Separation with kids staying in one home

MalMonroe

I think I'd have to consult a solicitor. I went through a very acrimonious split (which yours doesn't seem to be at the moment) and my daughter, who was 9 at the time never really recovered from it. And that was with her staying in the family home with me until she went to uni at 18. Not all children adapt, sadly. 

I totally agree with what Sunny_Cyprus said, "I have my own awful experience of a naff break up and saw how that affects children."  Exactly what I thought.

If you both just could just sit down with a solicitor and have one of those free first session consultations, it may be helpful. But I do agree with most others here, home swapping thing won't work. After a break up you need your own space and time to heal. It's not something you can get over quickly or easily (speaking from my own experience) and having my ex coming and going when I wasn't there would not have worked for me. 

You are going to need to come to some arrangements about custody, finances, etc. and they're going to have to be properly recorded. If you're heading towards divorce then you'll need solicitors anyway, separate ones. After speaking with a solicitor you may both decide you want to sell the house and share the proceeds (it's the family home, doesn't matter that it's solely in your name, it won't be regarded as solely yours - whose daft idea was that though?!) so you can each buy another place. 

What do your children think? Perhaps the four of you could sit down with them and discuss the situation. They are old enough to have opinions. 

gussail

Sea_Shell said:

Here's a link to the relevant start of the "kids stay put" element.

The OP stopped posting in 2020, so we don't know how it unfolded for them.


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76705026/#Comment_76705026

Hello - thank you for your reply. I couldn't find the reference to the kids' staying put in that thread (434 pages!). Do you know approx. what page it talks about the similar situation?

gussail

Thank you all for your replies. Regarding the option to sell the house and then look for two smaller apartments where we can live separately, it could take months to do that and I am not sure what we do in the meantime.
My job requires a lot of travel during the week and the only way for it to work for the short term (I am thinking 6-12 months) is to have the arrangement I mentioned. 
Regarding practical challenges - we've thought about a few and have a few 'rules' agreed.
- None of us brings a new partner into the family home - ever. The new apartment is likely to be a two-bedroom apartment so we keep our separate rooms. (Although this is not in either of our minds I can safely say)
- Food, consumables, etc. - we both bring what we need and avoid using each other's stuff, but behave like adults if someone does from time to time and not make an issue of it. (we'll see how well that goes!)
- Cleaning, laundry etc. - we leave each house as we'd like to find it the next time.

Regarding involving the kids - was planning to do it once we finalize that we're going ahead with this arrangement. Perhaps a good idea to have a discussion with them already now. They see that our relationship is broken, but don't know if they feel it is so bad that this is the next imminent step.
Wish I could just fast forward 1 year, or rewind 15 years of my life. Living in the present is so difficult right now! Thanks for your replies though, they all help.

Twixty3

Thing is @gussail who do you think gets to live in the flat 7 days a week if it doesn’t work and you have a 12 month rental agreement?  This flat could end up inadvertently being your new home for longer than you plan and with the kids coming to stay over and you may have to sleep on the sofa when they do if it’s only a 2 bed.  

Your plans need to include an agreement over what will be done 6/12 months from now.  Most likely 12 as 6 month rental agreements are harder to find I believe. 

Things will get better in time especially if you have an end plan that you both agree on to work towards.  

Sea_Shell

gussail said:

Sea_Shell said:

Here's a link to the relevant start of the "kids stay put" element.

The OP stopped posting in 2020, so we don't know how it unfolded for them.


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76705026/#Comment_76705026

Hello - thank you for your reply. I couldn't find the reference to the kids' staying put in that thread (434 pages!). Do you know approx. what page it talks about the similar situation?

Sorry, I thought that link would take you straight to the right page (it does me).   But it might be because to you its an unread thread, and so it doesn't, and just takes you to page 1.

You want page 410, the post on 10/1/20, which includes...

In terms of the current situation. XH and I currently swap in and out of our family home to look after the children. He has a studio flat he goes to when not doing childcare, I theoretically also go to the flat but generally stay with the new chap. When we first rented it we basically sat down and looked at all our income and outgoings for the main house plus the studio as a set of family outgoings, then figured out who needed to give who what money in order to make it work. He is currently paying the debts, but it's possible I'll end up with some of them. We start mediation next week (I had an intro meeting with the mediator today) which should help us figure all of that out, along with a childcare schedule. If anyone has any questions about how we're managing money as a separated couple, I'd be happy to answer questions.

Hope that helps. 


Was a really good thread, and a shame the OP never came back to it (again).  We're all left wondering what happened next in their life.  The thread had a lot of followers.

Spendless

gussail said:

Thank you all for your replies. Regarding the option to sell the house and then look for two smaller apartments where we can live separately, it could take months to do that and I am not sure what we do in the meantime.
My job requires a lot of travel during the week and the only way for it to work for the short term (I am thinking 6-12 months) is to have the arrangement I mentioned. 
Regarding practical challenges - we've thought about a few and have a few 'rules' agreed.
- None of us brings a new partner into the family home - ever. The new apartment is likely to be a two-bedroom apartment so we keep our separate rooms. (Although this is not in either of our minds I can safely say)
- Food, consumables, etc. - we both bring what we need and avoid using each other's stuff, but behave like adults if someone does from time to time and not make an issue of it. (we'll see how well that goes!)
- Cleaning, laundry etc. - we leave each house as we'd like to find it the next time.

Regarding involving the kids - was planning to do it once we finalize that we're going ahead with this arrangement. Perhaps a good idea to have a discussion with them already now. They see that our relationship is broken, but don't know if they feel it is so bad that this is the next imminent step.
Wish I could just fast forward 1 year, or rewind 15 years of my life. Living in the present is so difficult right now! Thanks for your replies though, they all help.

gussail said:

Thank you all for your replies. Regarding the option to sell the house and then look for two smaller apartments where we can live separately, it could take months to do that and I am not sure what we do in the meantime.
My job requires a lot of travel during the week and the only way for it to work for the short term (I am thinking 6-12 months) is to have the arrangement I mentioned. 
Regarding practical challenges - we've thought about a few and have a few 'rules' agreed.
- None of us brings a new partner into the family home - ever. The new apartment is likely to be a two-bedroom apartment so we keep our separate rooms. (Although this is not in either of our minds I can safely say)
- Food, consumables, etc. - we both bring what we need and avoid using each other's stuff, but behave like adults if someone does from time to time and not make an issue of it. (we'll see how well that goes!)
- Cleaning, laundry etc. - we leave each house as we'd like to find it the next time.

Regarding involving the kids - was planning to do it once we finalize that we're going ahead with this arrangement. Perhaps a good idea to have a discussion with them already now. They see that our relationship is broken, but don't know if they feel it is so bad that this is the next imminent step.
Wish I could just fast forward 1 year, or rewind 15 years of my life. Living in the present is so difficult right now! Thanks for your replies though, they all help.

gussail said:

Thank you all for your replies. Regarding the option to sell the house and then look for two smaller apartments where we can live separately, it could take months to do that and I am not sure what we do in the meantime.
My job requires a lot of travel during the week and the only way for it to work for the short term (I am thinking 6-12 months) is to have the arrangement I mentioned. 
Regarding practical challenges - we've thought about a few and have a few 'rules' agreed.
- None of us brings a new partner into the family home - ever. The new apartment is likely to be a two-bedroom apartment so we keep our separate rooms. (Although this is not in either of our minds I can safely say)
- Food, consumables, etc. - we both bring what we need and avoid using each other's stuff, but behave like adults if someone does from time to time and not make an issue of it. (we'll see how well that goes!)
- Cleaning, laundry etc. - we leave each house as we'd like to find it the next time.

Regarding involving the kids - was planning to do it once we finalize that we're going ahead with this arrangement. Perhaps a good idea to have a discussion with them already now. They see that our relationship is broken, but don't know if they feel it is so bad that this is the next imminent step.
Wish I could just fast forward 1 year, or rewind 15 years of my life. Living in the present is so difficult right now! Thanks for your replies though, they all help.

That is a huge ask/demand on both of you given that your youngest is only 9. You're looking at the best part of a decade with your personal lives on hold. I'm not even convinced that the food situation would work out. Yes you might think to take along a pizza for 1 night and stuff for the 2nd, what if you use the last scraping there is of ketchup or branston pickle, and the 'official' householder only discovers when they go to use it. Wouldn't take too many of those incidences to start to grate.

I knew a couple with 3 kids who split. They sold their 4 bed detached and bought  2 x smaller 3 bed ones, within minutes walk of each other. The kids could still walk to school and see their friends regardless of what parent they were staying with and if they forgot something, easy to nip back. It worked well for them. Mum and kids emigrated back to her home country when they were mid teens so I can't say how it would have been when older but until then it was fine. 

Brie

You both may want to talk things through with a neutral third party (not a solicitor and not one of you chatting with a group of strangers online).  I'm thinking that work or union or church or a civilised mutual friend to both of you may be a good person to help you work through the practicalities of what you want to do.  

Talking to a solicitor may very well take more than just an initial free session and start to become very expensive quickly.  And they may say that you each need your own solicitor which then doubles the expense.  With all due respect to them as educated human beings they are working to earn money and the more you use them the more they make.  And anything you document with them may not be adhered to by one or the other of you - we've all heard the stories of how arrangements get abandoned.  So look who might talk to you or act as a witness or mediator for free (or less expensive) before you start paying out £300 an hour or whatever.

JReacher1

This whole thing is a crazy idea.  You and your wife need your own place each where you can both move on with your lives. 

You’re going through a difficult time but this is not a sensible option even for six months. 

Also your wife needs to get a job

Scorpio33

I am confused.

You own a house now, its in your name.

Assuming you are married, you want to buy her a flat for her to live in, which will be part (or entirely) her financial settlement.

Why can't you either:

(a) Her stay in the flat, you in the house, kids go between or
(b) Remortgage / use more savings and buy her a bigger flat for her to stay.

To me, its not about the kids per say, its more about wanting a complete severance of ties from the ex. I think if you were sharing a place (even temporarily) then you wouldn't move on from the relationship completely until you don't share any accommodation.

The fact that you seem to talk about not even having a future relationship, makes me think that you have not yet accepted the relationship is over yet.

You need to sever ties asap for your own sanity.

TBagpuss

You and she are free to agree whatever you want, and it would be possible to have a written agreement which set out the arrangements .

For it to work, you would need to be able to communicate very effectively with each other, have and both be willing to stick to clear ground rules - eveything from how cleaning and shopping are dealt with, arrangemenrts for guests (in either property) etc.

You probably also want to buld in that this is a a 'two yesses, one no' situation where it comes to an end if either one of you feels it is no longer working.

I would approach it very much as a temporary arrangements until you finally sort out your finances,. Neother of you may have new partners on the horizon now but it is probably unrealisitc to think you're both going to be celibate for the next 9 yers until your youngest leaves school.

Longer term, the outcome is likely to be that you sell the current house and buy two less expnsive properties - so it may well make more sense to look at renting rather than buying a second porperty now. It may be sensible to look at the flat being rented in her name, or joint names - if she pays the rent she can start to build a pattern of regular rent and I ssume that she will also be looking for work so she ca n move towards being independent - with the youngest child being 9 there is no eason she shoukd not work at least part tiem, nad that way,if you can manage for 6 -12 months she will have started to build her own mortgage borrowing capacity and be in a better position to be able to get a mortgage in her own right when you sell the house.