[Solved] dont know where to start

Hi All,

Seems like some very helpful people here and some very good advice..... which I hope you will help me with.

Hi there

I'm so sorry you are in such a distressing situation, if you've read other members posts, it might help to realise that what is happening to you is more common than you'd think. You've asked a lot of questions, some I can help a little with and some, like the divorce questions, I'm not too hot on. Hopefully someone with more experience can offer you advice on that.

for background.

Me and misses......funny that i still think of her like this. me and ex together for 17 years, married for 5 years, two kids 7 and 4.

There had been growing issues in marriage over last few years due to job insecurity, finance, ex no longer center of my attention due to kids, growing resentments in several areas which i think is why ex started extra marital affair this summer. I became aware pretty quick and confronted her about it. She repeatedly denied it, lying, made me feel that all issues were my fault including trust, I went to see a relate therapist by myself as she said that she would come along then decided against. After several sessions the questions the therapist was asking made me look into controlling partners and what I read didn't come as a complete shock but did make me reevaluate my relationship. Several night later..... after discovering she had just bought sexy office outfit and karmasutra playing cards I asked for a divorce which i think came as quite a shock to her.

Two days later the ex told me that when kids went on holiday with their grandparents in two weeks that I was to leave home, which quite frankly came as a massive shock as i was not expecting this..... no two ways about it but i was to be out, gone, left.

When you've been with someone so long and shared so much, it s shocking that they can become virtual strangers overnight... unfortunately you had given her fair warning that you were unhappy; asking for a divorce, in a way you gave her time to plan. Some members have experienced how truly nasty their ex's become and it's is a shock.

Over the next two weeks I tried numerous times to have a conversation regarding what to do about kids, where i was to go, what was to happen next.... all met with "i don't care, your gone when the kids go", which caused a me great deal of anxiety until I read up that she had no right to make me leave, This is when the goading started although i didn't realize why at the time and just though it was her being petty and nasty towards me. A week later i received a letter from a solicitor telling me to voluntary vacate due to my behavior or face an order and 4K cost. That week she also froze the joint account and i discovered that at some point she had removed all her own personal files, all the files relating to our home, mortgage, bills, everything that showed any kind of ownership to household items, everything to do with the kids, birth certificate, medical letters, school reports, memory boxes, all the joint account statements etc.

Solicitors will always play the "If you don't agree you'll have to pay my clients costs" card. It's a particularly nasty tactic and is designed to scare you into submission. It seems that she knew exactly what to do and what would have the biggest impact on you....I find it particularly calculating that she even removed everything relating to the children.

I spend an hour on phone to her solicitor explaining that I was trying to sort the future of my family out, had no where to go to, and that the ex would not discuss anything except for me leaving. The goading continued with something different each morning and each night for the two weeks the kids were off and then for a further week when they got back. The week the kids were back really got to me because she'd started using them as an excuse to goad, manipulate and control situations, forcing situations and upsetting the kids. After confronting her about this outside one night something just clicked in my head and i reacted and locked her out of the house. After standing in shock at what i'd just done i took the latch of and let her back in and i left the house and stayed at a friends that night. The following day i received a call from the court bailiff who handed me an anti molestation order, and three other ex-partee orders including occupation, residency and prohibited steps and to appear in court in seven days time. The affidavit was.... well i don't have the words to describe what i felt, unbelievable what she had put about my behavior towards her and my children over the years, completely twisting the truth and filling it out with lies and fiction.

This is par for the course with some women unfortunately, it's all about control and maximising her financial position. It's common for them to lie and exaggerate to get what they want, but courts will usually act when they are presented with an ex parte application, they have to be pro active because it's a matter of protecting the children, but you will have the opportunity to put your case to the judge when you return to court.

I took the orders to a solicitor who explained a bit about the orders and it was at this point it clicked in my head that the goading had been intentional, it also made sense because both her mother and sister had previously taken there exes through the courts and it just seem too coincidental for it not to have been premeditated.

I attended the directions hearing, self representing which was daunting but ok, I admitted to locking her out for a short period of time, I was told that I should accept the anti molestation order but to say that i did not agree with the allegation, which i think was a mistake as i am not allowed to contact her for any reason unless it is to arrange contact for the kids, hence for the most part i have no idea what is going on in the kids lives now as i can't ask. I also objected to the other three order, but gave an undertaking not to return home, and that I would have contact with my kids for three hours every Sunday plus phone contact twice a week. My solicitor informed me this was very positive outcome but i didn't feel so.

As you admitted to locking her out, the NMO would stand and the advice you received about accepting an undertaking, without accepting the allegations, was the best you could hope for tbh....so theadvice you were given was right. The fact that you had an agreement for contact is positive and can be built on...that's probably what your solicitor meant.

I spoke withe CAFCASS for phone interview which seemed to go ok and was all set for the FHDRA. A week before the FHDRA her solicitor suggested putting it back so that mediation could take place, i agreed and it was put back for 7 weeks, which is now due in two weeks time, I asked the Cafcass officer for a copy of the report but he said that he would send a copy a week before the new court date as this allowed time for it to be changed should anything happen in the meantime, so I have not seen it yet.

The fact that she requested mediation makes her look reasonable, even though she used the sessions to issue her ultimatums!

I have been to mediation which seems a waste of time and money as its seems more of an ultimatum and me giving up all my rights whilst she insists that she keeps the family home, wants full residency for kids with me seeing them every second weekend, Wants to buy me out and for me to accept 80/20 split in ownership of home in her favor rather than 50/50, refused to give any financial disclosure, and has produced a chattel list that gives her all the white goods and furniture, whilst labeling my things and the broken furniture as joint ownership but given to me by way of my fair share of household items..... what a load of BS!..... and the worst thing is that my solicitor suggests that for the most part this is a good deal as continuing to challenge all this in court is going to sot me an additional 10k in her fees alone, the judge is likely to side in her favor, give her primary residency of kids due to me locking her out of the house (irrespective of all the rubbish in the Affidavit that she could not prove), that i am unlikely going to get more time with my kids unless the ex agrees, and that this could be all over sooner and i can start seeing kids sooner if i just agree!. Then to top it off i received her divorce petition on Friday on the grounds of my unreasonable behaviour. I only asked my solicitor to deal with the orders and don't want to have to start paying for her to deal with he divorce as well.

I really don't know much about the financial/divorce side of things, it I do know that it's usually for the resident parent (usually the mother) to take a larger share of the equity and I'm pretty sure she will have to give financial disclosure for the divorce to proceed. It is often better to accept a smaller share of the equity as fighting it can cost thousands, but it's up to you to do the figures and I guess it would depend on how much equity there is tied up in the property.

As far as contact is concerned, I wouldn't necessarily agree and it's something that you can argue in court.

For a start i'm thinking i should deal with the divorce as i have only seven days to reply, It was me that wanted to divorce HER! i'm certainly not inclined to start paying for her solicitor fees for this. please could you direct me to where all the documents are for filing for divorce and any additional documents i may need, how do i gather my evidence, how and when do I present it, if anyone knows/has examples showing this it would be very much appreciated. How do I reply on her petition if i'm going to file my own petition?, how soon do i need to get it in?

As I said, I'm not best placed to advise you on this, but I will look up a link to some useful information sheets from the Advicenow website. You might also like to check out a website called Wikivorce.com where you'll find lots more info and a helpline that you can call.

Second, is my solicitor right? is this a good deal for custody at this point, i read a lot of posts and this seems to be the norm plus a few of the posts and about playing the long game. I was looking for 50/50 split as we both work full time but i have flexiworking plus work two days from home but she doesn't. I also use to take the kids and collect from school/ child care and take them to all their clubs, cooked all meals and helped bath and put them to bed, surely this should count in my favour, if any of it does count should i tell this to the judge or Cafcass officer? I was happy to give the family home up if i got a fair payout that allowed my to buy something close by in the hope of using this to my advantage in the future but it seems she may be aware of this due to unrealistic and unfair financial offer, How do I improve my chances here, should I rent close by in mean time?, will this help?, anything that will give me improved chances of getting better custody proposition than every second weekend and no over night would be a bonus.

You do need to build your case, and you should most definitely tell CAFCASS/court the extent of your involvement with the children and the fact that your flexi working enable you to do much of it. Certainly you should be asking for more and providing evidence of the extra things you did for your children on a daily basis. Obviously it's better to live close to your children, travelling time for contact does have a bearing, so the less time they spend travelling the better, especially as they are still young.

In terms of prohibited steps, I will continue to object to this as unnecessary due to my conduct showing that i have no intention of removing the children from school, grandparents, sports clubs etc, and that i have abided by the terms of my undertaking.

In terms of the Occupation order, should i continue to object?, or just give in?, her solicitor suggested that if i gave them an undertaking for twelve months then there would no longer be a need for this order, I have held out but my solicitor has pushed me hard several times to accept, Why?, should I accept?, it seems to me that if i am after 50/50 custody then I should be able to ask for consideration for me to be allowed back into the family home and for her to be made to leave, is this just wishful thinking?

To be honest, at this point I don't think 50/50 is realistic, nor Is the possibility of getting her out so that you can move in, I know this doesn't seem at all fair, but she is in occupation, has played the system and struck quickly to maintain the upper hand.

I feel very slow to a game that me ex seems to understand the rules to. I have never felt so continually tired, stressed and so out of control, and yet this seems like nothing compared to what some of the guys on here are going through and what their children are missing out on.

You're right of course, she has been coached by the experience of her family and she had forewarning that you wanted to divorce. I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but you will recover from this and hopefully move on. As I said, I can't advise on your divorce situation, but if it were me, I think I'd want to get it done as soon as possible and take back my life. It won't happen overnight but it's a good idea to try and step back from your emotions and deal with it in a more businesslike manner. Try and look after yourself and the basics, make sure you are eating and getting enough sleep. Some guys find going to the gym can help, oth with taking their mind off things and for fitness levels, you're going to need to be strong over the coming months and if you take care of the basics it will set you in good stead for dealing with everything else.

Also any suggestions about prefilled forms would be good as im not very computer literate and it takes forever for me to type things out 🙂

I'll look out the links for you and I suggest you have a look at the sticky at the top of the legal eagle section, there's lots of info there about the court process. It might help for you to attend a Families Need Fathers meeting in your area, where your,find others in a similar situation and will get advice and support. Here's a link to their website where you'll find details of meetings nationally.

www.fnf.org.uk/help-and-support-2/local-branch-meetings

Thank you in Advance

I would definitely pursue full weekends, picking up from school on Friday and dropping off on Monday morning, as you already did this it affords continuity to the children and allows you to continue to be involved with their school life. As she works, it's unlikely you would get every weekend, so you can also request a weekly overnight stay midweek too. It would also be better to get as much definition into the order, so you should be asking for. 50/50 share of all school holidays, shared Christmas and birthdays, Father's Day where it doesn't fall on your weekend, and likewise Mother's Day when it doesn't fall on hers. If telephone contact has been ongoing through the case, it's in the children's best interests to have that continue, because that is what they are used to.

I suggest you prepare a short position statement for the hearing, just a couple of pages with some background, the issues and what you would like to happen. You should be given an opportunity to provide a more detailed statement and evidence of your involvement with the children day to day....think about getting letter from the organisers of the clubs they attend, from the school to confirm that you were the one to do the school runs and anything else you can think of that will show your full involvement.

Remember, you pay your solicitor to act for you, they are there to take instruction from you! Unless your solicitor specialises in family law, they won't understand the intricacies of the case and I would advise that you keep a firm grasp on how you want the case to go. It's important that you lead your case in this respect, so gather as much information and knowledge about the process as you can.

You can contact the school, go in and have a chat with the head, bring them up to speed and let them know that you wish for your involvement to continue and ask for them to keep you informed of all events and to be included as a point of contact, as well as their mother, on their records so that you can be informed of parents evenings and receive progress reports.

Best of luck

http://www.advicenow.org.uk/guides/how-get-divorce-or-end-civil-partnership-without-help-lawyer

And another...

www.advicenow.org.uk/file/2317/download?token=h4jkNORG

Advicenow have a whole heap of information sheets about divorce and Wikivorce.com is a really good resource for all matters divorce too.

Thank you guys

Just knowing that someone else cares and wants to help is a big relief. I've actually got a light feeling of relief inside me. Really appreciate the honesty more than you could ever know, trying to get a straight answer out of my solicitor is hard and trying to understand a system that you have no knowledge of and all the implications is so draining.

I'm not very good with websites and finding navigating this a bit difficult. Please could you direct me to where the legal eagal section is, i can't find the tab :-), also what is a sticky?, and how do I bookmark useful post from the forum as I've just read some very interesting posts on dealing with Cafcass and what to expect from them in the future, that may be useful to reference later on.

Many thanks again.

Unfortunately I've written a post explaining how to navigate the site but it won't let me post!

The stickys in each section have a little red pin tack next to them. This means that they won't move down the section as people post new topics, they stay at the top so that forum users can find them easily. Stickys are just posts that stay and they are generally good for keeping relevant information in one place. There are one and half pages of stickys at the top of the legal eagle section with all sorts of useful info, so it's worth reading through them.

Under the blue and yellow DAD logo at the top of the page you will see a row of tabs written in grey....
INDEX. RECENT TOPICS. etc ... ending with the SEARCH tab. If you click on INDEX it will take you to the main page and there you will find all the different sections, just click on the one you want and it will take you to that section.

If you want to search previous posts for something specific, you can click on the SEARCH tab and it will take you to a page where you can input what it is you're looking for. For example, if you want to read about Position Statements just type that in at the top and then click on the search tab at the bottom and it will gather all past topics relating to that subject for you.

Going back to the top of the page, on the left hand side you will see two rows of tabs in blue with white writing, when there's a post that you want to save, just go up to the blue tab marked FAVORITE, above the post and click on it, this will then save the post to your favourites page. You can locate your favourites page in your profile page and you can get there simply by clicking on your own username. Once at your profile page you can access your favourites, go to your private messages, edit your profile and view your previous posts.

The CAFCASS post that you've mentioned is actually one of the stickys at the top of the legal eagle section, so you can find it whenever you need to.

Navigating the site will get easier, but if you need further help please don't hesitate to ask. 🙂

Here's a link to the legal eagle section to,get you started.

www.dad.info/forum/legal-eagle

The only thing I would add to the excellent advice above is the I suspect the 20/80 split is a starting position, and that you might be able to negotiate this up a bit. 50/50 isn't going to happen, so it's then a matter of weighing up any legal fees against the increase you may get (but not guaranteed by any means) in the split.

Starting to navigate a bit better now, Many Thanks

Hi There,
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We have spoken briefly in private message, for my experience, you covering her legal fees shouldn't happen, my divorce my ex applied for this and it was refused and a friend who I have been helping through his divorce also had his ex apply for legal fees and again this was denied, I would imagine that the only time it would be awarded would be if you were the main earner on a very high wage whilst your ex didn't work, but as you both work full time I can't see that they would win the costs from you.
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I think that the 80/20 split of the equity of the house is very low, but as actd has said you do need to wiegh up, how much equity is in the house compared to what it may cost to fight for extra, sometimes it's just not worth it in the end and you can spend more trying to get a higher percentage and what you gain is then already spent on legal fees ect.
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I have sent you my email address in private message so feel free to email me some extra details and I will try and help as much as I can, I am not leagally trained but I do have experience from my own divorce and also helping others through thiers.
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GTTS

Hello B Es Dad,

Sorry to hear you are going through all of this. You must look after yourself ! I am sure your are aware gaining access to the children is a separate issue to the divorce but a few things may overlap.

With regard to, quote,"..... she also froze the joint account....." I believe the banks / building societies use the word "blocked" as opposed to "frozen" in this type of situation. "Frozen" is an action the bank themselves take or is initiated by a Court Order if there is suspicion of fraud etc. (this doesn't apply to you).

A joint account can be held jointly where both signatures are required for a transaction or severally. Severally is when each of the signatories can act independently from the other BUT if one of the two "block" an account to stop access for the other person, they themselves are "blocked" also. You need to get a bank statement relevant to the day it was "blocked" to see if she withdrew money out which was not agreed by you. Should this be the case you would be able to use this against her in the divorce if it was purposely done to deny you your rightful share and if it was done purposely for her personal gain.

Albeit the account is "blocked" electronic payments carry on being paid out of the account due to the signed mandate.

MOST IMPORTANT, if your wages are going into this account you must stop that immediately, inform your employer and open another bank account with another bank as you will not be able to access the account to get them out, also when the account is "unblocked" your wife will claim 50% of what is in the account.

You can request statements regarding the account.

The account can only be "unblocked" by either a letter sent to the bank signed by both signatories (a very simple method) requesting the account be "unblocked" or by a Court Order.

Please check with your own bank as I have stated what the procedure is for the one I know. They all operate on similar lines but may vary slightly from each other.

Hello B E's Dad,

Your wife's attitude being as it is, you now know what you are dealing with in the sense that there appears to be no fair play on her part. It is important you gather information which will be required at a later date and to also give you insight as to your position to enable you to present your case in the divorce proceedings.

I would obtain a copy of each utility bill relevant to the service provided, council tax, bank statements, mortgage details. Also financial statements regarding the car/s and credit card statements if applicable plus any other financial obligations there may be relevant to daily living. File these for future reference and also note what your wife pays for, what you pay and what is paid jointly
If there are any credit cards or regular invoices in her sole name then that is her responsibility to pay them, not yours and vice versa.

My personal experience is that I have not yet come across anyone who has been forced to pay the costs / fees of the person they are divorcing or vice versa, each pays their own solicitors fees

Your wife will have to submit to the divorce court complete financial disclosure of her earnings, assets and a list of chattels belonging to her and you will also be required to do the same.

THE HOUSE, the law will make the children priority in that provision must be made for them to have a home to live in. This will influence the situation regarding a suitable agreement reached.
I do not know your finances regarding the house. The following questions I do not want you to answer but hopefully prompt you to consider a number of possible options.
Is it owned jointly with no mortgage?
Is there a joint mortgage? If so your wife is solely responsible for her half and you the other half.
You are both in full time work. Is it possible to sell the house with sufficient equity available for each of you to independently make a deposit on a house each.
Could your wife buy you out and pay you a percentage of the equity and release you from any further mortgage payments?

I think an 80 / 20 split in your wife's favour sounds to me extremely unfair on you.
Another alternative is that if the equity in the house cannot be realized, it is possible to retain your share of the equity and at a time determined when your youngest child reaches, for example, the age of 18 or 21 that the house be sold according to the market price at that time which would then enable you to realize 50% of the equity. It may not be economically feasible as you would still be liable for payment of half of the mortgage.
If your sole name is on the deeds and you pay the mortgage in full or you yourself own the house outright, the percentage of equity would be 100%, in which case you could let your wife live there rent free but responsible for the upkeep of it until as said previously, the youngest child reaches a specific age when the property would be vacated.

Please seek legal advice as I am not legally or financially trained and whatever you do have your decision legally documented.

My comments regarding the house may be feasible, they may not but they have been said to prompt you to enquire of the facts and explore all the options that may be available to you.

Remember with finances, be fair to yourself, you have a life to live also. Added to which you will need a home of your own to cater for when the children stay overnight. When working out your finances take into account the child maintenance you will be required to pay.