Please help me

Hi All,

I found this great website and was looking for some help. My wife of nearly a year a few weeks back told me she thinks she doesnt love me anymore. It looks as though we will be splitting up and eventhough I am in pain over all this I know I need to sort out the financial situation.

Both of us are on the mortgage but I pay it by myself. I also pay all bills, all our meals out, most of her clothes, in fact I pay for everything bar a few misc items like ironing water and maybe toilet rolls ... sorry to be flipant but dont want this post to be too depressing.

We both have cars, full time jobs, I get paid very well and have a pension.

No kids as she recently went back on the pill without telling me.

Ok so now I am going through this split I am desperately worried that for all I have earned and worked for some of it will end up in her hands for doing pretty much nothing in return. I know I signed a contract but if we settle out of court could I just pay her off? She pays £500 a month towards a £1117.00 mortgage and total bills including mortgage comes to over £2500 a month (my own car payment is in that however).

We also have outstanding credit card debt of which she agreed was her debt also but does not contribute to paying off.

We have equity in the house to the region of £40,000 and re-mortgage is in November. I am going to take her off the mortgage deed and have it soley under my name. That is if we have not split before. If we do I will have to keep as is.

Can you give me an idea of how much worse I am likely to feel shortly please. I am doing all I can to try and stay together with practical measure and improvements in how we live together but she seems dissinterested.

Please help

Dave,

You say you have been married just over 1 year and that you have no kids. Also you both have full time jobs.

I am going to focus purely on the financial aspect, not on the relationship side and whether or not you should save your marriage or divorce.

Because of the short marriage, no kids and both working. The likely outcome of divorce at this stage is that you will both be put back into the position you were in before you married.

So what was yours before you married - you keep.

Any increase in value of assets (e.g. house price gains) over the last 12 months is something she could potentially claim a 50% share of.

Be aware that if you have a kid then things change significantly and you will be liable for child maintenance til kid is 19 - so think seriously about having a kid if you are not completely sure about long term commitment to the marriage.

The debts are likely to be viewed as joint if tehy were incurred in the last 12 months (whoever by) unless they were incurred on extremely excessive spending - e.g. gambling or similar.

Who has paid what during marriage doesn't matter at all really.

What matters is that you both have jobs and so she can support herself without ongoing maintenance payments from you.

If your job is much higher paying than yours and marriage was longer (say 3,4,5 or more years) then
you can start to be liable for spousal maintenance -i.e. ongoing payments to her to make up for difference in earnings.

So summary is in short term - if you divorce soon you should come out OK financially. If you stay married, have a kid or two, and divorce in 5 years time then you will lose a big percentage of your assets and/or be liable for ongoing child maintenace / spousal maintenance payments.

DO YOU HAVE SEPERATE BANK ACCOUNTS? IF SO YOU WILL BE ABLE TO PROVE THAT YOU PAID ALL THE BILLS AND THE MORTGAGE THIS WILL HELP YOU WHEN IT COMES TO WHO GETS WHAT, AND WILL SHOW THAT YOU DID INFACT PUT MORE INTO THE FINANCIAL SIDE OF THINGS.
GOOD LUCK

Yes we have seperate bank accounts. I am at a loss as to what to offer her as a out of court settlement. I would not even know where to start? Should I offer her anything at all considering I have paid the majority of all bills etc.

Thank you so much for replying as it has afforded me great relief in obtaining this much information. I was so worried I would lose everything as you hear stories that once your married half of everything you have is theirs.

If we did agree to settle out of court what is the general procedure, how long would it take? Again should I offer something to settle?

Your all so kind in helping me, such support is priceless at this time as its painful enough!

Life goes on I guess.

I had a written agreement with my x through the solicitors signed sealed and delivered by both parties, this unfortunatly does not uphold if the other goes for more in court, It workeed well for a little bit until the x decided that I was the better off financially so please look into out of court settlements deeply before you go ahead.

I had a written agreement with my x through the solicitors signed sealed and delivered by both parties, this unfortunatly does not uphold if the other goes for more in court, It workeed well for a little bit until the x decided that I was the better off financially so please look into out of court settlements deeply before you go ahead.Sorry about the posts dont know what happened. As the law is straight forward in marraige they are entitled to 50% but it may be worth a visit to your sols since you can prove that all the bills came from your account you may have a good bargining tool for an out of court settlement<br /><br />Post edited by: mumof2, at: 2007/04/10 12:57

I know everyone goes to help about the financial aspects but I am in the same position as you and it is just all so cloudy and painful. My husband and i shared the finances but most of the time at the moment, i just don't care about money. Emotions get in the way and confuse eveything. I know busying yourself with practicalities helps but I personally am just giving myself time for clouds to clear before I make any financial decisions. You need to deal with finances aside from emotions. until you can do that step back, make a decision about what you are going to do emotionally, eg, split or stay, deal with the pain that that brings then think about finances. Take care