When my wife and I got married in 2020, we never combined finances. I added her to my account (just removed her), and I think the plan is after she changed her name we would combine finances. It never happened.

We made roughly the same amount the first few years, then the last year we were together she made more than me. She works at a kindergarten, I work self employed in construction, mainly by myself.

From the beginning I paid all the main bills, rent, car insurance, phone, other utilities, car maintenance, etc. She did most of the grocery shopping and bought her own beauty products, gas, etc.

I was slowly saving money until about mid 2022 when I started having health issues, and we had a bit of car issues. I did not save any more money after this time. Then the last two years I had a lot of medical and health expenses that cut into my savings.

While we were married every few months we would talk about finances and I would express my frustration that I felt like I was treading water financially, and she would reply with, "but I am saving money" and "my money is your money", then I would feel better for a while because if I looked at it that way, WE were saving money for a future house. I think the last conversation about our finances was mid 2024 and she said she had $40k in her savings.

After she left I spiraled into a deep depression and could not keep up with the business side of my work at all, and within 4 or 5 months had burned through my savings and in the next four or 5 months stacked cc debt (under $6000) and all the money I have been making has just been keeping that debt from getting larger. I opened a lower interest loan from my bank recently and mostly paid off the cc.

TL;DR If I file for divorce, would it be reasonable to just ask for a set amount from her, e.g $15,000 instead of trying to do an equal division?

I really am not trying to gouge her, and don't want to deal with the hassle of finding out what 50/50 is. I have some $ in my self funded retirement account <$10k, and other than that just debt. To me $15k from her would get me out of debt and would be reasonable.

I basically was her private mechanic and paid her rent, car insurance, and phone for 4 years. I was happy to do it and didn't see our relationship as transactional back the. But she made it clear our relationship was transactional... And the way she strung me along and put me down at the end really hit me hard. I never carried a balance on my cc before this, and I still struggled with work some days due to depression but nothing like this.