Trusted Fiance, Now Loosing My And My Kids House

I have noone to blame but my self. I am awaiting licence in mental health counseling, so I am naturally carrying and helpful to those in need person. I never thought I would be in this position. I have 2 kids, divorced, worked and saved, and went to graduate school to follow my dream to help people and become a psychologist. In my mid thirties. I was engaged to someone I trusted to be a person I can trust. After many years of renting houses, I was finally ready to buy a home and give my kids that one place that they will leave to college from, and will be coming back to on holidays. I had money for downpayment, and for renovations, but I was at school full time and did not work, and my fiance did not have liquid cash but had a successful career as an architect. With stable and growing income. He just never was good with money and did not save. I found a house in perfect neighborhood, it needed renovation, but we decided that it's worth it, because we will keep it for at least 10 years. So without anything in writing, after having a conversation about how we can make it work, we shook hands and he gave me his word that he will not turn on it no matter what happens. The deal was: I put 30% downpayment, he will get mortgage for the rest, the house will be 50/50 ours, but he will pay his 50% of downpayment and investment to me in portions, within 2-3 years. In case we break up, the house will be my home, and his investment property, he would still keep making payments towards the interest free loan I gave him, in a way, and once he reaches 50% with $ we will be real equal partners. During this whole time I paid half of mortgage, taxes, insurance. As you imagine the plan did not stand. Under the stress of living through the remodel, fights about his lack of desire to plan a budget in advance, and not receiving any kind of payments he promised to make monthly, we broke up over nothing, it was building up and 7 months after we bought the house he left. At first he repeated multiple times that he is going to pay me, and made few minimal payments, promising bigger chunks of money. In a mean time I was writing checks left and right to his contractors who needed to be paid to finish the house. Once I literally spent all my money he told me, that he wont be paying me, and that we need to sell. Long story short, he said he just want what he had invested out which is 15% max. But then he said he is going for what is "his" -- 50% and he is forcing the sale. I spent everything I could scrumble by selling jewerly, watches, etc. to pay for lawyer to make the agreement where we split the real shares 85/15 and now he refuses that after months of negotiations. I offered fin 70/30, 60/40 even he says no and started a process of partition of property. The house has a lot of equity which is my cash that I have put in there, he won't let me take equity out even under my own name. I couldn't stop construction, because he designed an addition to the living room, that meant I literally had no wall in the back of the house and had to close the permits and finish that expensive addition otherwise I wouldn't be able to live there or sell it.

So here I am now cannot work because I am waiting for bureaucracy receiving my licence, I survive on child support I receive, which is not much. I sold everything I could, cut expenses on everything and now I have to hire a litigator lawyer who would help me prove that I had an agreement to be paid half, (i have emails and messages, him repeatedly saying that that is in fact the deal) thank God, I kept them. But I cannot hire anyone without spending money, which would worth it, because if he gets 50% I loose 450,000 at least. This is not for me, this is for my kids, I will need to provide them a home when we sell this one, I was paying all the bills, including rent when we lived together with my ex fiance, I helped him build his credit, brought him clients, took care of him, cooked, cleaned, paid for a lot of our travel, and never got anything from him. I believed that if you can help someone in need, you should, especially if you love that person.

I made a mistake and now I have to fix it, he is taking food from my kids' plates, while he has his own apartment, and land investments , and stocks, that he is not selling knowing I spent everything I had and trusted his word.