Realised I'm financially vulnerable... now what?

[marshallgreen]

I met DP when I was in my early twenties and got pregnant whilst taking the pill. We kept the baby and when DC was born, I felt a huge urge to be at home with her,mothering her myself as opposed to working full time and putting her into nursery. Luckily I had a good enough job and went part-time. DP and I were planning to get married after the pregnancy so it seemed silly to give her my surname when we were marrying anyway.

After she was born I had PND and "changed." DP said we needed to postpone getting married and so we plodded on for 3 years, her with his surname, me working part-time so paying less pension contributions, BUT very very lucky to be at home with my daughter too.

3 years on and DP decided that he wanted us to marry, I was dubious at first, but things had improved greatly between us. We began looking at venues etc and planning when I became pregnant again. This time we had a son and I'm so glad he came into my life. No PND this time, but I've just loved being a mother to him too. I feel very lucky to have had 2 lovely children and been able to spend a lot of time with them.
The children are now 6 and 2.5 and DP and I have decided we are separating. We never did marry. I realised that DP is selfish and that my PND etc was not to blame for us not marrying but because he expects everything to work exactly as he wishes or not at all.
Both DCs have his surname (yes, yes I know) and I can't return to full time work just yet. However, I'm left quite vulnerable, my pension has hugely suffered and I won't be entitled to any of his because we're not married. He does care greatly for the children and their best interests so I am hoping I can appeal to his better nature and claim some of his pension to make up for the loss of mine.
I'm also wondering whether to double-barrel their surnames? Or will this upset and confuse DC1? I've been naive and made some silly choices at times, but I stand by my decision to lower my working hours to be at home with the DCs more. The financial impact of this decision could be huge... I'd just like some support/ guidance?

Hi
Just saw you who had had no responses and whilst I'm not the best person to give advice I thought I'd try!

I was in a similar boat but just with the one child. No mortgage, we weren't married and I was working part time.

So.. what my ex and I agreed was that

1. I would increase my hours
2. He would pay CMS (can't remember what it's called now)
3. a big one, half the childcare costs. This included, later when at school half the cost of wraparound care.

The last one was remarkably easy to pull off when I suggested that based on the maintenance was going to barely cover the cost of nursery I would have to go back to work full time, but it would be a 50/50 split and he'd have to work part time or pay for his share of the nursery.

I do feel for you, a lot to navigate but you can do it. I do think you are going to have to bite the bullet and become more independent.

Re surnames, I made sure my kid had mine. As I said to him we weren't married and I'd have never changed my surname to his anyway. Instead of a double barrelled name though how about just adding yours to the end? I've a friend who has done that. Her kids ex partners name is effectively her middle name..

HTH.. you might find more support in Relationships x

I double-barrelled my dcs names when they were 10 and 8 and 6 and 4. They loved the idea.

Dh and I were thinking about separating so I insisted my dcs would have same name as me.

We've worked things out from then so now we are all double-barrelled.

I have no idea how the pension thing works, but as you are amicably agreeing, would it do any good to have a quick token marriage of convenience before you split up, followed by a divorce of convenience?

Almost no unmarried men would give up financial assets like pension after a breakup, so wouldn’t hope for that.

It’s great that you continued to work, albeit PT. Why can’t you go FT? Important to do that asap to improve your circumstances.

A friend in a similar situation rented a place with a spare room and got au pairs, worked well for a few years.

Surnames, would change DCs’ names to yours!

Can you change their surname without dad’s permission though ?

No advice re financials, sorry. Regarding the DC names. I had changed my name on divorce back to family name, which left DD with a different name to mine. Probably only an issue to me as we'd never had different surnames. We changed her name (by deed poll, not strictly necessary but made it easier when places asked for it) to add my name to hers, double-barrelled. She was an older teenager at the time, and liked it. Under 16 I think I may have needed XH's permission, but that may have been different because we were married.

Any of this any use OP?