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Legal & Financial Financial implications of divorce The price of divorce The price of divorce
This is a true story about a friend mine. If you know someone who did something similar while getting divorced then add your thoughts about whether this is good divorce advice. Use the link at the bottom of the page.
A circus romance
A friend of mine had been married for over 20 years. She met her husband when they both worked for Billy Smart's circus in the 1970s. She was the wardrobe mistress and he was the lion tamer's assistant. They ran away from the circus to set up home together in a caravan at a safari park.
Long marriage, instant departure
26 years later he dumped her for a woman young enough to be his daughter. By then they were living in a modest but comfortable house, had two sons and he had his own landscaping business. She had no idea that her husband had been having an affair. The first that she knew that anything was going on was the day he telephoned to tell her he wasn't coming home and was moving in with a woman he had met while training to be a counsellor.
What to do next
Initially she was shocked and deeply hurt but ever pragmatic my friend went about securing the best deal she could for her two boys and herself. She was determined to leave solicitors out of the equation and set about getting divorced. The legal side of things in a divorce is relatively straightforward as long as it is uncontested. It's really only about two things; money and children. As the boys were both over sixteen there was no problem there but then there was the division of the spoils.
Getting as much as she could
Playing on his feelings of guilt my friend bullied her husband into signing over the house to her. It had a small mortgage which she continues to pay. She emptied their joint accounts going so far as to forge his signature on several documents. He got only a small endowment and even smaller pension.
Was this the right thing to do?
What she did was not fair and in part downright illegal. Her husband had worked all through their marriage and had paid the majority of the mortgage on the house. He may not have been the ideal husband, he had a pretty close relationship with the bottle and was not the most attentive father in the world. Judging by what my friend has told me were her actions justified?
