Divorce, once rare and stigmatised, has become mainstream – 42 per cent of marriages now end this way, meaning nearly half of us who get married can expect to experience it in our lifetime. Just as every marriage is different, so is every divorce. In this column, divorcees reflect on their life-changing experience. Helped by the benefit of hindsight, they’ll share advice and reflections.
Anna*, 31, from Suffolk, who works in governance, tells how her husband used her for financial gain – and why she wishes she’d drawn up a prenup before their wedding. Interview by Lauren Crosby Medlicott
It’s been two years since I left Tom*, and I’ve lost £20,000 in savings – all the money I had been saving since childhood – to legal fees, fighting to keep the house I bought prior to meeting him.
We started dating in 2020. I was 26, had just come out of a long-term relationship and was feeling quite vulnerable after a bad break-up. My friends set me up with Tom, someone I’d heard about through them for a while. It was supposed to be for fun and distraction, but during lockdown we agreed that he would come and live with me – in the house I owned.
Surprisingly, I fell for him. Tom was silly and fun, a good time guy – he seemed steady and calm which appealed to me after my intense last relationship. Two years after we started dating, he proposed. I didn’t expect it at all – and really, deep down, I had doubts about us, but felt I was too far in now to say no. We married in July 2023.
I thought the things that annoyed me about him would change, but they got worse. He was lazy – he didn’t help around the house at all. I owned our house – he came into the relationship in debt, so we’d agreed he would pay towards the bills, but not towards the mortgage. This seemed to make him think it wasn’t his responsibility to look after it. He got really irritable when asked to do chores or help out more. I know now that I was too soft on him, but at the time, I convinced myself that things weren’t too bad.
Our physical relationship had never been amazing, but after our marriage, it got worse – he didn’t seem interested in any intimacy. When I questioned it, he said I had unrealistic expectations. I remember trying to hold his hand on a walk, and he ripped it away from me.
But when I described to a friend the reality of our relationship – that physicality was non-existent, that Tom didn’t pull his weight financially or practically, and that he expected me to wait on him hand and foot – her reaction made me realise his behaviour wasn’t acceptable.
In November 2024, only a year after our wedding, I wrote a letter to him asking him to leave my house, and that I no longer wanted to be married. He left with only an overnight bag, and a week later, after not hearing a word from him, Tom texted to ask me what we were doing about the money situation.
We decided I would keep the house as I had paid for it prior to our marriage, and my childhood savings which amounted to about £20,000. Tom would get all the liquid assets – the car we shared, some of our joint savings, and his ISA account – amounting to about £20,000. Considering he had entered the relationship with debt, this seemed like a fair split.
Then a month later, Tom told me he was hiring a lawyer “to make sure I wasn’t screwing him over”. This lawyer convinced Tom that because we married, he could get upwards of £60,000 from me – which would include a lump sum from the sale of my house. His lawyer’s argument was that although Tom might not be able to touch the deposit and mortgage paid off, he was entitled to the increase in the value of the house, which they worked out at £50,000, plus the liquid assets we’d previously agreed to.
Later, Tom and his lawyer began threatening that Tom was also entitled to the deposit and the mortgage I had paid off.
I then had to hire a lawyer to represent me. The only way I could afford it was to eat into my childhood savings, which I had never touched before. My parents are angry and mad as hell at him – they showed him such kindness and even let us live with them while we had our kitchen done, with my mum doing his washing and ironing.
Although the divorce went through almost a year ago, I am still in this financial settlement battle. As part of this, both parties have to share bank statements, so I know he has himself spent about £13,000 on legal costs on this point – money he could have just kept and carried on with if he hadn’t dragged me through this.
Tom refused to move any of his things out of the house for one year after he left. All of his stuff – clothes, book, toiletries – was there, a constant reminder. Legally, I couldn’t change the locks for a year, seeing as it was technically the matrimonial home, and I felt uneasy that at any point, he would come back for his belongings. The stress of it all has led to me staying with friends and family, as the house I once loved has become such a negative space for me.
As our court case draws closer, I am getting increasingly stressed that the judge might just turn around and say I must give him half the value of my house, even though he never contributed towards it. I feel totally powerless. Although I feel happier and more like myself since having left Tom it has caused me huge stress and in the last few months, I’ve felt emotionally drained and physically exhausted.
I never imagined this could happen to me. I sorely wish I had had a legal agreement drawn up to ensure that whatever the result of our relationship, I would be entitled to the house I owned. Retrospectively, I wish I had ended things with Tom when he convinced me to let him move in during the lockdown – I wish I had trusted the bad gut feeling I had about it. And I definitely should not have married him. My indecisiveness when he proposed should have been a red flag. I’ll never make either mistake again.
If you’re considering marriage, or even a live-in partner, I’d definitely advise that you know for certain that it’s the person you want to build a life with, and require that you both sign legal documents to protect financial assets.
It’s human nature to see the best in people, especially early on in a romantic relationship, the honeymoon period. But things could always shift, and it is worth paying a few hundred pounds to get a legal agreement drawn up to protect any financial assets in case things go south. If that person has your best interests at heart, this shouldn’t be an issue – if it is, it’s a warning sign.
*Names changed on request
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