Property Split after Divorce

Slinky0001

I have been separated from my spouse since 2017 and prior to that, we were married for 2 years. We have not divorced due to the PTSD I experienced from our time together and I was afraid to poke the bear. I now feel in a better place and would like to move forward with a divorce.

I own my own home, in my sole name, and he owns his home, in his sole name. We have no kids. We retained our own properties throughout the marriage with him moving between the two but predominantly living in mine for 2 years. He has never made a financial contribution to my house and any work he carried in the house was done prior to our getting married and I paid him for it. I loaned him £18k to get his own house to a standard that he could sell it and he did not pay that back when it sold. This was before we were married and it was loaned on trust that it would be paid back.

8 years on from separating and I want to start divorce proceedings with a financial order. In your wise opinions, how do you think a court would view the fact we both have our own houses and neither one has been reliant on the other for a property, ever?

He is retired and I work full-time. It's difficult to say what he has in terms of income, although he is retired on paper, as he works cash-in hand and would lie anyway. He has a small pension, and I have a few pensions that I contributed to before we were married.

Thank you.

Hoenir

Seek advice from a Family Law solicitor. They may well suggest mediation to come to a mutually acceptable arrangement. Having left the matter some years. Not as clear cut as it may appear, 

VyEu

Have you reached an agreement with your spouse already? The courts won't make a decision for you unless you start proceedings, but they will need to approve any decision you make by consent. If going down the consent route, the courts main concern will be how can each party meet their housing and income needs? If you can both meet both, for such a short marriage (presuming no prior cohabitation before marriage) a clean break seems adequate.

But ofc if spouse doesn't agree, then you go down the contested route and thats a longer and more in depth route

Exodi

Slinky0001 said:

I have been separated from my spouse since 2017 and prior to that, we were married for 2 years. We have not divorced due to the PTSD I experienced from our time together and I was afraid to poke the bear. I now feel in a better place and would like to move forward with a divorce.

I own my own home, in my sole name, and he owns his home, in his sole name. We have no kids. We retained our own properties throughout the marriage with him moving between the two but predominantly living in mine for 2 years. He has never made a financial contribution to my house and any work he carried in the house was done prior to our getting married and I paid him for it. I loaned him £18k to get his own house to a standard that he could sell it and he did not pay that back when it sold. This was before we were married and it was loaned on trust that it would be paid back.

8 years on from separating and I want to start divorce proceedings with a financial order. In your wise opinions, how do you think a court would view the fact we both have our own houses and neither one has been reliant on the other for a property, ever?

He is retired and I work full-time. It's difficult to say what he has in terms of income, although he is retired on paper, as he works cash-in hand and would lie anyway. He has a small pension, and I have a few pensions that I contributed to before we were married.

Thank you.

It all depends on whether he agrees or not.

A lot of divorces end up 50:50, and you can appreciate that in these instances both parties aren't always starting with zero, so points like "I have a few pensions that I contributed to before we were married" can become irrelevant.

Generally on a 'short marriage' the intention is to get you both back to as close you were before you got married, whereas longer generally ends in a split of assets. I think a short marriage is usually defined as 5 years or less, but I'm sure there is discretion applied here.

If he argues for an equal split of the total assets, or does not agree with your view that the £18k was a loan, you may be in a for a long and painful journey.

Unfortunately divorce can bring out the worst in people, so I'd suggest you are open-minded and flexible.