In my cirumstance there were only two things that i decided to be firm on and stand my ground 1) that i would have equal custody of the kids 2) the financials would be sorted and it would be a clean break
I tackled this out fairly early and but getting a final agreement was pushed all the way until a week before my W moved. And its fair to say that she is really angry about it and feels i have stolen her money. Theres a lot more too it than that but doesnt matter here.
anyway we quickly came to an agreement that I would buy her equity in the house off of her (for a figure which was both the maximum i could raise and roughly 50% of the equity) and that everything else would be a clean break with debts laying where they lay. Now in truth this is a lot worse for me than it really should have been given she is leaving me and committing adultery but in the scheme of things pretty reasonable.
Now you might not want to go down that but I think its worth your time to work through what all the assets/liabilities that are between you and see what outcomes you think works best (lump sum vs spousal maintenance etc.)
as a starting point and sorry if you know this but you need to consider (vanilla can add)
Properties Investments and annuities Cars Pensions Income Credit Cards and other debts
Roughly speaking add all this up and divide by two and thats what you should end up with in lump sum terms. Even if you do nothing with the information is useful for your own information and to an extent peace of mind if things do start getting difficult.
Both mid 30s, 2 young kids BD 7sep14 XW moved on long ago, now living with OM1 D paperwork in progress
