So I have been doing my research and using the search engine here to try to find some answers and now I am thinking about a strategy and I need support to correct any gaps in my reasoning. I have a meeting with lawyer next week.

Background: I am a high income individual that luckily has a hybrid work from home job that is fairly flexible. Wife quit her job after childbirth because she had the option to because we are financially secure and has been a stay at home mom. We have been married for 6 years and she only worked 1 year prior to her delivery of our one child who is now 5. There was one episode of infidelity on my part because we had a dead bedroom after pregnancy for over a year. Otherwise no history of any substance use, abuse etc in household. While I love my child to death due to circumstances they are much closer to my wife by a substantial margin and I know my wife would want more than 50/50 legal and physical custody (she offered 70/30 split for both physical and legal custody) and will go to litigation for it. Given 90% of all assets were earned by me, I have an interest in getting as much as possible.

Common assets 1. Home that I purchased prior to marriage and I never put her name on the deed because we fought pretty hard right after our wedding. I paid off around 40% of the house pre marriage and we put in around 350k of renovations during marriage. I used an online calculator and I believe she has roughly a 20% stake in the value of the home. I still have around 200k in debt left at less than 3% interest.

  1. Work 401k. I max this out every year and employer has a generous match and non voluntary. The issue here is that work changed 401k companies several times. I have roughly 3 years of retirement here prior to marriage.

  2. Brokerage account that I had prior to marriage. I have put in at least 100k here during the marriage.

  3. Multiple bank accounts that have been used extensively with quite a bit of prior money but the money moves a lot since they are used to autopay bills, credit cards etc.

Items 1-3 are the big ticket items and I don’t have anything else fancy other than a recently purchased used car which is completely paid off by selling off two of my old cars prior to marriage.

Separate assets 1. I have several old 401k accounts from multiple companies which I was too lazy to consolidate. They just do their own thing but have probably grown 8-10% when the institutions show the performance.

  1. I have inherited some property from a deceased family member during the marriage which I have not transmuted by using inherited bank funds to pay for the properties.

  2. I have also inherited a few beneficiary IRA and brokerage accounts as well which have not been touched with common asset funds.

My original strategy after some research was to do a mediated uncontested divorce where I would give her around 20-30% of the common assets. The majority of the assets would be cash from banks, and a portion of the brokerage account. I prefer not to mess with my 401k account. I would then agree with her custody wishes of 70/30 with her saying she would take less alimony to compensate for the increased child support. However when we started talking numbers she flat out told me she gets what the law will give her which is 50/50 for assets and she might budge a little (as in less than 10-20k) since I am giving her 70/30 on custody. Obviously this puts me at a disadvantage (I know no one wins in a divorce).

So my new thought which I need help on is that if she is so firm about the 50/50 asset division. I should then be firm about the 50/50 custody. She is expecting me to take the child to school and pick them up every weekday when she gets some job doing the usual 8-5 and she gets the fun weekends and holidays. I plan on just hiring a forensic accountant to review all my assets and show me what she would get in a 50/50 asset split knowing at the end of the day if she doesn’t negotiate on alimony and assets to make it favorable to me then there is no reason for me to budge on 50/50 on custody. This is based on the assumption that if we go to trial the judge just defaults to 50/50 for everything per California law.

Child support will just be calculated per the child support calculator and once she gets a jobs I plan to get it recalculated if it seems worthwhile. If she were to get a job I would likely make at least 6x more and possibly up to 10x more.

Any advice or thoughts? ?