Husband refusing to leave marital home - help

I think you are complicating things, Chained

As Mathsisfun has already explained, the division of assets is dependant on the financial circumstances and financial needs of the two parties, it''s not possible to make a statement that the OP is "entitled" to 2/3 of anything, based on the information she has given.

Thanks Mike
I shall answer the questions posed and shed a bit more light:

Well, let''s try and put the present situation to one side for the time being and let us look at the medium term, when the divorce is through, and you are no longer married.


The House is in negative equity. There is nothing to stop you, or him, living in a house with negative equity - if you can afford the repayments. But you have no job, so would you have the resources to live there, if you were given the right to do so by a Court, to the exclusion of your husband ?

I have a part time job in which i can increase my hours to fit around childcare. I would be able to cover the costs of living in the house.

Because if you can''t afford to live there, with the aid of such resources as you have or might acquire, which would include spousal/child maintenance, tax credits, etc etc. then the Court would not be likely to '' award '' you the house or the right to live there. In that case the answer would be for you to rent, when housing benefit can come into the picture.

Yes - but he is going for full custody so i would not attract the benefits - and besides - i want the children to live with me as he is not flexible with his work (police officer) and has to work 40hrs per week etc and could not do school runs without a childminder - something we have avoided by me giving up my career to look after the children to date.

Your husband could, in these circumstances, be '' awarded '' the house outright because in many respects it is a liability.
You cannot exclude your husband in normal circumstances because he is a joint owner, and only the Court can do that. However, I''d say that it is unlikely that there would be grounds on which the Court could exclude him.

This is the difficult part - he only wants every other weekend and 2 days in the week ....but at the same time wants to reside in the house - and therefore would have access to the children 100% of his time when he wants - with me picking up the responsibility of feeding, clothing, washing, conveying the children etc etc in normal every day life - whilst he comes and goes. He is also insisting on sleeping in the bedroom on a fortnightly on and off basis....

I think the chances are that you would end up as the primary carer. You would be entitled to child support, up to 20% of his net income, as a minimum. On top of this you could have benefits like income support, child benefit, tax credits, housing benefit and council tax benefit.

Yes - but only if he is forced down this route by a court as he is desperate to keep the house and benefit from everything being taken care of for him

Whether you would get spousal support depends on whether he could afford to pay you more than the child support alone. I''d say it was a strong possibility that you would get some order for SM, but I have no idea as to the figures.

He earns 40k+ pa i earn 6k at the moment so SM may well come my way but he is intransigent over the childcare, house, CSA etc etc . He says one thing in mediation and then totally changes his position when there is no impartial person present. He is using my son to say that the children want to stay with him - but this is only because my 10yr old son is a keen footballer (as he is) and both are desperate to continue the 4day a week and every day in weekend for football, at the expense of my daughters wellbeing - who has to basically accompany every football event. The kids are twins.

Does this sound like something which, in principle, you could live with ?
Does this offer a way forward which both of you can live with ?
Because if you can you may be able to settle the financials without breaking the back - for either of you.

It is not an option for me to live under the same roof as him. He has already admitted to me that he has stolen and pawned my wedding rings - and this is now a subject of a police investigation. He has now lied to them, telling them that he had my permission to sell them. I simply cannot expose myself to his devious and threatening ways any more.

He has also submitted a prohibitive steps order to the court to prevent me from exploring options for the children in better schools 15 miles away - and has tried to bribe me to drop the criminal complaint in exchange for agreeing to ''reconsider" the steps order.....but i simply have no trust in him and think he would renege on this anyway. In any case, i would not retract the criminal complaint. Theft is theft in my book.

Finally, he refuses to agree to a contact arrangement - despite may many attempts to get a reasonable resolution around access, even to me offering for him to be in the house every other weekend and 2 days a week, whilst i move out, and then he moves out for me to have the children every other alternate weekend and the other weekdays.

I have been away this week whilst he has had the children, and he has emailed me to say that he has moved back in permanently and if i don''t like it, its tough, and i can move out. I feel like i am in a no-win situation. Surely there has to be a way to terminate his control over my life and my circumstances without me sacrificing custody of my children?

Thanks again for taking the time to read and advise.

So, actually, she will have to go the legal way and let the court decide or find a solution with her husband.

Am I being more simple now? :-S

Chained wrote:

Sorry I pop in but I have a question for anyone that knows about that.

Isn''t she entitled to 2/3 of the house because she has the children?

Last thing you would want is automatic 2/3rds of a liability if you had the children.

House is in negative equity.

WYSPECIAL

What you say is a very scary thought as my partner was advised and actually signed off 2/3 of their house with negative equity to his ex, because his solicitor told him she would get it anyway if they went to court.

Right now he is sitting with a court order that orders him to sign the house off to her, she cannot do this because the mortgage company will not take his name out of the mortgage and because of that she has to get a solicitor to help her and she cannot afford one.

As we speak, she and the children do not even live in this house anymore as they all moved to another country.

Everyone thought this was a strange arrangement (with other details I won''t get into right now) but everything was advised by a solicitor.

Dear Halsdad, and experts out there please!

this is spooky, I was just logging on to ask the same question as you Halsdad, but also another one as to why ex might be doing this, and what the effect will be on hearings.

I have been trying to divorce a very controlling , verbally abusive husband for over a year now. He was working abroad for 3 years, but a year ago on his weekly returns to the house he took over a room in the house and locked it, and says no one is to enter it. He now says he will be living in the house all the time from October when he will be back working in the UK. We have a children''s hearing next year, and finances haven''t even got underway. He tells me I can move out, but that I can''t take our daughter as he will say I am kidnapping her! I feel sick when he is in the house, and threatened by him - the divorce process was triggered when I called the police to stop his threatening behaviour. He has toned down his behaviour, we don''t get the huge rages any more at least. I saw that your ex stole your rings - mine did the same, he told me he saw the box but can''t remember where he put it. I went to the police and they said because we were married at the time it is not theft - my wedding rings were marital property!

He says, he will now be in the house every day looking after our daughter (he has never done this before, I have always looked after her - everything a mum usually does and I worked part time to make sure I was there for our daughter outside of school hours, he however was not around, working abroad!).

I asked solicitors what I can do to ask him to leave and they said there is nothing I can do. I can''t afford rent as I don''t have enough income, and have no where to go. I am trapped, and could have another year of this hell. I contacted the benefits people and they said I earn too much to get housing benefit. I can''t afford a solicitor for the court hearings.
My ex has the full works, expensive city law firm and top barrister, who has been very aggressive to me at every hearing to date.

My question to the experts is: - I think my ex is living in the house so that he ends up with the house in the financial remedy process, and I think he wants to be there every day between october and the children''s hearing early next year to show that he is a good dad as he wants to have the greater share of joint residence.
He has never looked after our daughter on a day to day basis, he usually sees her at weekends (half of these) and even then leaves her with his mum or sister. My question is, in the experts opinion - will the court suddenly think he should get a greater share of the residence because of this? will it scupper what I am hoping for which is the typical set up of alternate weekends and a week night with dad ? The reason I want this is because there will be stability for our 10 year old daughter, I don''t want her to be a suitcase kid moving back and forth. She loves being with her dad, but he has never done daily life with her, he was only ever around for weekend outings and ice cream. I don''t believe deep down that he can even manage to look after her as he is a workaholic, it will probably end up being his mum or he will pay a child minder. What do the experts think?

thanks!
J

Judges and CAFCASS are not stupid (usually, at any rate). I don''t think that three months of being there every day will trump your having been your daughter''s main carer for the rest of her life. If he is still working full-time and you are part-time around school hours he''s not going to be doing all that much childcare anyway, even if he tries to do everything from when he gets home.

I do worry about your safety, though, and the emotional abuse of your daughter that may occur in this situation. I think you should at least consider moving out if you can - though I can see that this would be problematic financially. If you did he would not get anywhere by saying that you had kidnapped your daughter, though of course he might then try to not return her after contact.

It might be worth ringing Women''s Aid and asking their advice about this.

best wishes,
Sadie