During a divorce, what if the other person (wife or husband) has lot of debt?

Question

Suppose man and wife got married and did not have a pre-nup agreement. The man owns a house worth, say £300k but has mortgage of say £200k (just random figures). The woman doesn't own the house or has any valuable possessions.

Now suppose the couple got divorced, how much would the husband have to pay the wife in settlelement??

The questions is for people who live in UK.

Answer 1

1/2 of the value of the assets less liabilities.

so in your example the house is sold, the mortgage company get their 200K and the husband and wife get 50K each.

let us assume she has got 5K on credit cards. then the assets of the "couple" are now 100K - 5K = 95K so she gets 47.5K and the credit card is paid off.

when i split with my g/friend we had house worth 40K, car worth 2K, mortgage of £38K, loan of 3K and 1K on credit card.  So I got the house and the car but also had loan and c/card.  She walked away with nothing but also no debt.

Answer 2

He would most likely be made to sell the house to pay off the mortgage and split the remaining cash half and half, depending on how talks go in court and what each person agrees to.