Will I have to pay maintenance to my Husband?

I would welcome your advice. I've just discovered that my (husband)H has been having an affair for 12 months & is planning to leave me for another. For the past 15 years (we have been married for 26)I have been the main breadwinner. H has worked part-time in finance whilst I have been a full-time teacher. The reason for his part-time career has been because he has been trying to establish himself as a writer. I was happy to support this endeavour. Now I discover that he's been having an affair & from what I read it seems as if his reward for adultery is to have a claim on me for either/or maintenance & a share of my pension. Due to his part-time work his pension is currently about a third of mine. We do not have any children & our only asset is our house.

I would love to hear other people's experiences.
ARC

It is to people like yourself that I have every sympathy where the law stands on financial matters during divorce

When deciding on a financial split, the law does not take into account adultery or unreasonable behavior excepting it is so bad as to not account for it.

If you have not already done so, then confront your H about the affair and what his intentions are regarding a financial split

If he is a reasonable person then he will take into account his actions and agree to a 'fair' division of assets.

You can each come to a 'fair' decision and submit that to a court by way of a Consent Order and once ratified it is unlikely that your H can come back for more.

Before this can happen one of you needs to petition for divorce, you can petition on grounds of adultery or unreasonable behavior, at present his only option is unreasonable behavior.

If you petition on 'adultery' you do not need to name the other person as long as your H agrees to it, if he won't agree then petition on UB, it is not too difficult to find some things that you cannot live with any longer and especially in such a long marriage

If you are hell bent on adultery and your H won’t agree to it, then it can be very difficult to establish, fact is that the law says that 'adultery' is penetrative sex between a man and a woman, so you can see how difficult it is to prove

I honestly find the law an ass in situations like this, you have supported your H for a very long time and he has betrayed that, and yes his punishment for that could mean a 50/50 split of assets

Try and get him on your side and under the circumstances be as amicable as possible, it will be difficult but you have nothing to lose by it.

Come back if you need more help, this is a very good site for people to understand what is happening to them during a very difficult time, there will be many people on here in the same situation as yourself and they will be in a position to offer support and guidance.

Sorry just realised I didn't actually answer your headline question "Will I have to pay maintenance to my Husband?"

The answer to that is 'probably' but the courts like to see a 'Clean Break' in situations where there are no children involved.

If your H persues what is known as periodical payments then a judge is more likely to offset some of the assets in H's favour to compensate for this.

I would suggest you use the calculator on this site as a test of what the financial outcome could be, it is not black and white, but it will give a good indication of the likely court outsome.

As it is a 'long mariage' when inputting figures always use assets as jointly owned and liabilities as jointly liable, it doen't matter in whose name they are the law dictates that assets and liabilities in a long marriage are equal.

I think you will be in for a 'shock' when you see the end result, therefore do not disclose it to H

I would strongly fight any claim for maintenance against me from ex. Why should you continue to support his aspirations to become a writer for one minute longer.

Tell him to go out and get a full time job to support himself. There's absolutely no reason why he shouldn't. And if he hasn't made it as a writer after 15 years I think he should give up!