Unmarried living together split after 18 years sorting finances

[edscdk]

first off my friend is seeking legal advice (already speaking to a solicitor)

I'd be interested to know if anyone knows the likely outcome or has any advice,

They each own a house outright (both are let)

They jointly own two houses (one of which they live in one is rented out)

She has not worked for 10 years - but he takes all the money from her rented house (and his) as well as the jointly owned house, she lives on £400 a month... she still has to pay for all the food and split additional bills from this £400.

So he gets the rent from all 3 houses + his salary + about half her £400 meaning he has managed to buy about 400k in stocks and shares over the years.

She put down the 200k deposit for the house they live in and jointly own (she was well paid before she quit work to look after her mother)

My feeling is all she will get is 50% of the two jointly owned houses and nothing else? (no children are involved)

 

[edscdk]

I did lend her a laptop i7/8gb/256gb SSD 1080p screen which she will use to communicate with the solicitor and do any paperwork (i7 overkill for paperwork i know but its all i had) so there is a tiny IT angle on this to make it relevant to the forum

 

[edscdk]

this friend of yours...

...she looks like she been taken for a ride by her supposed "partner"...

he has also messed her up in the head by constantly belittling her so she has gone from someone capable of earning 70k a year to someone too scared to apply for a job.. he keeps a diary on everything she does, when she goes out, who she went to see

 

[edscdk]

Your friend should speak to a domestic abuse charity, who will be able to advise her on reporting the partner to the police for controlling or coercive behaviour.

It's not really controlling just weired. Most other women would not stand for it but she lost her parents and a baby in quick succession, her best friend died of cancer and about the only other person she knows (other than me and the wife) has mental issues.. (50yr old woman lied down in tescos and was screaming on the floor)

He does not really tell her what she can or cannot do he just moans and complains and takes all the money!.. Up until recently she should it was ok!

 

[edscdk]

Maybe look into coersive control that may help?

she photo graphed all his weird diaries i think the solicitor will be going down that route

 

[edscdk]

Best way to do it would simply be to get him to agree to a reasonable split of the assets based on individual contributions. So she probs gets a portion of portfolio and probs a larger share of joint property she stuck a health deposit down for (like if they contributed equally then 50/50 on the rest after her 200k deposit) - presumably she might want to essentially buy out his share of the house they live in perhaps via giving up her portion of stock portfolio and part of her interest in joint rental property and he can move out. Go see solicitor for advice etc... but might be best to get it finalised amicably as getting into legal disputes could end up costing both more. Ditto to police stuff, that’s surely only an issue if he doesn’t acknowledge that she has a share of the investments and her deposit etc...

She is getting legal advice (he does not know yet) He has issues with money, there will be no amicable split.. He will think he should keep everything apart from her solely owned home,

He is refusing to let her have the rent from her own house or anything from the joint house (she asked him earlier)..

He goes out with his friends and on holiday but she cannot afford it so never goes out or on holiday.. He even makes her pay more for electric if she uses the tumble dryer!

 

[edscdk]

this 1000 times, try and get them to come to a fair agreement. I spent more than a house on solicitors

Yer I was going to excel the problem but the massive unknown is solicitor fees... And I'd hate to adviser her to walk away from a possible 200 to 300k.. I suppose the best I can do is work out what she can easily get without risk and what might be possible if she can snag a good % of his loot.. And even that I'd have to guess a good outcome would be some random %.. Then show her my best guess and let her decide..

 

[edscdk]

How do you know the guy has bought £400k in stock, surly if he was fleecing the woman then he wouldn't have told her what he was doing with the money.

she found the paperwork that was hidden in the house (so he does not know she knows at this point)

 

[edscdk]

Sounds to me like the guy has done the right thing by investing the money over time instead of wasting it on other woman / gambling / drugs. The woman wants out of the relationship as she has found another guy.

I agree with the first bit (investing is good)

second bit - the reason does not really matter..

Personally I think if two people live together for 18 years and merge their assets / income there should be some sensible division of assets,

Just because one partner took the opportunity to siphon off all free cash and try and hide should not make it unquestionably theirs (she probably contributed ~40% of that money over the years with her rental income and large deposit)

what the law says I don't know, which is why I asked for peoples opinions of what might happen.... sounds like she is going to have to spend a lot to get anything other than 50% of the two shared properties..

 

[edscdk]

If anyone was interested, its going to court.. Despite there being 1.2 million involved he is going to represent himself!

her solicitor says she should stay in the joint home (it will help the court case) despite the fact he is hassling her all the time,

Solicitor seems confident she will get more than the legal split 50/50 of the 2 joint owned homes as well as a reasonable lump of the cash (especially since he was pocketing the rent from her sole owned property, the joined owned home, his sole owned home and 50% of her other (small) income)

She did not know about gas lighting she can see now what he has been doing to her

 

[edscdk]

A minor update, she has changed solicitors twice, and in the current practise it been esculated to a more senior solicitor.. He refused to go to mediation so it's booked to go straight to court..

She is still being advised she needs to stay in the house until everything gis sorted..

The guy was abusing her dog and got bitten, she found some letter from an old flame of his and we now know he likes being pegged...

He paid off the last 30k of the mortgage to get the deeds which he has now hidden thinking that means the house is his.

He says as she has no kids he should have everything and she should walk away with nothing..

She caught him eating her dogs dog treats. He says he is malnourished and she is neglecting him (as she will not buy food or cook for him).

He is also fighting with his brother as his mum and dad died and split the money between the 3 siblings .. But for some reason he thinks he should have one of his brothers 3rd as well as his 3rd..

 

[edscdk]

He sounds like a maniac.

He eats dog treats because she doesn't cook for him? I thought they split up 3 years ago.

he obviously has mental issues, he has 2 houses he owns our right, and 2 and are joint owned, his income is about 4000 a month after tax (rent + pension) and he has about 600,000 in shares,

he will eat rancid food, stale mouldy bread, dog food and the neighbours left over food that they drop off for the dogs

solicitor has said she needs to stay in the house to make the split / court case easier (for what ever reason)

 

[edscdk]

This is ongoing she is on her 3rd solicitor, 10s of k spent, I have told her this is a 3 to 6 month job not 4 years.. I have told her to tell the solicitor to do the paperwork to force the sale of the two joint owned properties! The paperwork for that should have gone to court 4 years ago!

I think the solicitors have totally missed the point and because she does not have a clue has just let them lead..

 

[edscdk]

So what's the actual reasoning behind the solicitor changes? There's definitely something she's not telling you here. Does she genuinely have a case, or is that the reason for the solicitor changes? - one runs out of steam and finds nothing tangible to go to court with, so she fires them and moves onto the next one.

Also you mentioned earlier in the thread that she only gets £400 a month, how is she funding tens of thousands in solicitor fees?

She inherited 200k, dunno the exact details of what's the solicitors are doing

I think the solicitors concentrated on a settlement for the whole situation including cash for all the rent he took for decades rather than treating it as several issues and going straight for forcing sale of the houses..

The guy refuses to pay a solicitor, he is abusive to the solicitors when they call him, his parents died which he used as a reason to delay stuff, he had a hip replacment that delayed it more, and then he crashed his bike and was in hospital that delayed stuff..

 

[edscdk]

I think that's maybe part of the issue here too, if the facts are as you say then presumably she is entitled to a share of the two jointly owned properties (if not more of one of them if she paid the deposit). But is she maybe a bit scatty/mental too, obviously this dog food eating/likes to be pegged guy is but she was apparently with him for a couple of decades too and this part of the OP seems absolutely [redacted].



Like why was she ever agreeing to that before things turned bad? How can he just "take" all the money from her rented house? That's in her name right and she's the landlady so ultimately the contracts to let it out to tenants or via a letting agent need to go via her.

She let him, she only left him and stated this because we told her it was not a normal situation (no sex for a decade seperate rooms, she pays for eveything and gets no rent money from 3 houses, she did all the house work and cooking, she was not even permitted to use the house phone) .. She is not right in some way to allow this to happen.

As much as she is not right he is not right wither she showed us his journals where he logged everything she did, letters he sent to her solicitor there he wanted to sue her for neglect as she was not cooking for him any more.. And not cleaning the house..

 

[edscdk]

This is text book coercive control and financial domestic abuse. With the new laws that’s have come on the police will be very familiar with this.


Whilst I agree about white knights, your immediate assumption it’s nonsense when this kind of thing does happen frequently shows your probably hate women and jump to assume they are lying is a bit concerning. You are the other extreme to the pathetic white knights out there



So he’s mentally ill.

What have the police said about domestic abuse? Easy way to get him removed from the house is a order or non molestation order.

She moved out a few years back.. Police were not involved he never hit her or threatened her.. It was a case of gaslighting I don't really understand how it can happen but it's a thing..

 

[edscdk]

Has OP boffed the lass yet?

Nope she fat and old..

 

[edscdk]

Is the rent from her properties/income still going to the bloke?

She should have been keeping her rental income herself all this time.

All very weird setup.

He split the rent for a while then said he could not afford to do it any more and kept it all.. She got her solicitor to give the tenants notice last month

 

[edscdk]

Did this happen?

I think that was jsut as covid started everything got shut down and it went to limbo / letter / email exchanges with the solicitor..

 

[edscdk]

If she isn't working and he is, then he is a moron. He would get taxed at his tax rate, she could have taken advantage of the tax free rate.
Then again he may not be paying tax, which then means he is placed at a disadvantage if played correctly using the right words. Or in trouble with the tax man

he is mentally ill there is no logic... 2 toilets in the house he lives, both cisterns have to be filled with a bucket - he says he cannot afford to have the fixed (1 has been broken for over a decade)... He was eating dinner scraps left for their dogs by the neighbor..

After she left he wrote a letter to her solicitor saying she had not looked after him properly and he had malnutrition also that she cannot take the new TV she purchased as he did not have the money to replace it... He also wrote a letter of complaint to the solicitor when she cancelled her netflix sub, and another when the amazon prime stopped working for the same reason

the list of crazy could go on and on and on

we are always excited to get updates from various people involved its like a crazy TV drama, i keep egging her on to get it fixed cos his actions make me mad (if we were not pushing her to fix it i think she would let him keep everything and walk away)