I like seeing the repeated usage of this. One thing that I'm a great believer in is never thinking that I'm the smartest guy in the room.
It's good in some ways that he's willing to do the division of the funds right now. Just make sure that you don't sign anything that identifies this as the final disposition. Keep all your options open until the final complete deal is decided.
As you probably know by seeing our other stories, pretty much everything is negotiable, but the general guidelines here and I believe there are 50/50. So the fact that he's wanting to abandon property means that what he leaves behind gets taken out of your share.
The legal spend is a thing. When I first met with my lawyer I said that I wanted to cap the spend at $4,500. I'm currently at about $7,000 and my case is a lot more simple than your's but almost done (one last filing to be done). Remember that each and every interaction with your lawyer or their office will cost you. They will expect a retainer up front (mine was $2,000) and you'll need to keep that topped up. Check with your bank and perhaps family to see what sort of funds you can draw on. I was glad that I did. Part of keeping the legal spend down for me was to avoid doing what I called "looking for nickels in the couch cushions". Decide what hill you are willing to defend but also have an idea on what you are willing to spend to do that. There's no sense spending $500 in legal fees over a $20 frying pan.
For the lawyers, they see this all the time and it's a fill-in-the-forms sort of thing. So many of them - including mine and my STBX's are not very creative unless you push them. I did have to have a "come to Jesus" moment with mine where I pointed out very plainly that I was unhappy with the lack of attention that my case was getting specifically the lack of preparation that she was doing pre-meeting. Don't allow yourself to be railroaded and don't sign anything that you don't fully understand. What helped me too was the lawyers were going through their checklists and wanted me to sign off on the equity split on the house before we moved on to other things. I stopped them and said that I didn't want to approach things piecemeal and negotiated a transfer of equity plus support deal that was all inclusive. My deal has basically two lines. I gave her a fair amount of money out of the house which I added to the mortgage and I give her a monthly payment. ALL other items were deemed to be resolved without bothering to identify them. By stating ALL, that makes it tough for either of us to go back and open things up. Each clause is a crack.
Good luck - hope that helps.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
