[quote ThumbWitchesAbroad]@R0SEMARY - yes, I'm sorry, of course you wouldn't let him pay your utility bills!
Parts of his proposals are outrageous and ridiculous and you and your solicitor should be able to demolish them totally. 
As for you "being provided for" - by your own efforts/inheritance - well, the solicitor should sort that out too.
Also, make sure you go after his pension in the divorce settlement (which he doesn't want, probably largely because of his pension!!)
You sound so much lighter and happier now - still grinning for you![/quote]
Yes I agree this is about his pension and child support. Because we have already largely sorted out the property issue. My solicitor said that ideally we’d have traded off one against the other but I had the cash to do it a step at a time and it allowed me to get him out the house sooner.
John is very arrogant about legal matters and imagines that his own interpretation of the law will prevail . So it doesn’t surprise me that he believes that the child support he pays should be based on what he considers to be my needs ie can I keep a roof over the children’s heads . Rather than his salary , which is 7 times mine.
The fact that he’s so keen to pay the bills shows me that he’s worried I’ll go after what he thinks of as his assets - which are of course matrimonial assets.
He thinks it’s a generous offer that will keep me quiet and stop me going to a divorce solicitor ( as opposed to a conveyancing solicitor who did the house transactions ).
He also thinks I will be so blind sided by his amazingly generous statement that he will pay the bills that I won’t think of working out how much child support he is due to pay.
And of course it’s the kind of thing that sounds good to the children, who understand what utility bills are. Whereas a pension is a rather nebulous concept. As we see all the time here on MN, where women who have been SAHP / worked PT for years to facilitate his career declare that “ it would be wrong to touch his pension “ .