It doesn't necessarily mean 'time and money' for me to dispute the facts and figures and submit an alternative, since as you say, I'm effectively a SRL at the moment. It's certainly 'time and money' for my ex though, as she is getting her lawyer to handle it at her end.
It's not my intention to drag this out, but yes the main asset is superannuation. Like I said previously, I originally agreed to keep our main assets (super) and liabilities (debts) separate just to keep things simple, because I was running out of time to take the matter to court and because I figured this agreement which I already knew was in her favour would draw a line under it quickly and simply even if it wasn't entirely 'fair'. But we're now 6 months down the line from that date of agreement and we're still not at a point where the consent orders are finalised and her lawyer is still playing funny buggers with our assets and liabilities to paint a certain picture, and I feel like since the other side has dragged things out considerably, the battle lines are starting to be redrawn a bit and what I was prepared to accept then is not what I am prepared to accept now, especially in light of her attitude towards other parenting matters like the fact that she withheld the children around a Covid technicality and then well beyond their isolation period, which I know should be unrelated to financial matters, but goodwill towards her is at a low point at the moment.
I'm still confused about whether I'm actually right about how the details SHOULD be presented in an application for consent orders though. I mean, how should a car which was always a 'family car' that was shared be drawn up as an existing asset? 50% hers and 50% mine? Or 100% mine simply because it's registered to me? And does it even matter who has the existing assets in terms of ownership when the more important part is the division of said assets?
I mean, we already have an agreement for its value to be split 50/50, but if it appears to be 'my existing asset' then it looks like I had come into the separation/financial settlement with more assets than I actually did. And then the replacement car that I purchased some time after she kept the family car also appears on my side of the ledger, which then makes it appear like I kept 100% of that asset and she got nothing from it, when in fact it should never (morally speaking anyway) have been on the ledger at all since it came from funds I scraped together quite some time after our separation - a time in which I had huge costs incurred due to be kicked out of the family home by IVO and having to rebuild my life from scratch while unemployed (because I was the stay at home primary carer of our child) and meanwhile she kept everything in the house including the car.
While I understand the need to consider the assets finances right up to the date of financial separation/settlement (because of the fact that joint assets can be sold/squirrelled away to hide it from the other party etc), I don't understand how income earned after the separation should be part of that. Especially in my case, when my ex who earns significantly more can essentially spend whatever they want following separation (including on an expensive lawyer) on belongings (that I can't possibly know about since it's not viable to have the chattels of the house valued) etc and therefore have little left to show for it in the bank, while myself on a lower income saves hard to try to rebuild their life in the following 3 years, only for those savings in the bank to end up on the negotiating table for potential division on the ledger.
Because effectively we are drawing up consent orders and therefore affidavits aren't part of the process so none of the above matters I suppose, except unless the registrar decides that it isn't a fair split of assets. But the only way they are going to understand or determine that is through understanding context behind the raw facts and figures, and there doesn't seem to be any way of explaining it. And the other issue is that unless we are in agreement about the facts and figures in the consent orders application, then while in theory we have an agreement about the division of assets, we don't have an agreement about the facts of each person's financial situation as presented in the application. It all gets rather confusing...
It's not my intention to drag this out, but yes the main asset is superannuation. Like I said previously, I originally agreed to keep our main assets (super) and liabilities (debts) separate just to keep things simple, because I was running out of time to take the matter to court and because I figured this agreement which I already knew was in her favour would draw a line under it quickly and simply even if it wasn't entirely 'fair'. But we're now 6 months down the line from that date of agreement and we're still not at a point where the consent orders are finalised and her lawyer is still playing funny buggers with our assets and liabilities to paint a certain picture, and I feel like since the other side has dragged things out considerably, the battle lines are starting to be redrawn a bit and what I was prepared to accept then is not what I am prepared to accept now, especially in light of her attitude towards other parenting matters like the fact that she withheld the children around a Covid technicality and then well beyond their isolation period, which I know should be unrelated to financial matters, but goodwill towards her is at a low point at the moment.
I'm still confused about whether I'm actually right about how the details SHOULD be presented in an application for consent orders though. I mean, how should a car which was always a 'family car' that was shared be drawn up as an existing asset? 50% hers and 50% mine? Or 100% mine simply because it's registered to me? And does it even matter who has the existing assets in terms of ownership when the more important part is the division of said assets?
I mean, we already have an agreement for its value to be split 50/50, but if it appears to be 'my existing asset' then it looks like I had come into the separation/financial settlement with more assets than I actually did. And then the replacement car that I purchased some time after she kept the family car also appears on my side of the ledger, which then makes it appear like I kept 100% of that asset and she got nothing from it, when in fact it should never (morally speaking anyway) have been on the ledger at all since it came from funds I scraped together quite some time after our separation - a time in which I had huge costs incurred due to be kicked out of the family home by IVO and having to rebuild my life from scratch while unemployed (because I was the stay at home primary carer of our child) and meanwhile she kept everything in the house including the car.
While I understand the need to consider the assets finances right up to the date of financial separation/settlement (because of the fact that joint assets can be sold/squirrelled away to hide it from the other party etc), I don't understand how income earned after the separation should be part of that. Especially in my case, when my ex who earns significantly more can essentially spend whatever they want following separation (including on an expensive lawyer) on belongings (that I can't possibly know about since it's not viable to have the chattels of the house valued) etc and therefore have little left to show for it in the bank, while myself on a lower income saves hard to try to rebuild their life in the following 3 years, only for those savings in the bank to end up on the negotiating table for potential division on the ledger.
Because effectively we are drawing up consent orders and therefore affidavits aren't part of the process so none of the above matters I suppose, except unless the registrar decides that it isn't a fair split of assets. But the only way they are going to understand or determine that is through understanding context behind the raw facts and figures, and there doesn't seem to be any way of explaining it. And the other issue is that unless we are in agreement about the facts and figures in the consent orders application, then while in theory we have an agreement about the division of assets, we don't have an agreement about the facts of each person's financial situation as presented in the application. It all gets rather confusing...