First Post

Hello. A very brief into into my story so far.

My husband and myself have basically lived like house mates for the past few years. He seems to think that this is acceptable but I can no longer tolerate it. I have tried everything to make things work but it is all one sided. I have now hit 40 and realised I need to do something about my life while I am still young enough. I am nothing more than a housekeeper to my husband, we don't go on holidays, have no social life and no romance. It is a scary time for me as I earn half of what he does and am very scared of what the future holds. We have no children together, my son lives with us but is grown up with a job. So far things are very amicable but nothing can move on until we sell our house which is not yet for sale as we are doing some renovations! We have a huge mortgage and I would guess our equity to be about 100 - 150k between us although the credit crunch is worrying me a lot. He thinks that a 50/50 split is fair but I don't - simply because he can afford to pay a much higher mortage than me. I always said I would rather live in a caravan and be happy - looks like it may acutally happen! Anyway, that's the basics - I hope to find lots of useful tips on here as the story progresses. Thanks.

Hi,

I am in a similar position to you where my wife just wanted to live together but with no contact of any sort!
After 6 month's of a living hell she finally agreed to move out although she is always back at the house seeing our 3 kids which I find difficult to deal with but I guess is fair.
We went to our first mediation session last week to sort out a proper Seperation, may I suggest you do the same?
It will help to clarify things for you both but the main point of my reply to you is that I know exactly what you are going through and it hurts like hell and is a feeling that nobody will understand, good days, bad days ect.
Try and keep strong, remember who you are, be proud of who you are and very slowly you will be able to crawl out of all of this, i'm not out of it yet but when you start to see your ex in their true light you will begin to realise that life can be better without him/her.
Best of luck Zedzed, I will be thinking about you.
Shep x:unsure:

try the Divorce Calculator on the site.

It will give you some idea of what to expect as a settlement.

Other thing to do is to get a free half hour of legal advice.

Good luck

If there's no kids involved do not see why you think 50/50 equity isn't fair.
You will have the opportunity to earn.
As I was told by housing at the council you use your divorce settlement to pay rent.

It is always best to try and agrea terms but if this is not possable and the court decides they are giuded by the matrimonial causes act.

If you earn half what your husband earns then yes 50-50 may not be fair to you the court also consider future earnings potential, your husband may also have a lager pension than you another consideration.

Your respective ages;

The number of children you have and their ages;

How many nights the children spend with each parent;

The length of your marriage and any period of pre marriage cohabitation;

Your respective incomes;

Your respective outgoings;

Your assets - both soley held and joint;

Your liabilities.

if you give these details we can give you an idea of what the split may be.

hawaythelads wrote:

If there's no kids involved do not see why you think 50/50 equity isn't fair.
You will have the opportunity to earn.
As I was told by housing at the council you use your divorce settlement to pay rent.

I do think 50/50 is absolutely fair if it provides you both with what you need for another home. In our circumstances we both work full time but he is in an industry where he earns twice as much as me. If i borrow the maximum mortgage on my salary to buy the smallest house I can find I will still need more than 50% of our equity to achieve this and will need to get a weekend or evening job to make ends meet. My husband can take out a mortgage for more but can also easily afford to pay it. I didn't realise I could be entitled to more than 50% but I went to see a solicitor and she told me that I would be entitled to more but NOT more than I needed for modest accommodation for myself. She said 60/40 was quite common. There are always circumstances in a relationship which people don't know about and I have made many sacrifices in the last 12 years in order to help my husband achieve the salary he is at now - he is well aware of this and at the moment I think he would be quite happy to repay me for this. We are lucky, we are still friends at the moment.

Hey zedzed,
don't worry you are not alone, there's lots of us here just like you, you gotta decide what you would want and make sure it's realistic and achievable, I appreciate you want more but in your mind set 50/50 as the worst case (you can make plans and dreams (maybe nightmares) on that)and then just ask and ask for the world and barter until you are comfortable, note comfortable not happy. I do hope ultimately you can achieve your goal but you may have to accept life is not going to be quite the same ever again.
If you push too hard you may become househates instead of housemates until it's sorted. Be lucky.