Property and finances
Arranging your finances and property can be difficult during a breakup.
For a simple visual guide to the financial mediation process, please click here.
Typically, the sorts of things you will probably need to think about are:
- Where everyone will live.
- What will happen to the mortgage or tenancy.
- How assets will be shared or distributed. This can include equity (if you own a property) and pensions (if you are married).
- Budgeting & dealing with debts.
- Maintenance and child support.
On all these issues the final outcome will depend very much on your views about:
- What is "fair". (which may not necessarily mean a 50/50 split)
- What is realistic.
- What best meets the needs of all members of the family, particularly the children.
Your mediator will assist you and your former partner to make a full disclosure of your finances which will be set out in a manner acceptable to a court. The mediator will then:
- Help you to identify and understand your assets, liabilities, income and expenditure.
- Use this information to help to explore the options available to you and the likely consequences of each.
- Help you to negotiate and agree proposals with one another for sharing your finances in a way that you consider to be fair.
- Produce summaries of the mediation meeting outcomes that you can use to obtain legal advice alongside mediation. (See Helping to keep your legal costs down.)
- Produce a Memorandum of Understanding setting out all your proposals which can be used by a solicitor to make your agreement legally binding.