Getting Divorce - claim on future income

I’m starting to go through a divorce after 30-years of marriage. As far as I know there is no one else involved, certainly not from my part?

We have gradually grown apart over the years not least when the kids where young and I worked 7 days a week both overtime and moonlighting. My wife didn’t go to work but provided the family home and stability something we both wanted and thought important.

Eventually we got comfortable for money, when the kids were about 11 and my wife had got a part time job. I dropped to 5 working days and got stuck into the DIY. I then started to go to night school for several management courses eventually obtaining an MBA. During this period I was studying, a largely solo task.

My wife mean time had taken the kids out for days and to swimming lessons, piano lessons etc. We didn’t have much of a social life often both falling asleep in front of the telly at night.

My MBA got me several rounds of promotion and my working world was different changing me and my outlook. The time with the kids had changed my wife. Later she discovered that her dead mother had been married before and had three boys and a girl that had been in orphanages. This shattered her view of her mother and there was no one to rebuild it. She grew closer to them. I suspect as a result of a bit of guilt that she had a fairly privileged life while her half brothers and sister had been split among several orphanages with varying experiences.

In the nearly five years since she found her other family we have grown remote from each other even though we live in the same house. She has grown extravagant and as I earn most of the money working full time while she was only working part time I decided to separate our finances. At which point she asked for a divorce and I jumped at it.

I discover from my solicitor that everything that we have accumulated – including my salary and pension forms part of the “marriage assets” and that it all has to be split 50:50. I have no problem with splitting the assets like house, car and savings 50:50 but on my future income I find it too much to accept.

My logic is I’m 54 and have been married for 30 and unmarried for 24. The sum of who and what I am, is not just the past 30 years. Some might argue that the first 24 years where more formative.

Looking at it this way my wife has contributed to who and what I am for 56% of my life and splitting that 50:50 would give 18% call on my income, assuming she earned nothing.