We Agreed to Wait a Year Before Divorcing

I was sat in my car outside Tesco, engine off, shopping list forgotten, when it properly hit me: I had no idea where I'd be living in six months. Rachel and I had decided to separate three weeks earlier, but beyond "we'll sort it out amicably," we'd done precisely nothing. The girls were in the middle of their A-levels, we were both exhausted from years of low-level bickering about money, and now I was having a minor panic attack in a car park because I couldn't answer basic questions about my own life.

Where would I live? How much could I afford to pay Rachel for the house? Who was covering the phone bill? What about the credit card debt we'd racked up last year? And the bigger stuff, the stuff that kept me awake at 3am: could I still help pay for driving lessons? What if the boiler packed in? Was I going to be one of those divorced dads living in a bedsit, seeing his daughters every other weekend?

I'm 55. I'd been married for 24 years. Rachel and I hadn't had some dramatic falling out or affair. We'd just grown apart, like everyone says, and lately we'd been arguing about everything. Money, mostly. She thought I was too tight with the credit cards. I thought she was too relaxed about the overdraft. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle, but by Spring 2024, we were just tired of it all.

The thing was, we both still cared about Emma and Sophie. They were 17, taking their A-levels, and the last thing they needed was their parents having a messy divorce right before exams. We'd agreed we wouldn't divorce until after they'd gone to university in September 2025. That gave us over a year to get everything sorted properly, take the pressure off the girls, and hopefully stay civil through their final year at home.

But agreeing to wait and actually knowing what we were waiting for turned out to be two completely different things.

My mate Michael, who'd divorced two years earlier, had warned me about legal fees. He'd spent £28,000 on solicitors and ended up selling the house to split everything. I couldn't afford that. Rachel couldn't afford that. And honestly, the idea of some stranger in a court deciding what happened to our home, our savings, and our relationship with our daughters made me feel physically sick.

So there I was in the Tesco car park, googling "how to separate without divorce" on my phone like some sort of relationship disaster tourist.

That's when I read about a separation agreement.

The basic idea made sense immediately. You write down what you're both agreeing to, get it checked by solicitors, and then you've got something solid to work from. It's not quite the same as a divorce settlement, but it's legally recognised and, importantly, it meant we could make our own decisions instead of leaving it to a judge.

Rachel and I sat down that weekend, once the girls had gone to their resepctive Saturday jobs, and made a list of everything we needed to sort out. It wasn't a fun afternoon. We had to talk about all the things we'd been avoiding: the house, the savings, the credit cards (there were three of them, all with high balances), who was paying what bills, and how we'd both keep supporting the girls financially.

The house was the big one. We'd bought it in 2008, right before everything went sideways with the economy, and we'd only just got the mortgage down to a sensible amount. It was worth about £380,000. I couldn't afford to buy Rachel out, and she didn't want to uproot the girls before university. So we agreed: she'd stay in the house with the twins until they left for uni in September 2025, and then we'd sell it and split everything 50/50.

But what about the mortgage payments? The bills? We were both still working, both contributing to the household, but we weren't exactly rolling in money. We agreed I'd move into a rented flat nearby (so I could still see the girls regularly), and I'd keep paying half the mortgage and half the major bills until we sold. Rachel would cover the day-to-day stuff like food and utilities.

Then there were the credit cards. Rachel's Barclaycard, my Halifax card, the high rate one we'd used for the kitchen renovation. Combined, we owed about £18,000. Another thing we'd been arguing about for months. We agreed we'd both take responsibility for paying off the cards in our own names, and we'd split the high rate one down the middle.

And the girls. God, the girls. We both wanted to keep helping them with driving lessons, their phone contracts, spending money. We agreed we'd both contribute £200 a month each to a joint account just for them, and we'd split any big expenses (like if they needed a new laptop or wanted to go on holiday with friends) on a case-by-case basis.

On paper, it looked simple. In reality, I was terrified one of us would change our minds. What if Rachel decided she wanted me to move out sooner? What if I couldn't afford the rent and the mortgage? What if we started arguing again and the whole thing fell apart?

That's when a friend suggested we get it all written up properly as a separation agreement.

We used a mediator to help us talk through the details and make sure we hadn't missed anything obvious. Then we each saw our own solicitor to check we understood what we were agreeing to and that it was fair. The whole thing cost us about £1,200 each – a fraction of what Pete had spent on his divorce.

Once the separation agreement was signed, something shifted. I could sleep again. I knew exactly where I'd be living, what I'd be paying, and what would happen to the house. Rachel knew I wasn't going to suddenly decide I wanted my name off the mortgage, or stop contributing to the girls' costs. The twins knew we had a plan that meant they could focus on their exams without worrying about their parents' mess.

It wasn't perfect. I still had moments of panic about money, about whether I'd ever meet anyone new (the dating scene at 55 is scary at best), about whether I was doing the right thing. But I could actually think about those things now, instead of lying awake at 3am worrying about where I'd be living or whether we'd end up in court.

The separation agreement gave us breathing room. We had a plan with some legal weight behind it, but we hadn't rushed into divorce while emotions were high and the girls needed stability. When they went off to university this autumn, we'll start divorce proceedings and convert the separation agreement into a final consent order. But by then, we'll have had over a year to get used to the idea, to prove to ourselves we can stick to what we agreed, and to let the girls finish their A-levels without the word "divorce" hanging over everything.

I'm writing this from my rented flat. It's fine, not amazing. I've got the girls with me this weekend, and they're both revising for mocks. The boiler at the house did pack in, actually, back in November, but because we'd agreed how to split unexpected costs in the separation agreement, we'd actually taken out a service plan, so it was covered under that. That saved us a £5,000 bill as well! Rachel and I aren't friends, exactly, but we're not enemies either.

And I can sleep at night. Which, six months ago in that Tesco car park, felt completely impossible.

This is the guide to Separation Agreements that got me started on this journey.