Reporting of divorce settlements

[WhatKatyDidnt]

This headline in the Guardian caught my eye this morning: wife gets £453m in one of biggest divorce settlements www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/11/ex-wife-awarded-453m-in-one-of-uks-biggest-ever-divorce-settlements

Reading further it seems that a judge essentially split the £1bn marital assets 50:50, given that the woman's (unpaid) work in the home had supported the man's (paid) work outside the home. Sounds fair enough.

Why are these cases always reported - even in a so-called progressive newspaper - as wifey walking off with hubby's cash?

Trying again with the link:

Link

I guess exceptions make headlines. Woman gets nothing as husband claims to be self employed wouldn't be that interesting would it?

It's interesting that it's painted as the wife "getting" or "being awarded". They're marital assets, for God's sake. Most articles state that, but it's still always the wife being "given" the money, as opposed to the judge allocating the money to both hisband and wife.

*husband

This annoys me intensely. My ex dh gave me nothing - I did however get MY 50% of the marital assets

I can't get annoyed about this. I think uk divorce laws are crazy.

And my next door neighbour keeps bleating on and on about how he "gave ". His ex £250k. He gave her nothing!!! Half the assets were hers anyway

Why are U.K. Divorce laws crazy?

The whole 50% (or more) thing, regardless of how much you brought to a marriage. A SAHM married to a rich man doesn't necessarily work any harder than a SAHM of a poor man, but ends up so much better off. I don't think it's like that in other countries. However, I'm the higher earner in my marriage and so probably biased, I know that's far from the most mumsnet consensus!

Random "most" in there...

Apachepony she can only take what's there no one can magic up money so the poor mans wife can have the same as the rich mans wife. It's also likely that the rich SAHM also worked and possibly in the same area as her husband so it's not like she married lucky.

apache the SAHM wife of a rich man is a massive enabler to him being rich! Why should he get to benefit more from her giving up her own career to support him, than a poor man?

I do think that assets pre marriage should be safeguarded though.

Not sure how it could be done.

It's just the nature of marriage though. You go into a partnership and that includes everything being marital assets. I don't think the "enables his earning" is a very helpful or accurate argument.

I'm a much higher earner than DH. Honestly I don't buy that he enables me to be a high earner. He doesn't do anything differently than if I earned £20k or £50k rather than what I do earn. In fact he does less as I can afford things that help us both out.

I consider all our money to be joint and if we divorce he'll get half. I'm ok with this or I wouldn't have married. I still think the suggestion that being, what, a particularly brilliant SAHP means the household earns more is bollocks.