What you need to sort out
These are the main issues you need to think about after a split:
- your children
- your home
- your finances
- other property
Your children
You'll have to try and decide who your children are going to live with ('residence'). It might be very clear to both of you who this should be. But if you both want to look after the children, it can be very difficult to reach an agreement. Both of you will probably be worried about what will happen to your relationship with your children if they don't live with you. But that relationship will be better off in the long-run if you can put your own concerns to one side and focus on what's best for your children.
If you're an unmarried father, check whether you have parental responsibility for your children - see our guide, Parental Responsibility for Fathers.
You'll also need to figure out how you're going to divide the costs of bringing up your children between you. All parents (either by birth or adoption) are financially responsible for their children. The parent the children live with will obviously pay for their day-to-day living expenses so, if you don't live with your children, you should contribute by paying 'child maintenance'.
Your home
Your living arrangements and finances can be a real problem after a separation. Your joint income, which might have been just about enough to pay the rent or mortgage on your home, now miraculously has to stretch between two households. It doesn't take a genius to work out that it's going to be pretty stressful sorting this out.
The first thing you need to decide is where you're both going to live. Often couples who own their own home agree that the parent looking after the children should stay there to keep disruption of their children's lives to a minimum, while the other moves out. This doesn't necessarily mean that the parent moving out will give up any share they have in the home - just that they won't be living there or trying to sell it for the time being. Sorting out ownership of the home is a separate issue for you to think about.
Housing law is very complicated. Whether you rent or own your home, you must get legal advice from your local advice agency or solicitor.For more information on the housing issues affecting cohabiting couples see our guide to Your Housing Rights.
Unfortunately, you may not have this luxury. You might be forced to sell your existing home to be able to afford accommodation for both of you.
If you rent your home, check out the terms of your lease - does the landlord have a right to terminate the tenancy if one of you moves out? How quickly can you act - can you end your tenancy now or are you locked in for a few more months?
If you're married or in a civil partnership, the law will treat your home and each of your savings and possessions as 'family assets', belonging to both of you rather than one or the other. When you separate, you'll each be entitled to a 'fair share' of these 'family assets'. The law decides what is 'fair' according to a number of different issues (for more information, see our guide).
If you have been cohabiting, you may have very limited rights. The law does not think of your home, savings and possessions as family assets so, on separation, they'll be kept by whichever of you owns them.
For more details on the rights of cohabiting couples, see Advicenow's LivingTogether Campaign pages by clicking on the following link: LivingTogether.
Your finances
If you're struggling with money after a separation, don't panic. You might be entitled to benefits or other financial help, particularly if you have children.You can check using the benefits calculator on the Turn2us website (see 'Links to Other Websites'). If you have any problem, your local advice agency or Citizens Advice Bureau will be able to help you. You can find them on the Community Legal Advice website (there's a link to the right of this page under the heading 'Links to Other Websites') or telephone their helpline on: 0845 345 4345. Alternatively, you can ask at your local council, local library, or look in the yellow pages.
If you're married or a civil partner, you may be able to claim maintenance payments from your partner. But be aware: these days, courts often only make maintenance orders for a fixed number of years, to help partners who have given up work to get back into the job market.
Cohabiting couples have no rights to maintenance payments for their own benefit unless they have made an agreement about this. But they will, of course, have a duty to financially support their children.You can get information about child support from the website Child Maintenance Options (see 'Links to Other Websites') or telephone their helpline 0800 988 0988.
If you can't repay debts, get some urgent advice - you don't want to end up with legal action over these as well. The National Debtline offers confidential advice on the phone on: 0808 808 4000, and online at the website address to the right of this page under the heading 'Links to Other Websites'.
Other property
Try and work out between you how you are going to share the rest of your stuff - like the furniture, car and pets. Legal disputes over these can cost more than the value of everything you're fighting about.
