How can it be fair?

[Shep]

I am expecting London Bubble to jump headfirst into this post.

My Mother has just telephoned me with some interesting news. I was divorced in 2003. The Judge ordered that my ex wife could keep the house a 5 Bedroom detached house with no mortgage valued at £320,000 then, she could keep our business unit valued at £75,000 also with no mortgage, £50,000 of Endowment policies, her Mazda MX5 Sportscar and all the house contents.

I could keep my new very small 3 Bedroom house, which was worth £110,000 with a £60,000 mortgage. He also awarded me all costs mine were £9,000 and hers were £45,000. so i effectively walked away with

NEGATIVE £4000

When i met her she was living in a rented flat on benefits, and i had bought my first house and had already paid of my mortgage i was 23 years old. Its called bloody hard work. She never worked in the next 16 years up to our divorce apart from 1 year at IBM as a secretary.

She sold the business Unit last year for £150,000 and my Mother has just told me that she has sold the house for £675,000.

So by may calculations she has had £675,000 + £150,000 + £50,000 from this divorce or £875,000

How can this possibly be fair? I had -£4000 !!!!! My advice to any young men thinking of getting married

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. It is the worlds greatest rip off, No benefits for a man whatsoever and plenty of downside.

Or if you are going to do it protect yourself completely. I now have an offshore company which holds my few remaining assetts, and those i will get in the future from yet more hard work. I am not going to let any gold digging women and there are plenty of them out there, rip me off again.

I am really pissed about this, 25 years of hard work completely down the drain, Over to you London Bubble

[Sharribee]

THat's really tough Shep and I can see why you advise against getting married, although as a woman I can see a few benefits.

I wonder how it would work if it was the other way around, would you have been given the same as her if your roles but not sex reversed. SOmehow I doubt it

[Slimie]

That IS tough, but on the other hand I know a couple who have been married for 67 (yes...sixty seven!) years and are as content and as happy as any couple I know.

Except when he drives

Divorce sucks, in so many different ways. I've only ever seen what it does to a couple and really don't want to go down that road one bit!!

-Simon

[Whealie]

Le Mans Trip - UPDATE

Boys and Girls

I am going to apologise profusely but i am not able to make this event this year, but i have a very good reason.

On Saturday 21st April at 3pm i get married at Guildford Registry Office to Anna my long time girlfriend. When i put this trip up i knew i was going to get married, what i did not know was that 3pm on the 21 st April was he only decent available date !!!!!

White man speak with forked tongue

[Shep]

Mabel

Thanks very much for those words, i genuingly appreciated that. I am certainly not a greedy or grasping person, all i wanted was some fairness.

I said to the judge, that she could keep it all until our youngest daughter left home, then we could sell it and split the money, NO

The worse bit is that i have not seen my 2 children Jack and Grace for 5 years now. Forget the money that hurts far more.

Anna is Ukranian in there country if you get married, you both have to register your assetts and debts before the marriage with the Notaire. If you then get divorced, each party keep all the assets they brought into the marriage and any others that have been acquired while married are split exactly 50/50. It seems such a good system and in practice works very well becuase it is fair.

I thought it was the same here, my lawyer told me that a man with children would be very lucky to get 20%. It does not matter what you brought to the marriage, or who ended the marriage for whatever reason. I see a lot of male friends with plenty of assetts and think that just one little problem with the wife and they would lose the lot, most Men do not realise how little they actually have until it is too late. It also gives women a huge incentive to Divorce, When you divorce there is the Petitioner who starts the divorce and the Respondant. The Petitoners last year for Divorce were 84% women, Coincedence?

It is not a fair or reasonable contract at present, which in my opinion is a real pity.

[Shep]

Whealie not at all. I have lived with Anna for 4 years. I have told her straight that if she is a Gold Digger she will get nothing primarily becuase i have very little now in relation to the old days, and secondly everything is structured offshore, and will continue to be in the future. That was my advice in the first post, if you are going to get married protect yourself.

Becuase she is Ukranian, we need a visa to live together, that can only be achieved through marriage. I am not happy about this at all, Anna has proven to me through actions not words that she is a great women and i very much want to keep our relationship going but the only way we can do that the way the visa law is structured at present is marriage. However if it was my free choice i would prefer not to be married to anyone, becuase the present marriage contract is a farce for any man.

Any man who does not believe me as regards this, try a divorce and see how you get on

[Sharribee]

Shep I really feel for you, and I am all for equality but a firm believer that it goes both ways, yes I like having the door opened for me but will also hold the door open for others reguardless of what sex they are. When Caitlin was born Jason and myself were not married, we went to register her and the registar asked me if I was sure I wanted her in his family name because it may give him more parental rights - duh, he has equal parental rights he is her father.

More often than not the women will always come out better off, so I must be the unluckiest person in the country, when my first husband left ( or was that encouraged to leave ) he walked away with far more than me and that was with no children he left me with £10,000 debt and a negative equity on my house then refused to pay anything towards getting divorced 6 years later knowing that I wanted to marry again and couldn't without it. For over 10 years I recieved bailiffs and final demands for debts that he was running up.

[Slimie]

Shep I really feel for you, and I am all for equality but a firm believer that it goes both ways, yes I like having the door opened for me but will also hold the door open for others reguardless of what sex they are. When Caitlin was born Jason and myself were not married, we went to register her and the registar asked me if I was sure I wanted her in his family name because it may give him more parental rights - duh, he has equal parental rights he is her father.

More often than not the women will always come out better off, so I must be the unluckiest person in the country, when my first husband left ( or was that encouraged to leave ) he walked away with far more than me and that was with no children he left me with £10,000 debt and a negative equity on my house then refused to pay anything towards getting divorced 6 years later knowing that I wanted to marry again and couldn't without it. For over 10 years I recieved bailiffs and final demands for debts that he was running up.

Hussy!!

So sad to hear about the iniquity of divorce, it staggers me that a couple who have been close enough to be married can become so seperate and I have nothing but sympathy for the people involved. It must be cr@p.

-Simon

[taffy]

my heart goes out to you Shep, you really are a trier and sounds like your still going strong and getting stronger, i was married at 19 and divorced at 20 we had nothing to fight over appart from my two girls what i was stopped from seeing (the ****ty woman she is) but they do get older and decide for themselves they want to see there dad, your day will come mate mine did and now i have two lovely grandchildren to.

[Chad]

yup it suck been there done that ... cant get access to my baby girl (well she's 8 now but ive seen so little of her that i still think of here as my baby girl)

the cash side of it is bad but nothing compared to how they can tear you up by using you kids against you..... now that really sucks lucky my wife now is able to pour oil over troubled water and we have a loverly little girl together..... she has a girl from a previous as well but is very good with how she treats her ex and hes a complete ****... so its not always the woman just more often than not