Getting divorced. We need to sell the house as I won't be able to pay the mortgage on my own. I have mental health problems which has stopped me working for a few years, and I am going onto ESA now we're separated - but even if I was working, I've never earned enough money to pay the mortgage on my own.
When we bought the house initially, my parents gave me a gift of £50K which covered our deposit. Since then, my husband has paid roughly £40K on the mortgage over the 6 years we have lived here (but most of that has been interest, only £9K of the mortgage itself has been paid off). Also because I've been a SAHM and have been unwell, he has been paying all the bills etc too.
We're putting the house on the market soon :( . My STBXH feels that we should be splitting the equity 50/50.
I have other people saying to me that I'd be a soft touch if I agreed to that and I shouldn't be selling myself short, especially as he is able to work at the moment and I'm not, and that even though I wasn't paying bills over the last few years, I was here to do childcare and thus facilitating him to work, and we wouldn't have got the house in the first place if it were not for my parents' gift.
I'm feeling a bit torn, because I don't know what is fair and reasonable to ask/expect. I had a couple of free half hours with Solicitors. The first I saw was basically trying to flog their "package" and doing a hard sell, but I couldn't get any decent information out of her. The other Solicitor pretty much said that I seem very organised and should sort out the divorce myself as the house is the only asset. She wasn't able to give me advice either.
Is it solicitors who should give advice on this, or should I be asking elsewhere or guessing and trying my luck?
I don't want to be a dickhead about the house and I don't want to be unfair to my husband or rip him off, even though he's not exactly my friend.
Anyone able to give me information or able to point me in the direction of somewhere that I could get sensible advice. My parents have offered to pay for me to have an hour with a solicitor because they are concerned about me throwing money away in the long term (and I'm going to need to live off this money, cos once the equity is released, my benefits will stop) but I don't want to waste money if a solicitor isn't the person to advise me on this.
Thanks for your help.
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Divorce/separation
Haven't a scooby how to divide equity on our house
39 replies
NightOfTheCactus · 11/07/2013 12:56
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