alone. I've known people do this successfully. Nobody wins but that's divorce. One family income doesn't provide two family homes without some issues on the way.

He might not be entitled to a 50% share op. Speak to your divorce solicitor and don't agree to anything until you've had proper advice in respect of your financial settlement.

I'm in a similar situation except my DH doesn't want to leave the marital home. As we earn a similar amount, both work FT and both have similar (practically non existent) pensions then the solicitor's advice was to sell the house. I think it is such a shame to lose our house as even with half the equity we would both probably be renting forever. I'm stumped. There's no one I can ask to come on the mortgage with me or lend me money to buy him out. I keep playing the lottery in the hope I win then I wonder whether I'd have to give him half!

Before you see anyone, get all the financial details together you can. List all assets, ie savings, pensions both his and yours, any shares or investments, equity in house, cars. Record everything you can remember. Write down all debts, car loans, personal loans, mortgage, outstanding credit card balances, business loans and so on. If you have a rough idea of value note it down, if you can get copies of balances on those better yet, if you don't know value just note down the assets and debts you know about. Also a rough idea of stbxh income would be helpful. A real estate agent can usually give you an idea of current market value of your home so you can work out value of equity. At least that's what they do where I live.

The more details you have the more accurate an idea the solicitor can give you of potential outcomes and your options. A solicitor can then give you an idea of if you can for example keep the equity in the house by agreeing that Stbxh can keep his pension intact. This assumes his pension is larger and that you can pay the mortgage on your own. Or if a mesher order is a possibility or if you need to pay him out or sell. Have a look at your bank online, most have mortgage calculators, work out roughly what you'd need to borrow to pay him out and if that is a possible option for you or not. There are various possible ways to keep your house, whether any of those are applicable to your situation will depend on the relevant details of incomes, assets and debts.

@Fantasisa the only option I can think of would be nesting. Where kids stay in the house and parents swap in and out and rent an apartment each or 2 bed shared. I know people that have done this and it works well for them. But it really depends on what your Stbxh is like. I take it you can't afford to refinance and pay him out?

@AlreadyGone44 I really can't and I've looked at all the options. I've also looked into nesting but it seems to only be for the short term as I suppose once one of us meets someone that would get more complicated. We are currently sleeping in separate rooms but are amicable. The pandemic isn't helping either, as there's so much uncertainty around jobs/finances etc.

Is a Mesher Order possible?