Money and home

If you are at the beginning of the divorce process, a real concern you may have is what the financial outcome of your split will be. You may well have worries over whether you'll be able to keep the family home, how much money you'll have to live on and whether your children will have to change schools. These pages look at some of these crucial questions in more depth.

  • For information on child maintenance visit our child maintenance pages.
  • If you are not married to your partner or in a civil partnership visit our living together pages.

Can't agree?

If you and your partner can't agree about sorting out the finances you can ask the courts to help.

The courts are able to make a range of orders for cash payments, transfer of property or other assets, maintenance and pension sharing.

Click here for more information.

Ask the expert: Resolution's Nigel Shepherd on money and home

Determining how much money you will get

At the moment, when a marriage or civil partnership fails, the courts use their discretion to decide how a family’s finances and property are divided up. This means that they look at all the circumstances of the case but will put the welfare of the children first. In particular the courts will look at:

  • The welfare of any children in the family
  • Your respective financial positions now and in the forseeable future
  • The standard of living you each enjoyed during the marriage or civil partnership
  • Your ages and the length of the marriage or civil partnership
  • Any physical or mental disabilities
  • Contributions made or likely to be made to the welfare of the family
  • Conduct if it would be unfair for the court to ignore it but it is very rare for conduct to be taken into account
  • The value of any benefits you would lose on divorce or dissolution of the civil partnership

Deciding on housing arrangements

It is impossible to say decisively at the outset of a divorce or dissolution who will get the house. With details of your circumstances your solicitor can give you an informed opinion as to the division of your assets.

If you and your partner can't agree on who will get the house, or any other asset, the court can be asked to decide this. It is the Judge's job to apply a test of fairness.

There are no hard and fast rules as to who gets what but the Judge will look at a number of different factors:

  • Given that the needs of any children are the first consideration it will be important to make sure that a suitable home is maintained for them. This doesn't necessarily mean that the parent with the day-to-day care of the children will keep the house. Where there is insufficient money for both households, courts can take into account the fact that the non-resident parent will need somewhere large enough to allow them to have the children to stay overnight.
  • It may be that the family home can be sold with the proceeds divided between the couple (not necessarily in equal shares) allowing both to re-house suitably.
  • Alternatively, the property could be transferred to one person with the other perhaps receiving a greater share of the assets.
  • A less common approach would allow one person to stay in the house with the other keeping an interest in the property, receiving their share at a later date. This might be when the youngest child has finished full-time education.

If you and your partner are renting under a joint tenancy and are unable to agree between yourselves who will get the house or flat, the court will consider factors such as the needs of any children, your respective housing and financial needs, the circumstances in which the tenancy came about and your suitability as a tenant. If a right to buy has been acquired, this will be taken into account.