Family home, ways to keep or not?

Situation:

Married 17 years, together 21 years
Two children, 12 and 14 - in principle agree 50/50, in reality they live with me
Live central London
530k’ish - equity in FMH jointly owned, mortgage outstanding of £170k (already allowed for in equity calc)
180k - equity in wife’s solely owned home in another country, owned before marriage, but some joint contributions throughout marriage (gaps when not rented out, major repairs etc)
£25k wife savings and investments
£80k husband pension
£300k husband stocks (company awarded as employee plan)
Husband, well paid, some 120k + variable bonus
Wife minimal income from part time music teaching, 12k - quit well paid IT role when second child maternity leave finished and decided to pursue music passion instead, but hs struggled to develop it as a viable income stream.

Currently, my wife has stayed in FMR. I rent a 3 bed property for 2,500 per month for the last 18 months. Pay all bills in both houses (gas, c/tax, mortgage, etc), pay wife monthly lump of £600, pay all child related costs (cloths, school lunches, trips, holidays, etc).... And children live with me c.90% of time, only going to their mothers when I must travel for work. Their default is they refuse to go.

Standard of living - we’ve never been too frivolous, we took a holiday once a year or so, we drive an old banger, most of money has simply gone on supporting a four person household in central London on a single income and overpaying our mortgage to build equity.

My understanding is that this will be a needs based financial separation, and income disparity will be biggest challenge for me. I would prefer a Clean Break and no spousal maintenance.

In some ways, I am not adverse to keeping the FMR and agreeing to something to enable stbx wife to stay in it - as selling it will see us take a hit on selling a “doer upper” cheap for someone else's benefit. Additionally, if we turned that to interest only mortgage, my ex would be able to benefit of having 3 bed house in central London for < £1000 pcm. However, my solicitor advises it makes more sense to sell assets and divide equity, as I would be left with penalties in terms of capital gains tax, stamp duty on my home purchase as second home etc…

We are about to go into mediation. We have exchanged form E disclosures etc. My ex is asking for 100% of the house and spousal maintenance and has “needs” of 8k per month, which, is, well, a bargaining position I guess.

My starting point is 50/50 of the assets, including her foreign home in the martial pot, and allowing for her to have say 70% share of the FMH to offset my pension and stocks… this would give her ideally enough to purchase a 3 bed apartment in current locale essentially mortgage free, see as she would not have borrowing capacity - I suppose that is the goal in the eyes of the law?

Am I way off ball here?

Your wife's position is absolute nonsense. She is asking for more spousal maintenance than you earn, all of the equity and when the children mostly live with you.

She needs a reality check. I would say a fair outcome is wife expected to work full time (as children are secondary school age); split of assets in her favour of around 70:30 of the WHOLE pot including her home overseas and a clean break.

I’d agree with the above but would also suggest you make some changes immediately.

Currently your ex lives for free in a London home with all bills paid and gets £600 per month pocket money so she doesn’t have to really work but can follow her passion instead. She isn’t going to be in a hurry to change that!

Stop paying the £600 and tell her to start job hunting.

Thank you for the responses, I have a couple of questions that require some extra context I suppose.

Firstly, re current financial support to her, it was a commitment I made to regain contact with my children, as I had filed for divorce and was asking for her to attend mediation, as part of this decoupling, I stopped my salary going into our joint account and redirected to my personal account, while still transferring money for bills and household running costs to joint account. She refused to co-operate and we were deadlocked. My solicitor said, “don’t move out of the FMH”, additionally, I did all the school runs, extracurricular activities, cooking, cleaning and WFH, it didn’t make sense to me for me to move out.

To break the deadlock, she filed a police report of financial coercive control, I was arrested and bailed with conditions to not return to the family home pending investigation.

She then withheld access to children until I agreed via my solicitor to
a) maintain "status quo" and
b) not seek to return to FMH when police investigation finished (she knew it was false and would be dropped which it was after about 8 weeks) and
c) pay her this £600 allowance

Obviously I'd agree anything to get contact back with my children and so committed to all this and moved into a rental property while the police investigation ran its course... Since then the children are with me full time and now 18 months later I have finally got her to agree to mediation.

Every time I discuss stopping any payments (I am currently spending > monthly income to support two households and have to keep selling my company stock to keep bills paid) my solicitor says the following: "Unfortunately, if you cut off financial support you will be at risk of x making an application to Court for interim maintenance."

So I have continued to hand out the cash... but yes, it means there is ZERO incentive for her to do anything, as she currently has mortgage, insurance, utility, c/tax, water, etc all paid + allowance + her own income - so is doing pretty well for herself.

What is the merit of this?


Second Question.... Why the suggested 70/30 split of WHOLE pot? This would see her walk with some 800k and me with 340k when I go tally up all the bits... okay, I earn well, but she would walk away with our FMH + her other home essentially, while I have the children full time and am holding down a full time job and would be rolled so far back financially... just curious to the rationale - what I am finding hard about mediation, is what is fair and reasonable to walk in as a starting negotiation? I know... how long is a piece of string...

I didn't realise how big the whole pot was. With that much, 50/50 would probably be enough.

It's incredible what women get away with in divorce. Absolutely disgusting that you have to pay her £600 a month considering that it is the result of her breaking the law.

I would try and dispense with mediation quickly and get to court if I were you. Have a session, demand 50/50 and clean break and if she disagrees get the mediator to sign you off and file Form A. She's a domestic abuser who makes false allegations so mediation is pointless but helps to have sign off to avoid a costs order.

It's high time the police got some training on female domestic abusers too and how they use institutions to perpetuate their abuse, instead of following nonsense about domestic abuse being a gendered crime.

If there is no court order in place that you have to pay £600 per month stop it now.

Contact your lender and ask for a payment holiday/interest only period to reduce your out goings on the mortgage while your divorce is sorted.

Unfortunately once you get to a pay to view situation with the kids it doesn’t matter what you pay, it’ll never be enough. Luckily your kids have voted with their feet and now spend most time with you.

There is no court order. I've simply been trying to be non-escalatory for the last 18 months and let things settle down, so I kept to the 600 agreement, and as all the bills are in my name I have been paying them as well, obviously I didn't want non-payment to hit my credit rating.

I'll contact the bank and see what I can do - I have been asking to switch to interest only for the last 18 months and a bit prior while we attempted to sort finances (and living arrangements prior), she has refused to engage, which is typical, we have been on a floating rate since 2015 as she has refused to agree to re-mortgage, which I have found so infuriating as has cost us SO much money in extra payments, especially the last couple of years. I didn't think I could flip to interest only without her agreeing also, we hold the mortgage jointly.

Re the police and complaints etc… to give them credit, the arresting officers were professional, the interviewing officers fair, and the investigating officers moved reasonably quickly given what I presume are high case loads and closed the complaint quickly once in receipt of clear evidence that there was no merit. It was surreal to be arrested in front of my children and removed from the home with nothing more than shorts and t shirt, although not unexpected as my solicitor had warned me that this was a likely next move once deadlocked on next steps and had been urging me to file a Non-Molestation and Occupation Order due to the issues in the house, but I couldn’t actually bring myself to push the nuclear button.

I also understand that statistically men are the majority of the perpetrators and the current systems and assumptions are in place to protect the too many women who are indeed being abused by abusive partners/ex partners. The police I think did the best they could in the situation. I just wish it had been faster, but I am not sure how you can protect against false complaints without investigating, which takes time.

She has now said she has no time for mediation until next year. I thinkI just need to stop being softly softly and push harder, else this will drag out forever.