Hi. I am planning to divorce my husband at some future point in time. Right now I am thinking about 2-3 years from now. The reason I am not filing now is because of the financial situation and childcare situation with our children. Basically waiting couple years makes a lot of financial sense.
As for now, I'd like to do a legal separation but remain living in the same house. If I can figure out how to live in separate residences I'll do that in a heartbeat, but so far, after 3 months of number crunching, I don't see it happening.
Right now all of our finances are completely joint. If we do legal separation, we need to separate finances as well. I'm thinking that for standard bills/expenses I would be giving him my portion of the bill and he can pay the whole thing.
But what about variable expenses like groceries and general household stuff? Should I just pay my portion of it regardless of how it comes out at the end of the month? Is there a better way to manage it? We take turns shopping and cooking weekly? What would make the most sense?
Also, the family right now is on his health insurance. Should I be paying him back for half of it (less taxes)? Or just the incremental of insuring him and kids vs insuring the whole family including me?
What other things do I need to consider before taking this to the next step?
He was made aware that I am eventually looking to get a divorce, but has chosen to enter a perpetual state of denial. So right now I am not sure what to expect once I seek legal advice and make this our new reality.
As a background, we have no savings (one, but not the main, reason of why I am done with this marriage), a mortgage neither one of us can afford alone, student loans, and a car loan. We have minimal 401k savings from prior jobs. Mine is around $50-60K, his is probably around $130K or may be a little higher, but not by much.
I am earning about half of what he is earning. I have a potential to almost double my income in about 2-3 years, hence the wait, but I need to get certain professional licenses and few more years of work experience. I have signed up for classes for my licenses starting in the spring. My current job provides needed work experience. Also, we have a live in nanny which we cannot stop due to my work schedule and kids' ages. In 2 yrs younger will be old enough where we can get rid of live in and just have part time sitter in the afternoons. Currently, my commute is disgusting - 1:45 one way, 5 days a week, and it's costing me close to $300 and I get $130 back in transit cost reimbursement. This is all using public transportation. He is driving about 15 miles to work one way. We have two cars, but one car stays with the nanny to drive kids around.
Speaking of cars, because we basically have to share 2 cars between 3 drivers, he and I end up sharing one car most of the time. How do we figure out how much gas I need to pay for? During the week he usually drives me to the train station in the morning and either he or nanny pick me up in the evening. In addition, I drive car for my own needs some evenings and sometimes on weekends. Should I be figuring out mileage for these trips? I would hate to have to pay him back for at $0.50 per mile which is corp reimbursement rate. But how do I split gas costs? I am assuming I will be paying half (or whatever %) of the insurance cost and car maintenance and car payment on one of the cars. Where we live is a fairly spread out suburbs, so everything is drivable and such.
I need to get this whole financial issue resolved and separated. I took over all of family finances about a year ago, because I got tired of always stressing about not having any money and never being able to save anything. Overall it's been good. I was able to pay off 2 credit cards and cash flow something that we would normally end up charging on the credit card.
But I am tired of constantly having to check on him and his spending. I don't want to be responsible for his finances any more. I don't want to keep reminding him that we each have on ly $40 of personal spending money a month because that is all I can squeeze out of the budget. I am tired of having to disguise most of my sinking funds that I've been funding since summer because he will try to justify spending everything he can get him hand on. I am literally checking bank and credit statement multiple times a day and question every single charge and I am tired of it.
I am hoping that in couple years my earnings will increase, the child care costs will decreased tremendously, and in this time I will figure out what my next steps are going to be. For now, I feel that I have no choice but to continue living as we are. Separating finances would be helpful for me though as I think it should reduce the mental strain I am feeling.