House mortgage and divorce. Please help.

[SpiritualKnot]

Hi,

Also posted this in legal secion,but thought someone in this section may have personal experience of this?
Seperated, getting divorced. H left me for OW.
Agreed with H to give him £20,000, by increasing our mortgage by this amount and he pays child maintenance.(Kids 18yrs going to college October and other 11years) Child maintenance for younger one only.
He now says he doen't want to do both. He says I have the house and should be happy with that. He wants the £20,000 and no maintenance costs.
I earn more than him. He really wants me to move out and share 50:50 (or 60:40 or whatever). I do not want to move out at all.
He has contributed v little over the years. I pay mortgage and all bills.
I know his only option for a 50:50 split would be to wait until daughter is `18 yrs old.

My Q is, if he made me do this would he not be expected to pay half the mortgage in the meantime? If I pay the mortgage myself, as per usual, for the next 7 years, would it still be a 50:50 split? We've lived here for 8 years.

He's just left and I'm v upset by this. My solicitor said what we agreed was fair, now he's seen one and they say it's not fair. He syas he's going to see his solicitor again.

I think... I'm fairly sure... that he would get 50% of the value of the house at the time you split, not at the time it is sold. So if you sell it in 7 years' time he'll get 50% of its current value, and any increase (or theoretically decrease?) in value is yours, provided you have been paying the mortgage, as you expect to.

When you mentioned this before, a whole lot of people said that child maintenance is separate from the division of assets, and I'm sure that's correct. I suggest you make a list of these specific questions to ask your solicitor, although the answer to some of them may be "depends what the court says".

It is possible the court will order the house to be sold and the proceeds to be divided 50:50. This is what happened with mine. I wanted to do it that way as I thought it was fairest, and I sure as hell didn't want to stay there. XH wanted to stay in the house, but there was no way he could afford to buy me out. It worked because there was enough equity for us both to buy a smaller but habitable property with a reasonable mortgage. In the case of a friend who divorced around the same time, there was nowhere near enough equity for this to be practicable (house was worth around £80k), so the ruling was that the mother stayed in the house with the child and the father would get 50% of the present value when the child reached 18, or when the mother decided to sell up, whichever happened first. (Interestingly, he'd had a prenuptual agreement drawn up that said the house was his and he would be entitled to 100% if they split up; under English law it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.) My friend had to move to his mother's and did still have to pay maintenance.

Funnily enough I was sorting out some papers the other day and came across the divorce correspondence. It was quite amusing in hindsight to see the two solicitors firing shots across each other's bows, reading between the lines, seeing how each one dropped hints and threats. It was also fairly clear towards the end that XH's sol was a bit p'd off with his client constantly changing his mind, telling him porkies, ignoring advice and eventually not paying him! Frankly I was always in the stronger position, though I didn't always realise it, as I had the money to dick around with solicitors longer than he could. Also my demands were reasonable whilst his were based on some very strange assumptions. I could probably have taken him for a lot more, but I was only after 50% of DS4's time, 50% of the assets and no maintenance on either side, and that's what I got.

Hi

Thanks for the reply. Glad you managed to get what you wanted to.

Is it 50% of what it's worth or 50% of the equity? There's about £90,000 equity and it's worth £195,000. There's 19 years left on the mortgage as well, so wouldn't be paid off by the time my daughter is 18.

So would he get £45,000 from the sale or nearer £100,000? I spose the remainder of the mortgage would come of this though? Such a pain all this isn't it?

I thought a court wouldn't order the sale of a house if there's children involved. Can't believe he went to a solicitor to see if he could get me to sell the house. He thinks I need one less bedroom now as our son is going to college, I'll still need his bedroom as he'll be back during holidays and probably the odd weekend.

Hi

Thanks for the reply. Glad you managed to get what you wanted to.

Is it 50% of what it's worth or 50% of the equity? There's about £90,000 equity and it's worth £195,000. There's 19 years left on the mortgage as well, so wouldn't be paid off by the time my daughter is 18.

So would he get £45,000 from the sale or nearer £100,000? I spose the remainder of the mortgage would come of this though? Such a pain all this isn't it?

I thought a court wouldn't order the sale of a house if there's children involved. Can't believe he went to a solicitor to see if he could get me to sell the house. He thinks I need one less bedroom now as our son is going to college, I'll still need his bedroom as he'll be back during holidays and probably the odd weekend.

Hi

Thanks for the reply. Glad you managed to get what you wanted to.

Is it 50% of what it's worth or 50% of the equity? There's about £90,000 equity and it's worth £195,000. There's 19 years left on the mortgage as well, so wouldn't be paid off by the time my daughter is 18.

So would he get £45,000 from the sale or nearer £100,000? I spose the remainder of the mortgage would come of this though? Such a pain all this isn't it?

I thought a court wouldn't order the sale of a house if there's children involved. Can't believe he went to a solicitor to see if he could get me to sell the house. He thinks I need one less bedroom now as our son is going to college, I'll still need his bedroom as he'll be back during holidays and probably the odd weekend.

Sorry for double posting, computer froze and I clicked again.

That, I don't know. Equity I think, but don't quote me. We didn't have a mortgage, although we did have some unsecured loans, credit cards etc, and these were paid off before sharing out what was left.

Oh yes, it is a pain, and the more you fight over it the more of your precious assets go to solicitors and court fees. I hope he bears this in mind.

Yes, I think he's losing sight of all the other costs, just wants to get at me now.

I think he's after about another £5K. But I sent over 2 hours on the phone arranging the extra £20K on the mortgage and took it to the limit of what I could afford. I don't want to go through it all again for another 5K.

I can afford 5K by giving him the children's savings (which I've saved in for years and years ),but that just wouldn't seem fair to me. I'm going to give our son £75 a week when he goes to Uni and am asking for maintenance for our daughter, which will probably be equivalent to what I give my son. The savings are for his uni for books and a laptop and extras. Same for my daughter for her future.

Don't give up the kids' money, under ANY circs. They are his kids too.

Nothing else to offer here, no exp.