Where do I stand??

Crossed posts. If he earns £30k your husband won''t have the ability to pay much in the way of maintenance. The other thing is to check you are claiming all the state help you are entitled to, in particular tax credits.

you don''t say what is to happen to the house? if its likely you will have to sell and split it then i would speak to your mortgage provider if you have a capital repayment and request that you temporarily pay on an'' interest only'' basis, this will significantly reduce the payments and no point making payments to reduce the capital as he would benefit from the payments you are making now on sale of the property. secondly if your adult child is not officially resident you qualify for a 25% reduction in council tax if you are the only adult living there. if it''s to be his permanent home then you won''t qualify and also because of his age he is not considered financially dependent and in theory could get a job and contribute to the household. there are a number of good benefit calculators on line which will inform you if you are entitled to any tax credits etc.. try ''turn2us'' or just google benefit calculator . if you are entitled to tax credits make a phone claim asap (patience required here, but they are pretty efficient once you get through) and also you may get a back date from the date of your separation up to 6 months. you may be able to do the same with the kitchen loan, but be careful you don''t do anything without consent as you don''t want to ruin your credit rating. any joint debts are likely to be deducted on division of assets so no point trying to pay anything like that off. unfortunately you may need a solicitor if you can''t agree the split but in the meantime do some fact finding on what you can expect/propose as a fair settlement '' knowledge is power''. so keep your chin up and keep focused on closure as you may think he''s a t**t now but it could be worse if he''s a smug ''t**t if you lose the plot. onwards and upwards