After 10 years together my wife and I have been separated for 6 months. I have strong suspicions she was having an affair prior to the split but there is no longer any evidence of this. She moved out and is now living in a rented cottage just a mile away from our matrimonial home where I am still living and I dont want to sell (close to school and nursery). We have two young children of school age. I am hoping for a 50-50 custody but she has not yet agreed to this. We are both working as freelancers in our own professions. It's tricky to turn down work as I need the money to pay the debts but this challenges my ability to see the kids as much. I have the mortgage in my name as my ex had a bad credit rating. I am still paying that and have taken responsubility for 2 credit cards she took out in my name and only she spent on to nearly £10k. I can secure a second mortgage on the house as I can't afford to pay both the old mortgage and the credit card debt. I have asked her how much she wants from the property and she has asked for around £60k. If I pay her this amount I still wont be able to pay the mortgage and the credit cards. Can I get her to aceept a lot less? The bank assessed equity is £120,000. She claims to have borrowed £9k off her parents which I can't prove. I have borrowed small amount from my parents.
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50-50 v financial settlement
- Thread starter Jake
- Start date
@Roblox - does this thread need moving to another section?
@Jake - So the credit card debt is marital debt, you don't need legal advice for that, it would be treated as a joint debt to the court. Same as the family home regardless of it being solely in your name. She has a right to half of it. You don't need legal advice to tell you that either.
What's your incomes? Working as freelancers, do you earn similar?
You should ideally look to get the children arrangements sorted firstly. Main reason being is if you agree/secure 50/50 care, your needs will be exactly the same as your ex's needs. If she gets majority care, then her argument maybe her housing needs are greater than yours and therefore she needs more equity than you.
As for your question, can you get her to accept a lot less than £60k (50%), that's purely down to her. If you take any formal route, unless she earns more than you, you're going to struggle to get more than 50% of that equity.
@Jake - So the credit card debt is marital debt, you don't need legal advice for that, it would be treated as a joint debt to the court. Same as the family home regardless of it being solely in your name. She has a right to half of it. You don't need legal advice to tell you that either.
What's your incomes? Working as freelancers, do you earn similar?
You should ideally look to get the children arrangements sorted firstly. Main reason being is if you agree/secure 50/50 care, your needs will be exactly the same as your ex's needs. If she gets majority care, then her argument maybe her housing needs are greater than yours and therefore she needs more equity than you.
As for your question, can you get her to accept a lot less than £60k (50%), that's purely down to her. If you take any formal route, unless she earns more than you, you're going to struggle to get more than 50% of that equity.
Is the house jointly owned? If your adamant you dont want to move then put a matrimonial home rights which prevents the house been sold whilst the divorce is underway,assuming your married,be mindful that order expires once the divorce final order is agreed and signed
Hi. I agree that it's important to get the child arrangements formalised first. Otherwise the children can end up being used as weapons or leverage in a nasty financial divorce agreement. The most common way is that the soon to be ex (stbx) stops them seeing you unless you give in to her financial demands. Unfortunately, Mothers get away with doing that and it could take many months through the courts to get it resolved meaning a long time without seeing your children.
Now obviously the whole lot needs sorting out, but it helps if you have the child arrangements formalised. If you can agree on arrangements then these can be put into a Child Arrangements order, by consent, with no need to go to court - you just both need a solicitor - yours to draw up the order wording, hers to approve it, then the solicitors send it to court for sealing. It should just be a one off fee to a solicitor for a couple of appointments. Providing you and your ex are agreed on everything.
If you're worried about not being able to do 50/50 - you can still have "shared care"/lives with both parents (ie neither of you is the "resident" parent and the children have two legal homes). With less than half the time. The difference then would be that you would need to pay Child Maintenance to your ex if she has them more of the time.
I'm sure you are still reeling a bit with it all. Separation is the pits - most people can't afford to get divorced. Are you sure there's no chance of a reconciliation? Have you tried couples counselling?
I think you need to be careful, because some cases get quite nasty. It might be that you're remaining in the marital home but if your stbx applied for an occupation order, the court could order that she moves back in and you move out. Maybe she's not likely to do this, but you want to avoid things turning nasty if possible.
How are you managing child arrangements at the moment?
As regards 50/50 - it's tricky if you freelance as although it sounds flexible, you can't afford to turn down work presumably. However, you can still share the care of the children 50/50 because you don't have to do absolutely everything yourself when it's your care time - you can use breakfast clubs and after school clubs at school, you can delegate a trusted person (maybe a grandparent) to do collections and drop offs from school or to leave the children with if you have to work one day at the week-end. Do you have family nearby?
I would suggest you try and agree everything is 50/50 - child arrangements, house equity etc. As Jumper says, the credit card debt is a joint debt so half of that should be deducted from her half share of the house equity.
When it comes to the actual divorce and finances - and again I'm no expert on this - but it's supposed to be cheaper to do it via mediation rather than using solicitors. With mediation for divorce they can do a consent order. Which is not the same as a consent order for Child Arrangements - that's a separate thing.
Presumably you're talking about remortgaging the house to keep it so you can buy her out? If you do that you could remortgage on interest only so the mortgage payments are less. It means you're not actually paying it off but that might work for now and you can decide what to do in the future - either when you can start paying some off or decide to sell and downsize yourself.
Try to keep things as amicable as possible if you can - once solicitors get involved with divorce, it can turn nasty - solicitors make things adversarial and charge a fortune.
So I believe the simple way would be - if you can agree everything:
Use a mediator for a consent order for financials.
Use a solicitor, as a one off job, to draw up a consent order for Child Arrangements.
Re Child Arrangements - NOTHING is binding except a Child Arrangements order - it doesn't matter what you agree - if your ex changes her mind overnight, there is nothing you can do - except go to court - unless you have a Child Arrangements order to legalise who the children live with and how much with each parent. What commonly happens is the ex suddenly starts dictating that they live with her and you can only see them when she decides, and on her terms. That is not a good position and it can be very expensive going through family court to get a child arrangements order.
How old are your children? Also is Jake your real name? If so I can change it - we ask people to use an anonymous username.
Re the credit card debt. If the only sticking point to agreeing everything is that she wants 50% of the equity and no credit card debt, then it could be worth agreeing to that and then clear the credit card debt when you remortgage. Rather than spend a fortune on solicitors fees.
Now obviously the whole lot needs sorting out, but it helps if you have the child arrangements formalised. If you can agree on arrangements then these can be put into a Child Arrangements order, by consent, with no need to go to court - you just both need a solicitor - yours to draw up the order wording, hers to approve it, then the solicitors send it to court for sealing. It should just be a one off fee to a solicitor for a couple of appointments. Providing you and your ex are agreed on everything.
If you're worried about not being able to do 50/50 - you can still have "shared care"/lives with both parents (ie neither of you is the "resident" parent and the children have two legal homes). With less than half the time. The difference then would be that you would need to pay Child Maintenance to your ex if she has them more of the time.
I'm sure you are still reeling a bit with it all. Separation is the pits - most people can't afford to get divorced. Are you sure there's no chance of a reconciliation? Have you tried couples counselling?
I think you need to be careful, because some cases get quite nasty. It might be that you're remaining in the marital home but if your stbx applied for an occupation order, the court could order that she moves back in and you move out. Maybe she's not likely to do this, but you want to avoid things turning nasty if possible.
How are you managing child arrangements at the moment?
As regards 50/50 - it's tricky if you freelance as although it sounds flexible, you can't afford to turn down work presumably. However, you can still share the care of the children 50/50 because you don't have to do absolutely everything yourself when it's your care time - you can use breakfast clubs and after school clubs at school, you can delegate a trusted person (maybe a grandparent) to do collections and drop offs from school or to leave the children with if you have to work one day at the week-end. Do you have family nearby?
I would suggest you try and agree everything is 50/50 - child arrangements, house equity etc. As Jumper says, the credit card debt is a joint debt so half of that should be deducted from her half share of the house equity.
When it comes to the actual divorce and finances - and again I'm no expert on this - but it's supposed to be cheaper to do it via mediation rather than using solicitors. With mediation for divorce they can do a consent order. Which is not the same as a consent order for Child Arrangements - that's a separate thing.
Presumably you're talking about remortgaging the house to keep it so you can buy her out? If you do that you could remortgage on interest only so the mortgage payments are less. It means you're not actually paying it off but that might work for now and you can decide what to do in the future - either when you can start paying some off or decide to sell and downsize yourself.
Try to keep things as amicable as possible if you can - once solicitors get involved with divorce, it can turn nasty - solicitors make things adversarial and charge a fortune.
So I believe the simple way would be - if you can agree everything:
Use a mediator for a consent order for financials.
Use a solicitor, as a one off job, to draw up a consent order for Child Arrangements.
Re Child Arrangements - NOTHING is binding except a Child Arrangements order - it doesn't matter what you agree - if your ex changes her mind overnight, there is nothing you can do - except go to court - unless you have a Child Arrangements order to legalise who the children live with and how much with each parent. What commonly happens is the ex suddenly starts dictating that they live with her and you can only see them when she decides, and on her terms. That is not a good position and it can be very expensive going through family court to get a child arrangements order.
How old are your children? Also is Jake your real name? If so I can change it - we ask people to use an anonymous username.
Re the credit card debt. If the only sticking point to agreeing everything is that she wants 50% of the equity and no credit card debt, then it could be worth agreeing to that and then clear the credit card debt when you remortgage. Rather than spend a fortune on solicitors fees.