I would welcome advice. My solicitor keeps pushing me to state what my forseeable needs are so she can design a strategy but I am having trouble as am still blindsided by the fact that my stbx left me for my friend at Christmas time leaving me so broke thatI had to sell my wedding ring to feed the animals and I. He is 42 and I am 52. We have been married 12 years, together 14
I don''t work at the moment tho am looking for a job. When we married I was a director of a ftse 100 and earned £80k and he was on £29k
Fast forward all these years later and a combination of my Dad having dementia and a car accident that yook me off the workforce for three years means he is now the highflier. Before he left he pretended he wanted us to ecomonise so we could save for a holiday and I managed to cut the monthly budget almost in half. He then rented a house with what I had saved, moved out and spousal maintenance was set to the amount I had got the budget down to which left me with £100 a month for food, no car or oil for heating.
I am divorcing him.
He has offered 50/50 on the house and 20 per cent of his pension- we turned this down at the FDR, the second court appearance is on 28th Sept. I desperately do not want to go back as he is so abusive verbally and I have been under the care of the local mental health team for attempted suicide at Christmas so my lawyer is trying to broker a deal but she says I am driving her mad because I won''t foresee my needs. I just don''t know how to.
We have 6 cats and 6 chickens. There is a £195k mortgage on the house which has £200k equity in it. STBX currently pays me £900 a month out of which I pay the mortgage, utilities and feed us all, We live very rurally so I have bought a real old banger of a car but am continually having to make up the deficit from my accident compensayion fund which his lawyer said to mine should only be used for mutual gain as it was part of the marital plot. Yet every month I have had to use at least £600 of it to meet basic needs such as petrol, fuel,dentists, and clothes for interview as I have lost three stone through stress.
Although he claimed to be broke when he left we since discovered he had had a £16k bonus in his account. It rally hurts to know he drove away leaving us to manage- or not but there it is.....
My lawyer is proposing we see if he will settle for my having 70 per cent equity of the house, keeping my accident compnesation whichis now £32k and putting the house on the market with him paying me £1200 a month to do all the admin, oversee the renovations etc etc as he now lives miles and miles away and just wants ''out'' (we are at the Nisi stage. The
CETV of his pension has been put at £300k and he earns £70k plus two bonusses a year.
Is this a good deal?
I paid for the entire wedding, the move here, all the stamp duty and the honeymoon plus I also put in £35k deposit on the mortgage. He put in the same but of course did not pay for anything else. I sold my stokcs and shares and took voluntary redundancy so we could live here as otherwise I would have been driving a 200 mile round trip each day.
The other offer she is proposing is that the house go on the market and if it doesn''t sell in 18 months that we sell to one of the ''homes for cash '' companies and go 60.40 on the equity with a bigger share of his pension and him paying me £912 a month to manage on (!) which is less than a third of his take home salary and means I still have to do all the admin etc and try and get a job which fits round that.
I don''t know if either if these are ''good'' offers or whether anyone would exoect my lawyer to push for more for me? STBX and I do not talk- I would but he won''t and although I want it all finished -without a job I owuldn''t be able to get a tiny mortgage let alone takeon the one here which is what I''d like to do.
Can anyone give me some advice?
Thanks you
Kits