Moving out

My wife and I are attempting to cohabit while progressing through divorce. I am regularly subject to verbal and physical attacks by my wife and my 19 year old son.

Last Saturday I was thrown to the floor, and kicked in the back. I have a broken rib. I don't want to report my son to the police, even so. Besides when I went to call an ambulance, my wife stated that she would tell police, I attacked him first. I had to drive myself to a & e.

I have been advised to move out. No one seems to have the answers however because my name is registered on all of the household bills... mortgage, council tax, gas, electric, water.. all in my name. I can not afford to run two properties and getting taken off the bills of not easy. My wife has no income.

But more importantly, my legal advice does not make sense...

I have been told, by a solicitor...."leave the property. Wait until the house is empty (everyone is out). Take what yu want from the property. Do not expect to be able to get and other contents once you move out."

This seems crazy...I am actually being told to get out and under a shadow of darkness, sneak 25 years worth of belongings out of my own house, and I have (maybe) a few hours to do it in.

It's not possible. I have motorbikes, cars. There is a grand piano, chandeliers and other fittings (which I have searched for, made deals for, bought, repaired, installed, etc) in the house. I have furniture that belonged to my hand parents. I physically could not get everything out of this house in an hour.

So I can't move out.

How is that justice?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2022 03:27AM by spartacus.

If your son has broken your rib in a deliberate assault and you won't report it to the police then complaining about injustice looks incongruous.

And I really don't think it is likely that you would be entitled to remove chandeliers and fittings without agreement.

There are two points here....

Firstly, he is still my son. Yes it was deliberate, and I debated with myself if I would report it to the police. While it is a hard decision, it has left me with (I think) two cracked ribs. I would report it apart from that my wife has made it clear that she will tell the police she saw me attack him first.

Knowing how UK justice works...the result would be me in jail.

As for removing items from the house, I was not suggesting that I do so. However I was told to get what I want and don't expect to get a second chance to take anything from the house, That seems very wrong to me. Surely, contents of the house should be split after the divorce is finalised and the house sold. But my solicitor said, quite clearly, that if I moved out, take what I want to take, and do it when she leaves the house, and do not expect that I will be able to get anything else from the property after I move out.

WOW!

If i was a woman...I dont think it would work like that.

I think when your solicitor said take what you want he was meaning your possessions, not the fixtures and fittings.

You are in a bit of a cleft stick here, move out and you have left your wife with the upper hand, stay and you are going to have to put up with her and your sons behaviour. If you stay, perhaps you could think about getting some recording device that you could use to prove that in any altercation you were not the instigator.

Admirable of you not wanting to get your son in trouble, he his you son after all but you are his father, if he has assaulted you then he has no respect for you so don’t feel too hard about betraying him, he is obviously on your wife’s side and the chances of that changing are slim.

Edit. No it generally it is not fair for the bloke and it all appears to be geared for the women, rightly so in some cases, and as men we have to bear some of the responsibility for that. We are sometimes happy to let wifey stay at home and cook and clean rather than build a career so we can’t moan too much when she gets a bigger slice of the pie when it it comes to the crunch. Me, after an almighty row with my then wife when I used the “F” word to her (Fulltime) when our children were more or less self sufficient and didn’t need us to be here, take them to school etc, I suggested she increase her working hours from 2.5 days a week and she would have earned more than me but that wasn’t happening and after the rows and froideur for a couple of weeks I let it go. Come the divorce she was wanting more because I earned more than her and had built up a bigger pension. Had I known then what I do now I would have pushed a bit more but we are where we are, I felt aggrieved but part of it was down to me because I didn’t want to deal with the fall out of the discussion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2022 01:31PM by Andyk.

There is a problem as far as your son is concerned. He is an adult and he has deliberately assaulted you leaving you with two cracked ribs. That was deliberate and not a minor incident. If he does that to his own father without consequences how long do think it is going to be before he does it to someone else?

So far as your wife saying that she will say she saw you attack him first there are several observations to make about that:-

1. You are the one with cracked ribs, not your son.
2. The evidence of one spouse against another is in general inadmissible because the risk of collusion/animus is far too high to make such evidence reliable.
3. If you give in to your wife's blackmail on this you can expect more of the same to say nothing about how your son may treat you in the future.
4. Regardless of whether the police do anything there is an issue of justice here - the apparent lack of which was precisely what you were complaining about.

The point about possessions which your solicitor is making is that if you do not remove and keep safe items which are important to you then there is a good chance that your wife (and apparently your son) will shred your belongings and dump them in the street.

Chattels are usually divided by agreement in the final divorce settlement. If a court has to decide in the absence of agreement then it will usually simply direct that a list be prepared than that wife shall have items numbered 1, 3, 5, 7 etc and the husband shall have items 2, 4, 6, 8 etc. Clearly if one spouse gets to keep or remain in the house then the chances of the other being able to claim any fixtures or items such as beds and sofas are minimal.