Starting divorce proceedings

enzolondon1

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.....

elsien

What is husband is going to do for equity for somewhere to live for the next three years while you stay in the house with daughter? 

RAS

You need to look at all the assets of the marriage. So property, savings, debts, pensions. And income potential. 

As your daughter is below 20 years old, whilst she is in full-time secondary education, the parent with care is entitled to child maintenance, adjusted for parental contact.

Your job is demanding. Do you have people around you to whom your daughter can go if you have a difficult shift? 

Divorce costs little. It's the financial settlement that costs. Probably better to do sooner rather than later and ask for more than 50% of the house as courts would probably accept that.

enzolondon1

elsien said:

What is husband is going to do for equity for somewhere to live for the next three years while you stay in the house with daughter? 

I asked me same question. He said he would wait till our daughter is 18 and then we could sell. I'm not happy with this in all honesty as it seems to be just delaying the inevitable. Ideally I would like him to remain in the family home and take on the mortgage and I move. So far he does not seem keen but I cannot afford to pay both the mortgage and buy him out. I wouldnt even be able to get a mortgage to buy him out unfortunately.

enzolondon1

RAS said:

You need to look at all the assets of the marriage. So property, savings, debts, pensions. And income potential. 

As your daughter is below 20 years old, whilst she is in full-time secondary education, the parent with care is entitled to child maintenance, adjusted for parental contact.

Your job is demanding. Do you have people around you to whom your daughter can go if you have a difficult shift? 

Divorce costs little. It's the financial settlement that costs. Probably better to do sooner rather than later and ask for more than 50% of the house as courts would probably accept that.

We have hardly any debts. Some savings around 12k so not a great deal. I do not have family local to me unfortunately but I generally manage to keep work/home separate and manage my daughter even after a difficult shift. I agree, the divorce needs to proceed asap. At thr moment I have no idea how much his pension pot is worth, all seems very complicated.

Emmia

I would go over and look at Wikivorce which is a specialist forum for this stuff.

https://divorce.wikivorce.com/forum-index

ian1246

The starting point is 50/50 and a presumption towards clean-break, only departing from these principles based on necessity. That means if you want more than 50/50 or to stay in the house for the extra 3 years, you need to demonstrate to the court why it is necessary. Obviously though, if you end up battling it through court your each potentially looking at £20,000+ in fee's... which is a significant portion of your equity blown, so you need to both be reasonable and sensible.

A couple of things which stand out to me with your situation:

His Income: £48,500 with a private pension - auto-enrolment is typically 5% employee, employer 3%. Take Home Pay: £3041.64 after his £202.08 pension deduction - his employers contribution to his defined contribution pot will be worth £121.25 if its only 3%. Only other thing to note is this is based off the *entire* income - whereas auto-enrolment is in-fact even worse, since the first £10,000 or so of earnings don't count as part of the quantifiable amount - so it means his employer contributions might be even worse whilst his own contributions might be lower (& thus take home higher).

Your income: £29,000 with a NHS Pension - you contribute 8.3% and your employer contributes 23.7%. Take Home: £1872 after your pension contributions. Your employers contribution is worth around £572.75 a month.

NHS Pension Scheme - employer contributions | NHS Employers

When you factor in the value of the respective pension contributions, your actual comparable income levels are respectively £1872 take home for you and him £2590 - if he were to put the extra into his pension to make it broadly equivalent to yours (it won't be. You have the benefit of a Defined Benefit pension which gets uplifted in excess of inflation every year, whilst his are at the mercy of the stock market). In his situation I would absolutely expect his solicitor to argue that your respective pay packages as a whole should be compared to one another, as opposed to just take home earnings - since ultimately employer pension contributions are merely deferred pay. This is particularly relevant given your both not far from retirement - the last decade or so of earnings will be the difference between an Ok retirement and poverty.

If you then factor in the likely impact of Child Maintenance Payments (I.e. £300 from him to you puts your take home at £2172 and his at £2290) and your pretty much identical in actual earning capacity.

Ultimately, it'll be down to yourselves to reach an agreement. Based on the above I wouldn't be surprised if your accrued pension is significantly more valuable than any pension he's accumulated (Private pensions are vastly inferior to public sector one's), even with you having worked part-time for a chunk of it. You need a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value for your pension and you need to know the figures for his Defined Contribution Pot, so that you can compare.

If you want to argue for more than 50% of the equity, you'll need to justify why it is necessary - the reality is you may already be looking at sacrificing a chunk of your pension to him as it is - and typically if you don't want your pension hit, you'd be looking to "buy him out" with additional equity. It might be he (& you in this scenario!) have struck lucky and he's had a private employer who pays much higher % in pension contributions, but I wouldn't hold my breathe.

By your own admission above, when it comes to debating which chunk of equity your each getting, you can meet your housing needs with a small mortgage and 50% of the equity. Based on that, what is your genuine reason or necessity for more than 50% of the equity?

The income gap means spousal maintenance will be a no-go. I don't see how in these circumstances you could argue for a departure from the 50/50 principle - and that includes the clean-break principle....

.... you've mentioned staying in the marital home for the next 3 years. Why? Your daughter is 15 years old, not 5 - in less than a years time she's legally old enough to move out of the home if she chooses to do so. The mind-set of "mum stays in the family home until the kids are adults" is very much a 1990's/2000's divorce trend and thankfully the courts have moved away from that. There are still occasions where it happens, typically when Mum can't meet her own housing needs - but in your situation? That's definitely not the case. I would expect your ex's solicitor to argue that the presumption of a clean break should apply - and given the figures of your respective incomes, I can't see how you could successfully argue against that presumption.

My advice, having gone through a divorce myself, is to keep your demands reasonable. This will minimise the arguments and bitterness and most importantly: maximise your chances of keeping the legal costs down. Every £ spent on solicitor fee's is one less £ you have to use for yourself or your daughter.

Good Luck - hope the above helps put a different perspective on it to what you've got from the other posters.

Emmia

I'd expect your husband's solicitor will advise him to seek a pension sharing order for a portion of your NHS pension as part of the settlement, especially if his own pension is relatively modest. This is the significant asset that you have. 

I suspect you will need to sell the house and divide the proceeds - this is likely to leave you both in much smaller properties, and perhaps not in the area you currently live in.

enzolondon1

ian1246 said:

The starting point is 50/50 and a presumption towards clean-break, only departing from these principles based on necessity. That means if you want more than 50/50 or to stay in the house for the extra 3 years, you need to demonstrate to the court why it is necessary. Obviously though, if you end up battling it through court your each potentially looking at £20,000+ in fee's... which is a significant portion of your equity blown, so you need to both be reasonable and sensible.

A couple of things which stand out to me with your situation:

His Income: £48,500 with a private pension - auto-enrolment is typically 5% employee, employer 3%. Take Home Pay: £3041.64 after his £202.08 pension deduction - his employers contribution to his defined contribution pot will be worth £121.25 if its only 3%. Only other thing to note is this is based off the *entire* income - whereas auto-enrolment is in-fact even worse, since the first £10,000 or so of earnings don't count as part of the quantifiable amount - so it means his employer contributions might be even worse whilst his own contributions might be lower (& thus take home higher).

Your income: £29,000 with a NHS Pension - you contribute 8.3% and your employer contributes 23.7%. Take Home: £1872 after your pension contributions. Your employers contribution is worth around £572.75 a month.

NHS Pension Scheme - employer contributions | NHS Employers

When you factor in the value of the respective pension contributions, your actual comparable income levels are respectively £1872 take home for you and him £2590 - if he were to put the extra into his pension to make it broadly equivalent to yours (it won't be. You have the benefit of a Defined Benefit pension which gets uplifted in excess of inflation every year, whilst his are at the mercy of the stock market). In his situation I would absolutely expect his solicitor to argue that your respective pay packages as a whole should be compared to one another, as opposed to just take home earnings - since ultimately employer pension contributions are merely deferred pay. This is particularly relevant given your both not far from retirement - the last decade or so of earnings will be the difference between an Ok retirement and poverty.

If you then factor in the likely impact of Child Maintenance Payments (I.e. £300 from him to you puts your take home at £2172 and his at £2290) and your pretty much identical in actual earning capacity.

Ultimately, it'll be down to yourselves to reach an agreement. Based on the above I wouldn't be surprised if your accrued pension is significantly more valuable than any pension he's accumulated (Private pensions are vastly inferior to public sector one's), even with you having worked part-time for a chunk of it. You need a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value for your pension and you need to know the figures for his Defined Contribution Pot, so that you can compare.

If you want to argue for more than 50% of the equity, you'll need to justify why it is necessary - the reality is you may already be looking at sacrificing a chunk of your pension to him as it is - and typically if you don't want your pension hit, you'd be looking to "buy him out" with additional equity. It might be he (& you in this scenario!) have struck lucky and he's had a private employer who pays much higher % in pension contributions, but I wouldn't hold my breathe.

By your own admission above, when it comes to debating which chunk of equity your each getting, you can meet your housing needs with a small mortgage and 50% of the equity. Based on that, what is your genuine reason or necessity for more than 50% of the equity?

The income gap means spousal maintenance will be a no-go. I don't see how in these circumstances you could argue for a departure from the 50/50 principle - and that includes the clean-break principle....

.... you've mentioned staying in the marital home for the next 3 years. Why? Your daughter is 15 years old, not 5 - in less than a years time she's legally old enough to move out of the home if she chooses to do so. The mind-set of "mum stays in the family home until the kids are adults" is very much a 1990's/2000's divorce trend and thankfully the courts have moved away from that. There are still occasions where it happens, typically when Mum can't meet her own housing needs - but in your situation? That's definitely not the case. I would expect your ex's solicitor to argue that the presumption of a clean break should apply - and given the figures of your respective incomes, I can't see how you could successfully argue against that presumption.

My advice, having gone through a divorce myself, is to keep your demands reasonable. This will minimise the arguments and bitterness and most importantly: maximise your chances of keeping the legal costs down. Every £ spent on solicitor fee's is one less £ you have to use for yourself or your daughter.

Good Luck - hope the above helps put a different perspective on it to what you've got from the other posters.

Thank you for your comprehensive reply. Much appreciated. It is worth noting that my husband works as a police officer and has a higher pension contribution. He has been in the police force for 20 years.I have been in the NHS pension scheme for 10 years and 5 of those have been part time.

ian1246

enzolondon1 said:

ian1246 said:

The starting point is 50/50 and a presumption towards clean-break, only departing from these principles based on necessity. That means if you want more than 50/50 or to stay in the house for the extra 3 years, you need to demonstrate to the court why it is necessary. Obviously though, if you end up battling it through court your each potentially looking at £20,000+ in fee's... which is a significant portion of your equity blown, so you need to both be reasonable and sensible.

A couple of things which stand out to me with your situation:

His Income: £48,500 with a private pension - auto-enrolment is typically 5% employee, employer 3%. Take Home Pay: £3041.64 after his £202.08 pension deduction - his employers contribution to his defined contribution pot will be worth £121.25 if its only 3%. Only other thing to note is this is based off the *entire* income - whereas auto-enrolment is in-fact even worse, since the first £10,000 or so of earnings don't count as part of the quantifiable amount - so it means his employer contributions might be even worse whilst his own contributions might be lower (& thus take home higher).

Your income: £29,000 with a NHS Pension - you contribute 8.3% and your employer contributes 23.7%. Take Home: £1872 after your pension contributions. Your employers contribution is worth around £572.75 a month.

NHS Pension Scheme - employer contributions | NHS Employers

When you factor in the value of the respective pension contributions, your actual comparable income levels are respectively £1872 take home for you and him £2590 - if he were to put the extra into his pension to make it broadly equivalent to yours (it won't be. You have the benefit of a Defined Benefit pension which gets uplifted in excess of inflation every year, whilst his are at the mercy of the stock market). In his situation I would absolutely expect his solicitor to argue that your respective pay packages as a whole should be compared to one another, as opposed to just take home earnings - since ultimately employer pension contributions are merely deferred pay. This is particularly relevant given your both not far from retirement - the last decade or so of earnings will be the difference between an Ok retirement and poverty.

If you then factor in the likely impact of Child Maintenance Payments (I.e. £300 from him to you puts your take home at £2172 and his at £2290) and your pretty much identical in actual earning capacity.

Ultimately, it'll be down to yourselves to reach an agreement. Based on the above I wouldn't be surprised if your accrued pension is significantly more valuable than any pension he's accumulated (Private pensions are vastly inferior to public sector one's), even with you having worked part-time for a chunk of it. You need a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value for your pension and you need to know the figures for his Defined Contribution Pot, so that you can compare.

If you want to argue for more than 50% of the equity, you'll need to justify why it is necessary - the reality is you may already be looking at sacrificing a chunk of your pension to him as it is - and typically if you don't want your pension hit, you'd be looking to "buy him out" with additional equity. It might be he (& you in this scenario!) have struck lucky and he's had a private employer who pays much higher % in pension contributions, but I wouldn't hold my breathe.

By your own admission above, when it comes to debating which chunk of equity your each getting, you can meet your housing needs with a small mortgage and 50% of the equity. Based on that, what is your genuine reason or necessity for more than 50% of the equity?

The income gap means spousal maintenance will be a no-go. I don't see how in these circumstances you could argue for a departure from the 50/50 principle - and that includes the clean-break principle....

.... you've mentioned staying in the marital home for the next 3 years. Why? Your daughter is 15 years old, not 5 - in less than a years time she's legally old enough to move out of the home if she chooses to do so. The mind-set of "mum stays in the family home until the kids are adults" is very much a 1990's/2000's divorce trend and thankfully the courts have moved away from that. There are still occasions where it happens, typically when Mum can't meet her own housing needs - but in your situation? That's definitely not the case. I would expect your ex's solicitor to argue that the presumption of a clean break should apply - and given the figures of your respective incomes, I can't see how you could successfully argue against that presumption.

My advice, having gone through a divorce myself, is to keep your demands reasonable. This will minimise the arguments and bitterness and most importantly: maximise your chances of keeping the legal costs down. Every £ spent on solicitor fee's is one less £ you have to use for yourself or your daughter.

Good Luck - hope the above helps put a different perspective on it to what you've got from the other posters.

Thank you for your comprehensive reply. Much appreciated. It is worth noting that my husband works as a police officer and has a higher pension contribution. He has been in the police force for 20 years.I have been in the NHS pension scheme for 10 years and 5 of those have been part time.

You should 100% have led with that since that changes things significantly for you!

So a couple of things with regards to the Police - his pension contribution rate will be 13.44% gross basic salary. His basic salary is £50,256 - not £48,500 (That's last years pay). Basic pay is exactly that - basic. In the Police you also get overtime (Time & 1/3 at directed rate. Time & 1/3 at casual rate - but you don't get paid for the first 30mins of each stint of overtime). You also get shift allowance - 10% of your hourly rate for any hours worked between 8pm & 6am. To work out the hourly rate, you divide £50,256 by 2080 (the amount of hours in a year Police are paid for) = £25.12

You ideally need to get a idea of his shift pattern since unsocial payments can add up to a significant sum of money and are consistent / routine - normally £150-£200 a month for Officers on Response, as an example. Overtime can fluctuate significantly, particularly in certain departments.

On the flip side, when it comes to things like Child Maintenance - its income after pension contribution, so his income for Child Maintenance purposes will be £43,501 - plus whatever he routinely earns in overtime and shift allowance.

His pension will definitely be larger than yours. You need to do some research into the Mc Cloud Remedy since its going to impact his pension, depending on which option he opted for - you'll need to find it out as part of the financial disclosure required for the financial consent order.

To give you an idea though - in September 2023 when I requested a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value for my Police Pension it was worth £68,047, having joined in January 2015 - so on the CARE Pension. Its worth noting the first 7 years of my career (bearing in mind by September 2023 we were only talking about 8.75 years of accrual by that point) were spent progressing up the pay-scale - which started at around £23,000 and at the time (September 2023) topped at around £42,000.

Basically: the first 7 years will always generate a far lower pension value than the following years due to the impact of Pay Progression. After a 20 year career, its entirely possible his Cash Equivalent Transfer value will be easily north of £200,000+

That gives you options - you'll be entitled to a share of his pension - calculated by adding up both your and his cash equivalent transfer values for your pensions and then splitting in half - you then deduct your pensions CETV from that amount which will then give you the CETV share left over which will need to be transferred to you from his pension. You then calculate what % that amount represents from his total CETV which will then give you a comparable figure of what % of his accumulated pension your entitled to.

He'll then have a choice - either accept 50% Equity and loosing a share of his pension, or buy you out of the pension by giving you more of the equity. Obviously Equity is not directly equivalent to CETV - equity you get the benefit of straight away, whereas CETV is merely a nominal value attributed to a Defined Benefit Pension which the individual won't benefit from until a number of years in the future.

Still, it gives you some leverage. Good Luck.

enzolondon1

Thank youian1246 said:

enzolondon1 said:

ian1246 said:

The starting point is 50/50 and a presumption towards clean-break, only departing from these principles based on necessity. That means if you want more than 50/50 or to stay in the house for the extra 3 years, you need to demonstrate to the court why it is necessary. Obviously though, if you end up battling it through court your each potentially looking at £20,000+ in fee's... which is a significant portion of your equity blown, so you need to both be reasonable and sensible.

A couple of things which stand out to me with your situation:

His Income: £48,500 with a private pension - auto-enrolment is typically 5% employee, employer 3%. Take Home Pay: £3041.64 after his £202.08 pension deduction - his employers contribution to his defined contribution pot will be worth £121.25 if its only 3%. Only other thing to note is this is based off the *entire* income - whereas auto-enrolment is in-fact even worse, since the first £10,000 or so of earnings don't count as part of the quantifiable amount - so it means his employer contributions might be even worse whilst his own contributions might be lower (& thus take home higher).

Your income: £29,000 with a NHS Pension - you contribute 8.3% and your employer contributes 23.7%. Take Home: £1872 after your pension contributions. Your employers contribution is worth around £572.75 a month.

NHS Pension Scheme - employer contributions | NHS Employers

When you factor in the value of the respective pension contributions, your actual comparable income levels are respectively £1872 take home for you and him £2590 - if he were to put the extra into his pension to make it broadly equivalent to yours (it won't be. You have the benefit of a Defined Benefit pension which gets uplifted in excess of inflation every year, whilst his are at the mercy of the stock market). In his situation I would absolutely expect his solicitor to argue that your respective pay packages as a whole should be compared to one another, as opposed to just take home earnings - since ultimately employer pension contributions are merely deferred pay. This is particularly relevant given your both not far from retirement - the last decade or so of earnings will be the difference between an Ok retirement and poverty.

If you then factor in the likely impact of Child Maintenance Payments (I.e. £300 from him to you puts your take home at £2172 and his at £2290) and your pretty much identical in actual earning capacity.

Ultimately, it'll be down to yourselves to reach an agreement. Based on the above I wouldn't be surprised if your accrued pension is significantly more valuable than any pension he's accumulated (Private pensions are vastly inferior to public sector one's), even with you having worked part-time for a chunk of it. You need a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value for your pension and you need to know the figures for his Defined Contribution Pot, so that you can compare.

If you want to argue for more than 50% of the equity, you'll need to justify why it is necessary - the reality is you may already be looking at sacrificing a chunk of your pension to him as it is - and typically if you don't want your pension hit, you'd be looking to "buy him out" with additional equity. It might be he (& you in this scenario!) have struck lucky and he's had a private employer who pays much higher % in pension contributions, but I wouldn't hold my breathe.

By your own admission above, when it comes to debating which chunk of equity your each getting, you can meet your housing needs with a small mortgage and 50% of the equity. Based on that, what is your genuine reason or necessity for more than 50% of the equity?

The income gap means spousal maintenance will be a no-go. I don't see how in these circumstances you could argue for a departure from the 50/50 principle - and that includes the clean-break principle....

.... you've mentioned staying in the marital home for the next 3 years. Why? Your daughter is 15 years old, not 5 - in less than a years time she's legally old enough to move out of the home if she chooses to do so. The mind-set of "mum stays in the family home until the kids are adults" is very much a 1990's/2000's divorce trend and thankfully the courts have moved away from that. There are still occasions where it happens, typically when Mum can't meet her own housing needs - but in your situation? That's definitely not the case. I would expect your ex's solicitor to argue that the presumption of a clean break should apply - and given the figures of your respective incomes, I can't see how you could successfully argue against that presumption.

My advice, having gone through a divorce myself, is to keep your demands reasonable. This will minimise the arguments and bitterness and most importantly: maximise your chances of keeping the legal costs down. Every £ spent on solicitor fee's is one less £ you have to use for yourself or your daughter.

Good Luck - hope the above helps put a different perspective on it to what you've got from the other posters.

Thank you for your comprehensive reply. Much appreciated. It is worth noting that my husband works as a police officer and has a higher pension contribution. He has been in the police force for 20 years.I have been in the NHS pension scheme for 10 years and 5 of those have been part time.

You should 100% have led with that since that changes things significantly for you!

So a couple of things with regards to the Police - his pension contribution rate will be 13.44% gross basic salary. His basic salary is £50,256 - not £48,500 (That's last years pay). Basic pay is exactly that - basic. In the Police you also get overtime (Time & 1/3 at directed rate. Time & 1/3 at casual rate - but you don't get paid for the first 30mins of each stint of overtime). You also get shift allowance - 10% of your hourly rate for any hours worked between 8pm & 6am. To work out the hourly rate, you divide £50,256 by 2080 (the amount of hours in a year Police are paid for) = £25.12

You ideally need to get a idea of his shift pattern since unsocial payments can add up to a significant sum of money and are consistent / routine - normally £150-£200 a month for Officers on Response, as an example. Overtime can fluctuate significantly, particularly in certain departments.

On the flip side, when it comes to things like Child Maintenance - its income after pension contribution, so his income for Child Maintenance purposes will be £43,501 - plus whatever he routinely earns in overtime and shift allowance.

His pension will definitely be larger than yours. You need to do some research into the Mc Cloud Remedy since its going to impact his pension, depending on which option he opted for - you'll need to find it out as part of the financial disclosure required for the financial consent order.

To give you an idea though - in September 2023 when I requested a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value for my Police Pension it was worth £68,047, having joined in January 2015 - so on the CARE Pension. Its worth noting the first 7 years of my career (bearing in mind by September 2023 we were only talking about 8.75 years of accrual by that point) were spent progressing up the pay-scale - which started at around £23,000 and at the time (September 2023) topped at around £42,000.

Basically: the first 7 years will always generate a far lower pension value than the following years due to the impact of Pay Progression. After a 20 year career, its entirely possible his Cash Equivalent Transfer value will be easily north of £200,000+

That gives you options - you'll be entitled to a share of his pension - calculated by adding up both your and his cash equivalent transfer values for your pensions and then splitting in half - you then deduct your pensions CETV from that amount which will then give you the CETV share left over which will need to be transferred to you from his pension. You then calculate what % that amount represents from his total CETV which will then give you a comparable figure of what % of his accumulated pension your entitled to.

He'll then have a choice - either accept 50% Equity and loosing a share of his pension, or buy you out of the pension by giving you more of the equity. Obviously Equity is not directly equivalent to CETV - equity you get the benefit of straight away, whereas CETV is merely a nominal value attributed to a Defined Benefit Pension which the individual won't benefit from until a number of years in the future.

Still, it gives you some leverage. Good Luck.

Thank you. I agree, it gives me some leverage and I absolutely do not want to have the whole outcome of this unfair and him be wholly worse off but neither do I want to be scrimping when it's not necessary. Let's see what happens. Thanks again.