Hello all, i'm looking for some advice. I'm about to start divorce proceedings against my wife and as you might imagine the initial conversations aren't going very smoothly. 🙁
I am the higher earner (3x her) and the sole bill payer. I pay the mortgage and all the bills on the house, and while my wife occasionally buys some bits of food and clothes, the majority of spend is on me.
In discussing finances she has gone straight from "let's keep solicitors out of it" to "i can't afford a house so you need to help with that, i'll need furniture and child maintenance payments - the solicitors will look into your pension etc. to see what I can get". I've seen some conflicting outcomes on this forum regarding 50/50 care and whether maintenance can be claimed.
Currently I would say I do more than 50% of the day-to-day child care. I do most of the school runs, I take them to clubs, help with homework, do most of the cooking. I don't see this changes after divorce either - I have a much better relationship with our kids than she does.
Can I request that she starts paying towards bills now and in the future would I be able to claim child maintenance payments even though I earn more than her?
hi,
have you discussed the children's arrangements with her? if you both agree that there is 50/50 equal day to day care of children, then technically neither of you pay any child maintenance to each other. little info about it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-we-work-out-child-maintenance
I think it is better if you can agree as a private arrangement or get a legally binding agreement.
@bill337 Hi Bill, thanks for taking the time to respond. We have had a few initial discussions about it, things are still quite "raw" at the moment so the conversations are different every time we speak. Currently I would say it's more like 90/10 in terms of day-to-day care and she is saying it would be 50/50 in the future because she believes that she can get a 3-bedroom house. I don't see how she can afford that, even after taking half the equity in this house and any savings etc. but she won't accept moving out and me raising the kids on my own. That's when she falls back to legal involvement, I would much prefer to sort it out between us and avoid any court dates or legal costs.
Thanks for the link, i'll add it to my reading list.