The family home, children and divorce

My daughter is on the verge of divorce. He is verbally and emotionally abusive and the atmosphere terrible. The children are 10 and 8 and it used to be that when you had children the spouse given custody would also get the house until the children were out of full time education. Is this still the case? The house is on the market but as she is paying the mortgage and all the expenses she feels she could keep the house and have him taken off the mortgage and we could help out by paying a large chunk of the balance off. She would not be given such a big mortgage on her own as she is self employed. He walked out of their business late last year and has done nothing since except a few days casual work for a pal but has still contributed nothing.

She could just move out as the situation must affect the children but she can''t afford rent and mortgage and there is equity in the house. Not sure how long a divorce takes and she has been told she cannot get rid of him as it is her word against his regarding threats etc.

Will the court look at the fact she has two young children and that she is the sole breadwinner paying the mortgage anyway and allow her to stay until they are out of full time education. Is it not that clear cut???

Any help and advice gratefully received as we know nothing about divorce and this process has only just started!

M

It depends on the figures but deferred orders for sale do still happen. They''re not well liked because they just put the problem off to another day but sometimes they''re the only realistic option.

maggie, i am sorry to hear of the situation, especially regarding the verbal and emotional abuse. My partner experienced this with her ex who was quite frankly evil. He physically assulted my partner and subjected her to real abuse whilst portraying the role of a perfect husband and father.
with regards to the house, i agree with jonathancj that deferred orders do take place and will be based on the circumstances of the situation. Whether it will apply in your situation is difficult to know and my advice would be to try and reach an agreement without a deferred order if at all possible.
My reasoning for this is that whilst a deferred order offers some protection now, you are always waiting for the day to come to finally break free. I am not saying you cant move on without it and i am not saying that a deferred order may not be the best thing but i have witnessed true freedom by someone who was in an abusive and emotionally manipulative and draining marriage and it benefitted them greatly.
By contrast, i have to wait for my share of equity and whilst i am very relaxed about it, the day cannot come quick enough!
Sorry that i cannot offer a legal view as i find that it is very difficult to call what a court or judge will rule and my experience differs to many others.
It sounds like you need some legal advice on this one and in the first instance i would get advice on how to stop the verbal and emotional attacks.

Thanks for your reply. It doesn''t really matter regarding deferring the sale as we are in a position to help her financially. We are in the process of trying to sell our house in order to buy 2 and she can rent from us in case she has to sell. However, if she can stay in the house where the children are happy and have friends around them, so much the better and we could pay some of the mortgage. However, I think it might complicate matters with the building society as the mortgage is way over what they would be allowed to borrow as it is a self-certification one and some fiddling went on! That was him again wanting something he couldn''t really afford.

I can imagine that my daughter will be paying him maintenance as he refuses to look for work as he says he cannot work for anybody else (he is so hard to get on with you see!). If he carries on doing nothing and living off her I expect some judge will award him payments to keep him going! His attitude is that he has kept her for a few years so she can keep him. It wasn''t that many years as she ended up helping in the business when the youngest child was 3.

Is it illegal to record verbal abuse without telling the person what you are doing? He has also threatened her and told her that if she called the police she would need 24 hour protection. Nice eh?

M