Financial split during divorce and consent order

Good morning

This is a follow on from a post a few months ago.

My husband is divorcing me after I left our very controlling marriage having been together 19 years and married 9, we lived together for the full 19 years.

My husband is 44, I am 39.
We have two children, 8 and 10 years old.
The children were seeing their father every other weekend for 1 night. For the last 4 months they haven't stayed with him at all but I envisage them staying again in the same pattern as before in the future.

My husband has been earning around £85K-£90K per year for the last 2 years. He is now apparently starting a new job next week for £60k (as his previous contract ended).

I earn around £22k per year and also look after our children.

Currently the children and I live in the house that we own jointly. My husband pays half of the mortgage until I buy him out. My husband rents a house.

My husband has £47K of debt in his sole name, most of which was taken out behind my back and I had no knowledge of, I paid half of his debt off after we got married and he promised never to run up debts again. I have approx. £2.5K of debt in my sole name.

My husband has land abroad worth approx. £25K - £30K.
He has pensions worth £37K.
He says he has no money saved despite his huge earning over the last two years, and he also had a £22K redundancy that I didn't know about either until recently, apparently that is gone as well.

There is approx. £220K equity in the house.

When we were together we contributed 50% each to the house mortgage and bills and he used to pay for most of the children's activities. I paid for everything that he refused to contribute to including children's holidays, football, the children's clothes, the family car, diesel to run the children around and all of my own expenses. There was no sharing pot of our income.

My husbands original proposal was that I keep the house and release him from the mortgage, he pays no spousal maintenance, the bare minimum of child maintenance, he keeps his pensions and land and has a Clean Break from me. He has been pressurising me to get a mortgage so I could release him from the mortgage. I have finally managed to get one and am in the last phases with the underwriters currently.

I wasn't comfortable with giving him no money from the equity in the house so offered him £20K. He has now told me that £20K is not enough and he wants me to also pay half of his debt off, his argument is that the debt was for student loans and I have benefitted from his studies, his last diploma cost £16000 and he finished it the month before we split up. His new offer is that I pay £38K to him.

He was suppose to be applying for a Consent Order that would be finalised before the Divorce Decree absolut (which can be applied for in 2 weeks) and before the house transfer is completed.

I have paid thousands in legal advice so far and been told different things regarding how to split the finances by every solicitor. In the end it apparently comes down to need.

I arrived at the £20K figure by taking the profit and splitting it 70%, 30% (which apparently is relatively standard given his earning potential and the fact that the children live with me) and then I deducted his land and a portion of his pensions.

My husband called me yesterday and told me that his solicitor has advised him that the judge will throw out the consent order at 20K to him and would also throw out 38K so I need to be offering much more. He is now saying the land is not in his name so cannot be counted, he is saying that his pensions do not count at all as they are not cash now and he is still saying I am liable for half of his debt. He is also saying that his earning potential makes no difference to how much he should get.

I honestly do not know where to go from here. Is it likely that £20K would not be accepted by the judge on the consent order or indeed £38K either?

From my last conversation on this forum when I was asking for advice about whether to accept the whole house or not (as I felt guilty) I was advised to accept it as part of the financial split package. I didn't realise that a judge may not agree, (if this is even true) Can anyone shed any light please? My husband is refusing to put what he told me his solicitor said in writing so I only have his word on everything.

I am worrying now that I will lose this mortgage offer (which has been really difficult to get) if we don't get this sorted soon.

Thanks.

Always take anything that starts with "my solicitor says...." with a large pinch of salt.

It won't be in your favour, will probably be an edited version of what was really said and bear in mind a solicitor bases their advise on the information they are given.

Pensions do count. If the land was in his name but no longer is the courts will need to know why and can treat it as still being in his name. You need full financial disclosure before you can negotiate.

Thank you for your help.

My husband refuses to give me any financial documents of his, he threatens me with court all the time and says he will provide documents to court but not to me.

I have already provided proof of my earnings and and expense list but he has provided me with nothing. I cannot afford to go to court, and neither do I want to. I am at the point now where I don’t care if he is hiding anything, I just want this settled. If I can keep the house, then the children and I have somewhere to live and this is the most important thing to me.

Do you have any experience as to whether the amount proposed would be approved by a Judge at all please?

Thank you.

The court will require full financial disclosure in order to decide if it is fair and whether to approve it or not.

If he isn't forthcoming with the information he will be ordered to supply it?

There is no need to feel threatened by court. One of you needs to make an application in order for it not be resolved.

WYSPECIAL wrote: The court will require full financial disclosure in order to decide if it is fair and whether to approve it or not.

If he isn't forthcoming with the information he will be ordered to supply it?

There is no need to feel threatened by court. One of you needs to make an application in order for it not be resolved.

Thanks for your reply.

By full Financial disclosure do you mean that he will need to write down all of his finances or provide evidence of them?

Thanks.

You'll both have to complete, and exchange, form E. Have a look and you'll see what is needed as evidence.