I found out my husband had been having 2 affairs last summer (at the same time, one just over a year and the other one had been ongoing for around 10 years). We agreed immediately to divorce. We had no savings and our only assets were the
matrimonial home and his private pension. We both had small worked based pensions but we agreed to take those out of the equation and each keep our own (there was only about £10k difference between them). In order for him to be able to leave the
marital home as soon as possible and buy his own home, we agreed that I would buy him out of our house and that he would then keep all of his private pension fund. (We preferred to do this rather than
pension sharing so we could finalise things as quickly as possible). We did that and completed this in November last year, with him being able to buy a house outright using the money I paid him, and also taking a drawdawn from his pension pot, as he was 55. I had taken a mortgage and a loan out to buy him out of the house. My house is worth about £200k more than his but once I deduct the loan and mortgage, that reduces it to £100K. He has around £77k still in his private pension and he owns his own business which is worth around £10K. His small workbased pension is worth around £10k and mine is around £20K. Our adult children still live at home with me (hence me wanting to keep the family home). He earns about £500 a month more than I do. There is no spousal or
child maintenance. He may be living with his new partner now or in the next few months (and I know that she has equity in another house through her own divorce settlement, so I'm not sure if she is planning on buying half of his house so they can put it in both names - but I'm not certain about that.). I have parents who are in their 70's who own their own home. A number of years ago, they put their house into a trust for me and my brother so that they could continue living there all of their lives, but it was protected from being used for care costs. Would he be able to take that into account, or is that protected? My parents are fit and healthy and I don't expect this to be an issue for many years to come. I myself suffered a mini stroke about 6 weeks ago, but I am ok and recovered. My concern is that he is continuing to spend money out of his private pension to renovate his house as quickly as possible - which is of course his right - but I'm concerned that in the future when he has spent everything he has, he may then try to come after my house. (We did everything through solicitors at the time - all of the transfer of equity and taking his name off the deeds.) We are now at the point of doing a
Consent Order - should this be fairly simple? And is it a consent order or a
Clean Break order that we need? Does this split look fair? I've spoken to 2 solicitors so far and been given different advice each time. Each solicitor has said that the split looks fair - although I should have gotten a transfer value of the private pension first as it would probably have been worth more. One solicitor has said that I look better off because I have more in capital than he has because my house is worth more even though he has a lot in his pension fund and I don't - but still says that he thinks the court will think it's a fair split. One solicitor said that any inheritance from my parents will be protected even without a financial order, because that will be happening in the future and after we are divorced. The other solicitor said that he could potentially have a claim on that, hence needing the consent order.
