will it affect my financial settlement

Bikemad, everyone seems to be obsessed with gender this morning, but I would have answered your question something like this.
1. In the form E which you submit to the Court, there is a question 4.6. which asks if you have remarried or cohabited or intend to do so. If you have any specific plans to cohabit or re-marry they should be disclosed. A general statement that you might marry at some time in the future would not affect the financial settlement, but as I said, if you have a specific intention to re-marry or cohabit you must disclose it. Not to do so runs the risk ( from your point of view ) that your x2b could apply to have the order varied to take account of the new realities, and you might be ordered to pay the costs.
2. There is no obligation to wait until finances have been settled before applying for a Decree Absolute - many people do. Whether that is sensible is, of course, another issue.
LMM

thanks for all your replies, i.m guessing spousal maintenance is more if stbx isnt earning much or has had a lot of time as say a housewife,can she apply for SM? she has always worked and has a really good pension, she is earning about 36k per yr, her take home pay is £2350 a mth,mine is £2500 a mth but im paying 500 maint for the kids which is slightly more than the CSA would charge, i''m also paying half the mortgage until it is all sorted out , thats another £300. i''m pretty sure she wont want to go to court and would prefer to sort it out ourselves,i havent filled in any form E, she has £3k a mth income with my contribution, my concern was if for example with the equity in the house being 140k, would i be awarded a smaller percentage just because i was living with someone as opposed to being single, my new relationship could fail in a few yrs and be left out of pocket from the equity in the house