Moral Support Needed On My Mortgage-Free Journey

Moneyfordreams

Best wishes on your journey. I would be tempted not to OP as wouldn't it give him more money when the equity is shared? I'd keep it in an offset account to pay when you are sole mortgagee. I'm glad you realised you had done your sums wrong. I do understand your anger and frustrations. I think I took years to forgive my husband of his financial failings got the cost of a divorce but kept the husband.

Hettyhound

If it helps, when my marriage ended how we calculated what I had to pay him out was:
Worked out what we had paid off the original price (£7k deposit and £14k mortgage)
Worked out how much each of us had paid so I paid the £7k deposit and half mortgage payments, him only half mortgage. So I’d paid £14, he paid £7 = I paid 2/3, he paid 1/3
We got the house valued by an independent surveyor, not estate agent as they inflate prices for potential sales getting you to put up for sale with them etc.
Deducted the original purchase price of the house from the new valuation to discover the paper profit.
Divided this profit by three, he got 1 x times this and I got 2 x time this.

It really got to me when I had to remortgage to pay him £35k but I was the one smiling when I sold up and moved 8 years later and got £120k equity towards my new property

cat04

Well a bit has happened since my last entry. Even after the relief of me realising his share of the equity would be quite a bit less than I first thought my anxiety kicked in big time and I got myself into a bit of a state about it all, the future, will I be able to support my girls etc etc. I overthink A LOT so I was running through various far fetched situations in my head. Not helpful. I've not been very well either which has made everyting worse.

DD1's bday was on Monday, so the ex came round to see her. We have called 31/10/2019 as his end date and he is no longer paying towards the mortgage.We had a chat about it all once the girls were in bed and a big part of me wants to trust him and believe everything that he's saying, but because he betrayed my trust so badly I'm taking it all with a pinch of salt - what he says may be true but I need to protect myself and my girls. He's saying that he will use his share as a deposit for a house, and that ultimately it will be left to my girls. I told him I'd be crazy to believe that, or even if I did it doesn't mean it would ever happen. I'm not sure if he's trying to use that to make me give him more than he may be entitled to.

I do sound terribly mean, but a very large portion of the equity is mine/protected as mine. He wouldn't be getting any equity if it weren't for me because we would probably still be renting, or would only have had a house for a few years with a bigger and longer term mortgage as I provided the deposit for this house, and if I didn't have that then, I would have used my inheritance as a smaller deposit on a smaller house with a bigger price tag then we paid for this nearly 11 years ago. But I'm pretty sure that's irrelivant when it comes to working these things out.

One thing he has said is that as long as neither of us are d*cks and tries to screw the other one over we can sort out the equity between us without having to involve solicitors etc. We both agreed the money would be better in our pockets than a solicitor's. We'll see how it all pans out though.

On the equity front I have the house deposit of £X amount written into a deed of trust, so that part is automatically mine. As previously mentioned there are some other items, such as my inheritance that we have agreed I can add to my share before we half the rest. Now, the deposit was taken from the divorce settlement I got from my first husband - half of the family house (mortgage free) and a decent amount from pension adjustment. Lets call this amount £Y. Y is just over £24k more than X. The total amount was awarded to me to be able to provide a home and secure future for our children. It was spent on furniture and appliances etc for this house and the rest got eaten up by his over spending and a couple of caravan holidays to the coast. Obviously I will go have a free half an hour or whatever it is you get these days with a solicitor to ask this and get proper legal advice, but does anyone have any idea on what the chances are of me being able to use amount Y instead of amount X when it comes to working out my share?? It would make quite a reasonable difference - the difference between being able to pay him his share in one go in cash with a little help from my parents, or not being able to pay it in one go and having to go down a different route to get him the money. Part of that all depends on the valuation of the house too. Or an amount somewhere in between. Oh I don't know.

Also, thank you MoneyforDreams and Hetty, I do appreciate your comments. I wish I'd thought about putting the OPs in a separate account until he was off the mortgage but iI carried on as normal and t's done now, although he has agreed to add what I've paid since he left onto my share.

cat04

The sun is shining here today after all that awful rain yesterday. I think at some point when I'm ready I ought to go and talk to someone. Reading back through my posts I can very clearly see that yesterday was not a good day inside my head. I hate having to ask for help, I always have done,and will struggle on with whatever it is on my own for as long as I can rather than admit I could do with some support.

I think the weight of the overwhelming responsility I have for my girls - for both now and in the future, as well as keeping a house running, work, other committments (I'm the chair of the school association for the primary school DD2 left this summer and we have our Christmas fair in 3 weeks), then having to think about divorce and equity, whilst dealing with a rollercoaster of emotions is just too much for me right now. I feel like it's all down to me. Their dad pays CM but we've had years of trouble of visits, lies, him chosing his GF over the kids etc etc, so he doesn't really see them as due to GF's behaviour and other issues they don't want to stay at his house - a couple of hours drive away - so he gave up seeing them. It's now been 15 months since they last saw him and they prefer it that way. His narsacism has meant he's a dad in name only. Sorry kids. Their step dad has nowhere to take them to stay at, plus he's always busy at weekends with gigs and GF so apart from a few nights a year at my parent's I have sole responsibility for them. I love it that way, they prefer being here with me, it just means I'm on mum duty 24/7. When it's written down like that it sounds like I think that's a problem, it's really not, but it means I don't get any time to just shut myself away and take a break from the thoughts rushing around my head. And I appreciate others have been doing the exact same thing on their own for much longer. I've done it for a few days short of a year and it's hard, and my girls are older too!

I know this isn't the place for all this, I'm suppposed to be here to work at getting mortgage free, but it does help a little to be able to get a few things off my chest without having to burden my friends or family

So MFW stuff: I paid that £15 off the mortgage yesterday, so it now stands at a lovely round £46,600. 10 years 1 month left on the term. Once it drops to single digit years I'll feel happier about it! My OP pot still stands at £60. It may well stay like that for a while as although I am still going to over pay by the interest each month (will have to see how December and/or January goes with Christmas expenditure etc), I think I need to concentrate on building up my savings again. I'm hoping to do a bit of both as although my mortgage isn't as big as some of the ones I've seen on here it is still a huge millstone around my neck.

Maybe what I could do is build up both savings and OP pots as much as possible, then pay a lump sum off the mortgage at the end of the fixed rate period, which means if anything happens before then I can use it if necessary. Kinda like an emergency emergency fund lol.

I've got the slow cooker on with a beef casserole in it, so only have veg to prepare later. Much better then me realising at 5pm that I haven't defrosted chicken, or got anything else suitable to make for a decent tea as I haven't been proper food shopping...

cat04

I've also just tallied up my OPs so far this year.
OPs from regular rounding up of DD = £448.91
Other OPs = £829.19
Total OPs so far 2019 = £1,278.10

Not bad going all things considered!

twinklie

You are doing amazing cat, you are very hard on yourself. I think it's just hard work all this grown up stuff, mortgage, debt, kids etc, without factoring the other stuff life throws at you.

I'd suggest talking to someone might help order your thoughts and give you permission to be a little gentler on yourself. My DH went for counselling at one stage following a near breakdown and he says to this day that he couldn't have got through everything without that person helping him order this thoughts.

There wasn't anything as significant as the events you've been through happening for him at the time, but the pressures of juggling everything he had taken on was just too much. There really is no shame in it. And I think admitting it on here is a massive step in the right direction, it means you acknowledged it and accept you are struggling.

In all honesty, I've a lot going on at the moment and feel like I'm struggling a bit as well. But I know my situation is a short term one, but if I feel like I'm not coping and/or things aren't being resolved by the new year I think I'll book myself in to speak with someone.

cat04

twinklie wrote: »

You are doing amazing cat, you are very hard on yourself. I think it's just hard work all this grown up stuff, mortgage, debt, kids etc, without factoring the other stuff life throws at you.

I'd suggest talking to someone might help order your thoughts and give you permission to be a little gentler on yourself. My DH went for counselling at one stage following a near breakdown and he says to this day that he couldn't have got through everything without that person helping him order this thoughts.

There wasn't anything as significant as the events you've been through happening for him at the time, but the pressures of juggling everything he had taken on was just too much. There really is no shame in it. And I think admitting it on here is a massive step in the right direction, it means you acknowledged it and accept you are struggling.

In all honesty, I've a lot going on at the moment and feel like I'm struggling a bit as well. But I know my situation is a short term one, but if I feel like I'm not coping and/or things aren't being resolved by the new year I think I'll book myself in to speak with someone.

I think you're right Twinklie, I am hard on myself. Once I start anything at all, I will try and carry it through to the bitter end on my own and assume all responsibility for it. Prime example is my first marriage - I'd taken on the commitment of marriage and after the first year or two realised I was not happy as his true self emerged but I stuck with it despote my unhappiness until DD2 was born (as in the exact day she was born was when I fully realised I shouldn't be with him for a minute longer!). I kept at it because I thought that's what I needed to/should do!

I went from living at home under my parent's guidance, to marriage at 18 and living under my husband's rule, then back to my parent's for 6 months then started renting with my ex before we bought this house. I have never had to take on full responsibility for all the adult things in life in terms of sharing the responsibility for running a home and family, there has always been someone else to do it with.

DD1's friend came round last night and when her mum, my best friend, came to pick her up we we ended up talking for a couple of hours. Some of it was about the house and ex etc, but some was about what's troubling her right now and other general chit chat. I know the sun shining is helping but this morning I feel a whole lot better. And I think that's down to talking to my friend! Out of everything that I could possibly miss with having my ex husband gone it's the evening chats. Not necessarily with him in particular, but the act of talking to someone, saying how your day went, having someone to share a little worry with. As much as I love the peaceful evenings and quiet it can be quite lonely and the thoughts stay bottled up in my head.

Thank you for sharing with me, I will probably leave it until after Christmas, but I will look in to finding a local counsellor for the new year. At least I know I won't be talking about how to deal with still loving him - that's long gone! Which has very much shocked me, part of me feels that I should still be pining away for him as I loved him so much and was certainly intending on spending the rest of my life with him! Now when I look at him or think of him there's nothing. Very strange feeling. Just got to deal with the anger and how his actions made me feel about myself.

I hope your struggles don't last long :heart2:

cat04

Anyone else have a Halifax mortgage and had a letter about them introducing a yearly check to make sure your mortgage payments are on target? The only bit relevent to me is the bit saying my monthly payment may change if I've made overpayments - which I have done. For me this will happen in January 2020 when I get my annual mortgage statement.

It does sound like my payments may go down. Normally I might have been a bit peeved and would have made additional OPs anyway so I was still paying the same as usual each month. Given my current situation it might actually work in my favour in terms of affordability on my own when remortgaging if my actual commitment is less than it currently is.

No other news really, plugging away at a few surveys etc. We've got the heating on and I've reduced the temp on each setting my 0.5 dregrees C, plus I've had 2 friends sign up through my Bulb link so I have an extra £100 now credited to my account which will help pay for my gas usage over the winter. Also applied for the Warm Home Discount for the first time so fingers crossed I get that as that will help a lot too.