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Assets vs Reality - What happens
- Thread starter MagicJ
- Start date
Very early on in my separation I tried to explain to my ex-wife that I was happy to go with whatever the financial split was as long as it was fair and 'doable'.
I made a very fair offer of £300,000 literally days after having caught her cheating on me (6 month affair with eldest childs football coach) that would allow her to buy a house mortgage free and get her and the kids set-up. The offer equated to fractionally over 50% of our total liquid and non-liquid assets plus I remain liable for all outstanding taxes (~£50,000) that were due and debts (~£8,000) that we had at the time.
In person she seemed to understand this and was quite reasonable, however once solicitors got involved she changed her tune and wanted everything she was entitled to and more irrelevant of consequence to me.
She was suddenly adamant I was hiding money. Apparently her solicitor said if thats my first offer then I must be doing something shady, when in fact my thought process was try to minimise legal fees and stress, just offer what she's entitled to straight away and get her out of my life. Her solicitor hired forensic accountants to investigate me and my companies, when they found nothing untoward (as I wasn't hiding anything) her response to this was that I've hidden it so well not even they can find it!
Anyway, long story short, she spent about £35,000 in additional unnecessary legal fees to get an extra £8,000 out of me so she walked away with £308,000 minus roughly £42,000 in legal bills that she had to pay out of her share, whereas if she'd just gone with the original offer legals would have been much less.
My point being, even when she was in the wrong for the affair she fought tooth and nail to get more than she was entitled to, she didn't care about what the impact on me was or my ability to move on with my life, she just wanted everything.
The best thing you can do, I think, is lay it all out in a spreadsheet or something, don't try and hide anything, make a fair offer and look to get it over with as quickly as possible so you can move on.
I made a very fair offer of £300,000 literally days after having caught her cheating on me (6 month affair with eldest childs football coach) that would allow her to buy a house mortgage free and get her and the kids set-up. The offer equated to fractionally over 50% of our total liquid and non-liquid assets plus I remain liable for all outstanding taxes (~£50,000) that were due and debts (~£8,000) that we had at the time.
In person she seemed to understand this and was quite reasonable, however once solicitors got involved she changed her tune and wanted everything she was entitled to and more irrelevant of consequence to me.
She was suddenly adamant I was hiding money. Apparently her solicitor said if thats my first offer then I must be doing something shady, when in fact my thought process was try to minimise legal fees and stress, just offer what she's entitled to straight away and get her out of my life. Her solicitor hired forensic accountants to investigate me and my companies, when they found nothing untoward (as I wasn't hiding anything) her response to this was that I've hidden it so well not even they can find it!
Anyway, long story short, she spent about £35,000 in additional unnecessary legal fees to get an extra £8,000 out of me so she walked away with £308,000 minus roughly £42,000 in legal bills that she had to pay out of her share, whereas if she'd just gone with the original offer legals would have been much less.
My point being, even when she was in the wrong for the affair she fought tooth and nail to get more than she was entitled to, she didn't care about what the impact on me was or my ability to move on with my life, she just wanted everything.
The best thing you can do, I think, is lay it all out in a spreadsheet or something, don't try and hide anything, make a fair offer and look to get it over with as quickly as possible so you can move on.
I am no expert on this, but can you explain exactly why the assets are illiquid? Are they something like shares that can't be sold due to some legal precedent, or shares that are not actually worth money, just some kind of ownership exercise?
was your offer Without Prejudice subject to costs? did she have to pay for all the reports.
Apparently her solicitor said if thats my first offer then I must be doing something shady,
Surely if you went in with a lower offer then it increases with negotiation then that would red flag been shady surely , but you went in on the basis of what the starting point is 50/50, this is what I’m expecting when her solicitor gets involved but there is hope I could be proved wrong
Surely if you went in with a lower offer then it increases with negotiation then that would red flag been shady surely , but you went in on the basis of what the starting point is 50/50, this is what I’m expecting when her solicitor gets involved but there is hope I could be proved wrong
I think making a low initial offer is what they’re used to people doing and so took a view that I must be doing it too!
From the beginning we agreed we’d each pay our own costs. Yea she had to pay for those reports!