Blindsided by H

[Gingerloaf]

So my ‘DH’ has been grumpy for a few weeks but says it’s my fault.
Today - out of the blue he tells me he has been seeing someone for 2 months. I had no idea - I told him to leave which he has done
Packed his bags leisurely and left

We have been married for over 25 years. Kids grown up etc

I have seen advice on here before and never in a million years thought I would need it - but suddenly it’s me that has this news. I understand also why previous posters don’t give too many details because for some weird reason she may be on here ( daft thought but there you go) and yes I have name changed

Your advice on the matter is very welcome
I can’t remember but somewhere on here someone referred to a ‘script’ that people use when they leave or are getting ready to leave - I would be interested to see it if anyone has it
I think I have been arch manipulated by ‘DH’

Thanks for reading

As the judge at the court case said during my parents divorce - 35 years ago - adultery is not illegal in the UK (hasn't been since 1857), so the court did not have the power to 'punish' my father financially for it. He then went on to tell my mother that my father 'could have slept with 100 women' and it would still have made no difference to the financial settlement she would receive, that the starting point was always 50/50.

My mother was a SAHM for the whole 23 years they were married, she never worked outside the home (she refused to, said that as far as she was concerned, as she'd had his children my father was obligated to support her financially for life). I was 21 and had already left home when they divorced, my brothers were 18 and 22. The mortgage on the 'family' home still had 20 years to run when my father left...my mother fought for nearly 3 years to try and get him to effectively 'give' her the house, meaning he would have been locked into being jointly responsible for paying the mortgage for a property he wouldn't be living in for those 20 years. My mother was 48, my father 43...there was no way at that time that any bank would give her a mortgage.

Ultimately my mother was awarded more than 50/50, but by the time the bank/solicitor fees/other marital debts had been deducted there wasn't much left. My mother was badly advised by her solicitor, instead of holding on for 3 years she should have sold as quickly as possible to get a better settlement.

As you are now finding out, it works both ways. The law doesn't care that you made the decision to support him when he was the stay at home parent. It assumes that you made that of your own free will, that you weren't coerced into it.

Well, I worked alongside my husband at the same work, same hours , no pay, family business, and did all the child rearing and domestics and the courts gave me nothing. I was able to support myself so that’s what I was to do.

It's a tick box exercise to free up the courts from lengthy disputes

Laughably he blamed our problems on feminism

Interesting that it's feminism's fault when you won't fall into line, but it's just fine and dandy when you're financially supporting him. What a dull pillock. Wonder if he'll blame feminism for the council tax.

@Gingerloaf

I understand your frustration. One of my sons is now involved in a divorce because his wife (who I always thought of as my darling DiL) had been cheating on him for almost a year. All of our hearts are broken, for him and for ourselves. There are no children involved, thank God. He was the main wage-earner and paid all the bills, whatever she earned was hers to spend on herself. He treated her like a princess, whatever she wanted she got. Now he's faced with losing half of everything. And the possibility of having to pay alimony! He's angry and frustrated but there's not much we can do, other than tell him that it will be painful, but he will be free and has time to build things back up. He's having the same emotions as you about the unfairness of it all. And is determined to either never marry again or to be sure he marries someone who is financially able to be an equal partner.

But here's the thing. Many years ago I was divorced under 'no fault' from an abuser. If there hadn't been no fault he would have been able to refuse to give me a divorce and kept me tied to him for years. And he would have done it, too, not just because he lost a spousal stipend when we divorced, but to make me unhappy and unable to truly be free. No fault allowed me to be rid of him in 6 months. And I'd say there are probably more people (mainly women) who benefit from no fault in this way than there are people who are financially disadvantaged by a cheating spouse. So by and large, no fault is a good thing. A bit of a lopsided thing, but a good thing overall.

And as we tell our son, you'll get through this. Just be sure everything is done right and tight and there are no issues left 'for future consideration'. Our son has an excellent legal team who will fight for him, make sure yours does the same.

Gingerloaf, he's had a rare old time to himself on your watch hasn't he?. You're out earning the money and he's picking up bits and pieces here and there. FWIW I totally agree you should be able to name Betty Budgie but the law says otherwise, crap eh. Hope your well, you have a wonderful family and friends, he has nothing. 💐💐.

The "no fault" divorce amendment was made (I think) after that case of the woman whose shit-head husband refused to let her divorce him for years, saying he had done nothing wrong, so she had no grounds for divorce. It was quite a high profile story at the time. He was an absolute bastard and refused to let her go.

"No fault" was intended to circumvent difficult partners, and to streamline the process, and to reduce animosity clogging up the courts.

I was also the breadwinner, and fucking hell did I pay for it. I wanted to burn the whole universe down to the ground, it was so unfair.

I don't know what you could do now to protect any part of your assets. It would take some serious creative thinking like getting cash back from the supermarket plus smaller cash withdrawals from the ATM and buying gold with it that you could later sell.

I don't know how men like that live with themselves. Although my ex seems to do so just fine.

"To be clear - he was at home when they were young but they also went to nursery I paid for
He attempted to work in a formal workplace and didn’t last
He went freelance and often did not pay tax - the DC by this time we’re self sufficient"

Maybe after you are divorced, HMRC might receive an anonymous tip off about his tax evasion 😈.

breaking the contract should not be rewarded with 50% of the assets to the adulterer/ guilty party

breaking the contract isn’t being rewarded with 50% of assets. The 50% was effectively already his. Anything that came in during the marriage belonged equally to both of you.

I’ve been through divorce. I had brought more into the marriage and yes it really sucked to lose so much. In my situation there was inheritance as well, which many people feel even more strongly attached to than salary income. It helped me to process it when I understood that any money that came to me during the marriage - if I didn’t take steps to protect it - was subject to an implicit decision to immediately gift 50% to my husband. If I had made a bad investment decision in the past and the company failed, I’d lose the money and it’s no use crying that I expected it to do well. If I buy a house and then discover subsidence and rot and woodworm, I have lost a lot money. It helped me to see it as a past decision to give away or invest 50% of the income in him. It turned out to be a poor investment, but that’s the risk I took. The money wasn’t taken away from me at the point of divorce, I had already given it away many years earlier.

Sorry, I’m not arguing to add to your distress. This sort of cold view on it really did help me to let go of the bitterness (eventually). But you have every right to be angry. It sounds like he’s being an absolute dick to you, and his poor decisions have exploded your retirement plans and so much more.

@Gingerloaf

A PP said:
I don't know what you could do now to protect any part of your assets. It would take some serious creative thinking like getting cash back from the supermarket plus smaller cash withdrawals from the ATM and buying gold with it that you could later sell.

Don't do this. My DS's legal team advised him NOT to play games with assets or try to hide cash/assets. They even advised him NOT to replace an expensive item she took until the financial settlement was signed because they didn't want any appearance of him trying to 'spend down' assets. He was told that these days there are so many electronic 'fingers' amongst banking/financial things that it's likely you'll get caught playing fast & loose.

@Gingerloaf it really is hard to accept I know but you simply cannot use the financial settlement to punish whatever behaviour leads to the marriage breakdown. Also, correct me if I am wrong (and I may well be) but just because you CAN do a no fault divorce now, does that mean you have to? - you can't cite adultery? I did a few years back and actually managed to get ex to agree to pay about 5k of my legal fees in return for not specifically naming the OW. That got me a fair bit of satisfaction. In the end, you will have a happier and healthier future if you try to detach from what you cannot control, ie the legalities and just get it done. You sound like a strong and self sufficient person and it will drive you mad if you spend the next 5 years counting over the missing ££££. If my ex hadn't cheated we'd now be well into paying off the mortgage on a house in the SE that has doubled in value since we bought it. But he did so now I am paying a much smaller mortgage, not in the SE and will probably only pay it off when I downsize and retire. But getting furious about it only helps so much. You do need some rage to get you through the early months but don't let it overwhelm you and thank your lucky stars your kids are grown and you don't have to deal with contact and maintenance and co=parenting!

It sounds really hard OP - sometimes though the cost is worth it to be rid of them. In time you will begin to enjoy your freedom from the weight around your neck that used to be him. Perhaps every penny is worth it because you are worth so much more.

@LardoBurrows I read the not paying tax as not earning enough to pay, rather than actively avoiding it.

I don't think it's ridiculous at all to feel that way, especially if you have been the main contributor financially (and practically) in the marriage. I would feel very sore and hard done by if I had to hand over half my pension, a huge stake in my future, to someone who couldn't keep it in his trousers.

I know that's not the way the law is, but I think it's very understandable to feel bitter about being robbed of the future you expected to have.

At the end of the day this isn't really the point.

OP and anyone who has been in a situation of betrayal has every single right to feel hurt by it and to discuss feeling hurt.

The OP here has shown herself to be very sensible and clear headed throughout all of this but unless shie is a concrete wall, she still has feelings and emotions. This is all very new to her, it's just been a few weeks, it's a roller coaster of emotions we all go through when something crap happens.

It's allowed to feel things are not fair even if in the cold light of day there are valid reasons for it.

Ultimately cheating is a breach of contract isn’t it? Between any couple there is a contract developed in the way they grow together. If someone stays home to look after the kids (not because they’re hopeless at the job, as some people imply) and do the school runs, boring house stuff, etc, then that is the agreement between the two consenting adults. Obviously career prospects flounder in this period. Getting a job once the kids leave home is virtually impossible regardless how skilled you are or your qualifications. Getting one that will support you - miraculous if you have no recent, relevant job history. I think legally splitting 50/50 isn’t always fair and always leave someone disadvantaged, but the cheater is the one who broke the marriage contract by exploring other options and should be the one to suffer.

It's not fair that the person who has the affair is entitled to 50% of your hard work. I would look at it as he gets 50% value of your assets, but that's all he gets.

You get 50% of the assets but you also get the love and respect of your family and friends. You also have the ability to earn back that money while he is living off some one else's money.

And at end of the day he will end up like my dad, living with the woman he left for and no family or long time friends.

Nothing wrong with leaving.

Everything wrong with cheating.

The issue with linking fault and the financial settlement is proof. Not so difficult maybe in the OPs situation but hard to prove a one night stand or similar. Equally with abusive behaviour or "unreasonable" behaviour ...how do you
collect court worthy evidence for this and how long do you think it would take before wealthy powerful men fabricate it to see their SAHM partners absolutely shafted? Its simply not feasible and only fuels the negativity. I do think more should be done to raise awareness amongst the general population that if one half chooses to SAHP they need to think about future pension provision from the family earnings so each is provided for separately.

The thing is, as has been pointed out, the law that divides assets is there to protect people like stay at home parents if they sacrifice their earning potential, you see women being suggested to make sure they go after their fair share on here all the time, but with OPs husbands behaviour, yeah it’s not always fair, but details can’t be argued for the few where it’s genuinely an injustice unfortunately, they are there to protect the greater of divorcees. I’m on OPs side in all this, he is being a dick.

But hindsight is a great thing, I genuinely don’t know why people get married, and sometimes after a bad divorce, they get married again, just why? Wrap everything up with will and insurance etc, but why promise you will love someone FOREVER and have the possibility of having an unfair division on divorce. All power to you OP, I like many are supporting you from the sidelines.

You need to find a way to get rid of your (righteous) anger.
Even if you could "the law" is a crap way of doing that. It doesn't work to calm things, in fact in an adversarial system it does the opposite. Instead of lowering the heat in a system it increases it on both sides.
It also just costs you a LOT of money. And the more adverserial the more the lawyers get.

That's why no fault divorce came in. If you find people who went through the old system you would see that they didn't feel vindicated by their "day in court".

Also Everyone has grounds to divorce everyone else. The grounds my ex husband used against me were not even the worst he could have used, and I had far stronger grounds against him, but he wanted to divorce me and I didn't care who did what.

So deal with your feelings separately from the legal aspect. Divorcing when cool and logical, following the best legal advice is the best. (And best doesn't mean most expensive).