Am I getting a good deal???

Hi, husband is desperate for a divorce and has advised that I can have the car (worth about £2000), and all the equity in the house providing all our debts (and the cost of the divorce) is taken out of it, which equates to about £170000 net. We have two children, 8 years and 2 years, who will reside with me. No mention of pension - he is assuming I will not make a claim against his pension and I wouldn't have a clue what it was worth. The main sticking point I can see is with maintenance. He takes home a minimum of £2200 per month (often more with overtime) and will only agree to give me £300 per month which makes it difficult to get by as I only take home £800 per month working part time (and will still need to obtain a 35-40k mortgage to house me and the kids). He is telling me that he thinks he will be made redundant so I can't expect him to agree to pay £400 per month! Don't know if its better to take the 100% equity and minimal maintenance or to go for all out war in obtaining spousal and child maintenance whilst letting him keep (probably) 30% of the equity in the property, but I fear that if I go down the latter route he will just pack his job in so he doesn't have to pay... Any suggestions??? Thanks.

I appreciate that you have a lot to think about, but please do not ignore the pension. It may be worth a great deal more than you think. Please excuse the advertising but there is a free calculator (with no catches) on our web site that will give you some starting numbers www.bradshawdixonmoore.com/calculator.html.

If your husband works in the public sector then the pension is probably worth even more than the simple calculation will suggest – if he works in the uniformed services (police, fire & rescue etc), its value will be even greater. Please just make sure that you know the rough value of the important assets before you go too far down the line.

Peter.

In the first place, there is the child support for your two children. The Court will not have any jurisdiction over this, so he has to pay 20% of his net salary. Whether he has to pay spousal maintenance on top of this, is a bit borderline. He is left with £1800 p.m. and you with £1200 per month - a 60/40% division of your incomes. This is well within the range of the possible, in my view - especially if you get a high share of the assets. It is quite likely that he might have to pay nominal spousal maintenance - ie an order of £1 a year which is not paid but can be varied if you fall on hard times.

You say your husband could be made redundant. Does his pension become payable as and when that happens ? This is an important point and you need to know the answer. Any maintenance order is very likely to have to be reduced if the payer becomes redundant. The fact is that wives do trade off long term security against their immediate need for a house.

Have you considered mediation as a way forward ?

Mike 100468