What's a fair divorce settlement when there's no children?

RobM99

"Good to now mid forties is still considered young though."
I'm 64 so they're mere spring chickens! 

sweetsand

swingaloo said:

sweetsand said:

Hi
10 years as equals in my eyes as it's a partnership for better and worse, richer or poorer. You are both young and as another said, forget the pension but if you are luck many people stay married for about 40 years untill most dies etc.  Therefore 10 yrs is 25% of that - give her 25% of your net wealth but not inc the pension and up to 5 to 10% as good will unless the OH cheated on you. If you cheated on the OH, give her 50% not inc the pension, I hope this helps.

What a strange way to look at it, that's a rather odd reply.  By the way how do you know they are both young? 

By doing what others have done IE read and usderstood the post before jumping in to respond in order to help the OP

swingaloo

sweetsand said:

swingaloo said:

sweetsand said:

Hi
10 years as equals in my eyes as it's a partnership for better and worse, richer or poorer. You are both young and as another said, forget the pension but if you are luck many people stay married for about 40 years untill most dies etc.  Therefore 10 yrs is 25% of that - give her 25% of your net wealth but not inc the pension and up to 5 to 10% as good will unless the OH cheated on you. If you cheated on the OH, give her 50% not inc the pension, I hope this helps.

What a strange way to look at it, that's a rather odd reply.  By the way how do you know they are both young? 

By doing what others have done IE read and usderstood the post before jumping in to respond in order to help the OP

Ok, so I missed the age in the opening post, my mistake. I still don't understand how you can decide a fair split by using the number of years you can expect to stay married as a percentage.

borkid

silvercar said:

I would say that 'fair' would be based on what each person contributed to the marriage, which as far as finance is concerned would be based on their respective incomes. 

It is very hard to judge. Maybe the couple made the decision that one would work a less demanding job to support the other and/or keep the home running smoothly or offer support to the main income earner in other ways.

If the marriage hadn't taken place, maybe the lower earner would be in a very different financial situation now and the settlement should reflect that.

Exactly you need to consider any decisions made. At the start of our married life I gave up the opportunity to do a PhD as my husband was studying for his accountancy exams. He was older than me and had already started the training when I started work. later he wanted children but didn't want them to be latchkey kids ( he was and hated it) so I gave up work. I then had to retrain for a new career and only worked part time so I could be home for the children. If we had decided to divorce and only taken out what I had put in moneywise I would have been at a disadvantage due to the career decisions we had made together. I'm not complaining about the choices we made but IF we had split I would have expected 50% of the assets including his pension and he could have had 50% of mine.

I know in the OPs case there are no children but maybe other decisions would have been made. If the lower paid worker did all the housework etc surely some allowance should be made for that.

Mickey666

silvercar said:

I would say that 'fair' would be based on what each person contributed to the marriage, which as far as finance is concerned would be based on their respective incomes. 

It is very hard to judge. Maybe the couple made the decision that one would work a less demanding job to support the other and/or keep the home running smoothly or offer support to the main income earner in other ways.

If the marriage hadn't taken place, maybe the lower earner would be in a very different financial situation now and the settlement should reflect that.

That's a fair point, but a consequence of such a decision is that the 'home maker' wouldn't have had to support themselves for the 10 years in question . . . is that also not worth anything?   

I'm not convinced by the second point though.  is it really fair (which is what we're trying to determine) to base anything on a 'maybe'?  After all, that opens the door to almost any scenario - 'maybe' the higher earner would have earned even more if they hadn't been held back by the other?

Perhaps a simple 50:50 split would be the fairest outcome - ie consider the couple as a single 'unit' and whatever assets they have accumulated since the marriage would have been a result of that single 'unit' regardless of how they decided to manage it.

Savvy_Sue

One thing to remember is that life's not fair. Fighting for 'fairness' in an unfair world may mean a worse outcome for one party than they'd have got if they hadn't insisted on 'fair' and 'their rights'. May mean a worse outcome for both parties. 

I don't mean that either party should roll over and just accept whatever the other asks for, but I do think that there's some value in recognising that there's no perfect divorce settlement in this imperfect world, and concentrating on the best you're going to get without a huge and costly legal battle.