Spill the beans ... how did you financially survive divorce?

Candice-Marie

Caz2703 - not aimed at you (or any other post) at all!

adamantine

i have no contact at all with my ex. he refuses to discuss anything and thinks we can divorce without solicitors when he wont even give me back my birth certificate and marriage certificate which we need to provide to fie for divorce!!

im on legal aid coz i havent been able to find a job but its hard especially in the beginning when my ex wiped the bank accounts and left me and his kids homeless and penniless but now i probably have more money than him coz i skrimp and save as much as i can so the kids can have a decent life while he blows it on fast cars he cannot drive!

golddustmedia

DO:
Sort as much as you can and put it in writing BEFORE you go to a solicitor. Why pay someone £100 an hour to write down or ask another solicitor what you're going to do about the car/furniture etc.

Take a realistic and pragmatic approach to the value of objects and whether they're really important or not. Yes that sofa may have cost £1000 from DFS 3 years ago but it's 2nd hand value is closer to £100. Don't get into a solicitor letter writing arguament over it, the letters will cost you more than replacing the sofa. Sometimes it's better to simply say "ok, you can keep the sofa" then follow up with "but I'd like to keep the spare bed/tv etc". It's about give AND take when dividing up but remember arguing over 1 item will cost you more than just replacing it.

Keep on top of the solicitor bills!!! I'm very glad I paid mine as I went along. Yes some months they were £500+ but when the decree absolute arrived and all was done I had nothing left to pay. My ex had hers on credit and got a large bill at the end which pretty much wiped out any lump sum she gained.

Be realistic about your housing needs. Right after separating it's tempting to say you need your own place and rush out to rent somewhere, for which you're committing yourself to a long term financial obligation. If you can stay with parents/siblings or maybe just rent a room from a friend etc while things settle down.

Be ready for a long wait. It's gonna take 6 months plus, maybe years. Mine was all agreed on paper before we went to a solicitor, then it still took over 2 years as my ex kept changing her mind about what to do with the house (stay/sell/rent etc).


DON'T:
Rush into a new relationship. Ok maybe this one differs for guys and girls, but I think it's safe to say that many guys immediately rush off to find someone younger to reassure themselves they're not a single divorcee. This is dangerous territory. It's a rebound thing and you're not thinking straight. OK, maybe go on dates and enjoy yourself but keep a tight hold on reality. Eating out and staying in hotels with new partners is expensive and you've got bigger problems to deal with!

Don't, absolutely don't in anyway involve children in your arguments or use them as leverage. I was shocked to be given the ultimatum that if I didn't give in on some demands from my ex that she wouldn't let me see my daughter that weekend. Your kids are entitled to see you and you them, they're not pawns to be used for bargaining.

adamantine

golddustmedia wrote: »

Don't, absolutely don't in anyway involve children in your arguments or use them as leverage. I was shocked to be given the ultimatum that if I didn't give in on some demands from my ex that she wouldn't let me see my daughter that weekend. Your kids are entitled to see you and you them, they're not pawns to be used for bargaining.

cannot agree with this more!!

my ex still says he wants me to suffer (leaving him coz he was having another affair warrents revenge apparently :rotfl:) which is why he wiped the bank account and left me with £150 to raise 2 children with for a month. the only people that suffer are the kids. my ex even took my CB and CTC before it had been sorted out and sent to my new account.

Roknrolluk

After 23 years of marriage the last 5 of which we had lived seperate lives, living in the same house (not recommended) so that we could see the children through their higher education/Uni, the agreement was that we would arrange an amicable divorce as both of us wanted to save money on solicitors fees. I offered her various financial schemes but she eventually went to a solicitor so I had to as well. The solicitors costs were deducted from the final settlement so neither of us paid more than the other.

Problem was that I had a hefty pension pot from my job which I wanted to retain so had to settle for selling our very large house and giving her 95% of the proceeds once the £60k mortgage was paid off. She also took most of the furniture, etc. As I was having to purchase another property with little cash, I managed to retain the endownment as she didn't need it and didn't want to be saddled with the payments.

Although both of our children were both still living at home they were at work so no problems there or maintenance, etc.

After the Decree Absolute, she outrightly purchased a 4 bed house in a nice area, my daughter lived with her, my son with me in a new 2 bed apartment for which I had a £100k interest only mortgage, and transferred endownment. But thankfully I was still working.

Worked for another couple of years and managed to get a redundancy. Luckily, as I was over 50, I took my reduced defined benefits pension and a lump sum, which together with the surrendered endownment, paid off my mortgage.

I did work part time for a while but have now fully retired, live on my pension and will soon be in receipt of the State pension.

We both have other (non live-in) partners now and things have worked out for the best, although it was probably the worst time of my life. I still find it hard to talk to my ex though and really only do so for the benefit of my children.

Throughout it all I was able to maintain a good relationship with both of my children, which was my main concern.

Where did I go wrong? I was too easy going, paying for everything during the seperation/divorce. Although my wife was working she contributed nothing into the home. My solicitor advised me to stop paying for the upkeep of my wife, household costs, etc. But I could only see that upsetting everything, affecting the children and prolonging the divorce.

RAS

adamantine wrote: »

i have no contact at all with my ex. he refuses to discuss anything and thinks we can divorce without solicitors when he wont even give me back my birth certificate and marriage certificate which we need to provide to file for divorce!!

You do not need the original documents. You can apply for replacements for the central registry but this is expensive.

If you ring the Registry Office(s) that cover the places where you were born and married, they can confirm the price they charge for a replacement. Our local one charges £9.00 for a replacement from an archived register. This is a lot cheaper to get then via the registrar general's office.

GreenSue

I told my solicitor that I couldn't afford to go to court, and after a bit of a struggle, as my ex husband was difficult, I paid him his half of the house, so that I and our two children could stay in it, taking out a second mortgage to do so. My only regret is that I applied to the court on my own for maintenance for the two boys, which was paid for only a few months before it stopped. I could have saved myself the stress of that as I already knew he didn't want to pay anything for his sons. I worked full time as a midwife, and managed to pay all my bills. I explained to my children that we would have to have cheap holidays, and on days out we always had picnics. Because I couldn't buy my children much, I gave them the most valuable thing a parent can give, my time. We enjoyed country walks, birdwatching, picnics by the river. On winter evenings we played board games. My sons have grown up happy and secure, I now have a lovely husband, and no contact with the father of my sons.

Estimator1

My advice would be to do your best to manage financially and keep your full time job. As the children get older, the childcare costs will become less. If you take a protracted career break, you might find it very difficult to return to the level of work that you obviously have worked hard to achieve. It's the old "short term pain for long term gain".

When I first went back to work, the childcare costs were astronomical and I really struggled. However, now I am quite comfortable.
There was a report today in the news that the government might be making childcare fees tax deductable, so that might help. Many employers are now quite flexible regarding childcare (early starts & finishes, flexi-time, etc) - All part of the "work-life-balace" thing. Do you have any friends/colleagues who might be able to share childcare? Maybe one does the school/nursery drop off, and the other picks them up at the end of the day? Or maybe swap a Saturday for a Monday with the friend for full-time care of all of the children?

In five or ten years time you might really regret giving up your career, when your kids have their own interests, and you're working part time at the Co-Op!!

........Just my thoughts, feel free to ignore them!

Good Luck!:)

pitry

I am still in 30k+ in debt and we weren't even married......
We are still friends and text each other occasionally, I kept the house and bought him out as at that time I was earning a lot more.
We both have new relationships but I have to say I sometimes feel a little bitter. I spent 8 years supporting him through IT course etc and now he's reaping the benefits.

I wish him the best though, we made our choices and have to live with them!

lyndorset

I am a female, who divorced my ex because he was going AWOL for whole weekends, sometimes when I was supposed to be working and causing me problems because he was not around for our daughter. I put up with alot, the final straw was when I came into find him beating her up, she was 8. Social Service would not help. I had to temporarily move out of my house into a holiday caravan whilst he was given notice to quit by a solicitor. He had also had a electricity meter fitted without my knowledge as he had spent the money I gave him to pay the bill and it was to pay arrears as well as current uses, the first I knew was a few days after he had gone when all the electricity went off. I had also been giving him the cash to go and pay the council tax bill and he hadnt paid it etc etc. You get the drift. The house was mine bought before him and in my sole name. During the divorce proceedings, I had constant harrasment, break ins, brake hoses cut on car and so on. In my divorce I had to pay all the outstanding bills and pay him £5,000. This got worse, as soon as I thought it was finalised, I put the house on the market because of the harrasment and also as the quickest way to pay off all the debts he had left me with. Turns out my solicitor had been off sick for a few days and it was not final, ex found out, divorce changed and I ended up having to pay him a further £15,000. He snatched my daughter, I was given full legal aid. then when the house was sold becuase I did not have anoher house to buy straight away, the legal aid took the lot, so I lost in a way the original £48,000 I had put into the house as a deposit plus the £20,000 to ex plus a further £22,000 that was left after debts all settled paid to legal aid because I was not in a financial position to buy another property immediately. Part of the problem is, I did not know how much I had to come. I could have bought a park home of small flat somewher to keep the money. I am now in a housing association house and the rent is higher per week than my mortgage was per month. Yes I am bitter, simply because I know I was morally right, but lost everything. Oh and I went for a clean break as everyone expected me to continue to be the higher earner. What was not checked was he owned a villa in spain I knew nothing about (hence the long weekends missing) and I could do nothing about it.