selling the home before settlement

I am getting divorced after my husband left me and I''m still in the family home.
My husband and his solicitor are putting me under a lot of pressure to sell the home asap before settlement is agreed. My question is what happens if I agree? I was told the proceeds of the sale would be ''locked'' until a settlement so i wouldn''t have access to any of the money to use to buy anywhere. I haven''t anywhere I can go. Will I have made myself intentionally homeless as well?

You could say you will agree to the house being sold if you are paid an advance from the proceeds of the sale to enable you to rehouse. The advance can then be accounted for in the final settlement.

There won''t be that much money from the sale unfortunately. But perhaps it would pay for rent. The problem with renting is that it would mean I had even less money when the settlement was eventually released. Also there is only 26 weeks from when you get the money from the house to put it into a new place - otherwise it is regarded as capital - I would be worried the 26 weeks would start from when I got the initial advance.

I had the same problem with my STBX. He wanted the FMH sold prior to agreeing the settlement. I categorically told him I would not agree to a sale until we had agreed a settlement. Although I currently rent, my landlord had said he planned to sell the apartment I live in and hence I would have been homeless. Thus far landlord has not sold this apartment so it''s fine for the time being. I also didn''t think it made sense for the capital to be tied up in a solicitor''s escrow account while we waited on settlement. Hadn''t realised about the 26 week rule so that''s even more of a reason. No money, no FMH, it would have been a disaster so I refused to sell. Are you close to a settlement? In my case we are on our way to the FDA so I guess he''ll push for a sale there.

I refused to sell too until after financials were sorted, that ended up being at Final Hearing. I had home rights secured at Land Registry so there was little they could do without agreement, I think my solicitor used the words selling at the stage they wanted was premature!

I think most of this has been said, but Thornley raised the question of intentional homelessness.

Intentional homelessness has four elements :

1. A voluntary act or omission on the part of the applicant to give up accommodation.
2. The voluntary decision to give up accommodation was the direct cause of the homelessness
3. But for the voluntary decision to leave, the applicant could reasonably have expected to continue to reside in the accommodation (s)he gave up ; and
4. It would have been reasonable to expect the applicant to continue to occupy the accommodation.

There is quite a lot of case law on this, as you might expect, but in your case I''d say that you would be held intentionally homeless.

LMM

Thanks LMM. That is interesting but as we realise from many Wiki posts each case is different. I did leave the FMH but under considerable duress as STBX was making my life very difficult, causing arguements with the children etc. so I left in a bid to try and keep the peace and resolve matters between ourselves. It has not worked out as planned. Younger daughter''s health deteriorated and as I am self employed a lot of time out of work has had to be taken to help her recover. A month after leaving I attempted to return to the house and then the divorce petition was launched. Time, money etc. all taken up to deal with this not to mention my daughter''s health issues which are still bad. Now I''ve resolved not to go back to the FMH and we share the care of our daughter but clearly the place I live in is vastly different from the 5 bed FMH which is mostly now unoccupied. STBX at his girlfriends and older daughter at boyfriends. The person who''s really suffering here is younger daughter who I know could not cope if I had to leave the rented accomodation.