Should I warn my ex before asking for more than half?

[Rinceyourrice]

I can't really talk about this with anyone.

I think I want to give my ex-husband a heads up that I intend to ask for more than 50% in the settlement. Possibly a lot more.

My main reason for doing so is that I know him well and one fact about him is that he does not handle surprises well. He's absolutely fine when given time to digest something. (as an example, we could never just decide to go out to dinner, but if I messaged him earlier in the day to suggest it, he'd be on board). During our 30-year marriage, I would always give him notice when I wanted to discuss something in particular. Springing anything on him kind of makes him shut down and unable to consider it.

I'm not sure if it's relevant to my question, but in case you want a full picture, the reasons I will ask for more than 50% are as follows:

Skip this bit if you're not interested:

1. He earns almost 3 times my salary.

1. One of the reasons he does, is because I paused my career to bring up our children. I was contributing to our family with my labour and care, while he was contributing by earning the money. That was our arrangement, and it would have worked, if not for his sudden change of plan.

1. His father is a 93 Yr old multi-millionaire. Dh will inherit. I realise that's simply his good luck and my bad luck, but I'm including it so you understand that ex-husband will be fine, financially.

1. Ex-husband changed the plan. He left me. I thought our marriage was fine. I would have been willing to work on things. He left me for someone else. That was his choice.

1. Financial abuse during the marriage. He did not ever allow me access to any of our finances, or the mortgage (which is in my name too), his pensions (I didn't have one), or tell me about the many debts he took out to give the woman he was seeing tens of thousands of pounds. He was living the high life while telling me we couldn't afford to fix my car door. And I believed that was true and faithfully tried to reduce the grocery bill to help with our family finances.

1. I moved to this country because of his job. Our children have their lives here. They want to stay. I can't afford to stay here if I can't buy a house.

1. Ex-h does not want to house the children. They are with me. He rarely sees them. They are my responsibility. He pays decent child support for them but plans to reduce his contribution - this will leave me unable to afford the rent to this house that we chose together, him already having started his affair.

1. I need more then 50% to set myself up and live my life independently with our children. I can't do it with 50%. I'll have to leave this country. I don't want to, and neither do the children. The amount I want will not see me enjoying overseas holidays or shopping at prada. It's a deposit that will allow me to get a mortgage.

I'm not asking if I'm entitled to more than 50%. Legally I'm not. Morally..?

I'm asking if I should give him a heads up. He's more likely to entertain it, given notice.

Or... Would I just be giving him time to justify saying no?

Your understanding is wrong.

Genuinely interested in what the position is. I was advised by my solicitor to move quick and get a consent order in place as until I did my ex could still some back to claim ? Had a friend in a similar position with her ex making a claim on her inheritance too.

In the UK (England and Wales), an inheritance is viewed as a non-matrimonial asset. It sits outside the normal marital pot and courts will only touch it if family money is low or if the inheritor mixed the funds with joint family finances. If her ex inherits after they are separated, and have filed for divorce, it would not be considered part of the matrimonial assets to be split.