Child maintenance - help!

dirtysexymonkey

how can he have a £35000 income if the csa have assessed him as having to pay £260 a month. he obviously doesnt have as much money as you think he does. your choice is simple, accept what he can afford and be thankful that he is in effect paying off £10/12,000 worth of debt on your behalf, or be prepared to pay that money yourself and receive the £260 each month for until your children are 18.

kb92830

Katherineanton,

Having been through a divorce I am not saying you are wrong to question where you are now, however my point was that you made some decisions (not necessarily the right ones) during the initial split. The problem is that it does not appear that you sought advice or legal ratification of the situation at the time, had you have done so it may have been highlighted to yourself what you could of or should have expected. I am not suggesting that you shouldn't revisit the arrangement, however, if I were your ex I would look certainly look to offset the value of the negative equity against any potential child allowance so at the end of the day you may not be any better off than you currently are as you will just be offsetting an income against a liabilty. I would also point out that the only link that there is between maintenance and contact is that the maintenance will reduce proportionally per day your ex has them, he may also force them to be with him for the originally agreed periods of the week potentially reducing your maintenance income by nearly half.

You have pointed out that you yourself have a new partner, if you expect your Ex's new partner to contribute, do you not think you Ex will expect your new partner to do the same.

Just to put this all in to perspective for you, my Ex who did very well out of the divorce (3 bed House paid in cash, lump sum, new car, large monthly maintenance payment) tried to take me back to court based upon the fact that I had a new partner both of us with good incomes and yet she had had another 2 children with a husband who refused to work,. What she argued was that given that she now had 4 children rather than the original two we had that she and her husband needed a bigger house as three bedrooms were not enough when she had 4 children (and strangely enough she thought it was my obligation to contribute to her having to pay a mortgage). The magistrates (all female) nearly laughed her out of the courtroom on the basis that they couldn't quite believe what she had been getting and that she had the audacity to ask for more based upon the choices she had made after we had divorced. As well as nearly laughing her out of court they also ordered that the original order be halved in terms of monthly payment from myself. I have only added this statement as sometimes an independant person will look at the situation with less emotion and will see not only the immediate negative impact we see as individuals but also the positives aswell.

If you do plan to pursue you ex please make sure your have considered all aspects of what you are looking for as there may well be some surprises that you have not thought of.

What I would add is please do not think I am bitter about the divorce and the cost of it. This could be farther from the truth and I generally look back and laugh about the whole situation. The only aspect I do not laugh about is not be able to watch my daughters grow up on a daily basis.

FBaby

To be fair, kb, it does work the other way... if the nrp goes on to have more children, csa to the first children will reduce in accordance, so either the first children have to do with less because of half-siblings, or the pwc has to foot up the difference. So although I do agree with you totally, the system is encouraging the thoughts of your ex when it comes to the nrp home life situation...

katherine, a few questions if you don't mind. Was the initial mortgage £220k or was the house remortgage? If remortgage, what was the reason? Was the house already in negative equity when you moved out? Surely if the house was in negative equity or breaking even and you don't care about future access to equity, why didn't you sign the house over to him? Why don't you suggest it to him now? Yes, he is taking the risk if he needed to sell the house tomorrow as liable for the full negative equity, but if he intends on keeping the house long term, surely he would be greatly gaining from you signing it over as the equity will be his 100% without having to worry about you coming to get a slice of it.

Sounds to me like the house should be signed over and you should get what csa says you should get monthly.

skibadee

Would you not of been better off staying in the house with the children rather than him?

Katherineanton

Again, many thanks to you all for the replies.

I feel that my situation has not come over correctly:

- The house was in negative equity when we split by about £20k (and still is).
- The divorce agreement said that he would share child care 50/50 (obviously I wouldn't dream of asking for maintenance if he was keeping to that!) The reason the girls won't see him is that his house is like a dumping ground, it seriously is like something off a documentary where there is so much junk, clutter and filth that there is a small corridor of space going through each room. It is NOT that I don't want the girls to see him, of course I do.
- I am not interested in his new girlfriend. I left HIM so have no issue with the new(ish) partner - she seems very pleasant.
- When I moved from the house I took NOTHING, no furniture, except for my clothes and a few personal items.
- I then had to pay approx £5k myself to furnish new house which I rented. I never asked for a penny. I also paid for the divorce in full myself.
- When we divorced I did NOT ask for a cut of his pension (of which he has a very good one)
- I would happily sign the house over to him if I were able. I realise that in time it will go up in value, but I don't want the equity when it does become available because his new partner has been paying towards it, so it is rightly hers.

Please don't think of me as one of the normal, sour ex wives - far from it. I have a nice job I enjoy and both my ex and our new partners are far more suited and have a better life for our divorce.

kb92830

Fbaby, fair point, I am under a court order so additional children do not generally get taken in to account on a variation request, and yes you are right, rules in a lot of cases, similar to the benefits system do drive the wrong behaviours.

Katherine, please do not think I am being critical, I fully sympathise with your situation. Similar to you I walked out with the clothes on my back, had a 2'x2' box dumped on my new doorstep with a few very personal items and then had to start from scratch again on my own, also I had to not only pay my legal fees I also had to pay her solicitors and barrister fees as well, the joys of watching 3 very well paid people argue for 3 days in court at my expense was laughable with hindsight. All I am saying is be very careful if you wish to review things, when it comes to finances it can get very acrimonious very quickly and all sorts of things can suddenly be thrown up. If it is any consolation my Ex had me on the brink of bankrupty twice over the last ten years but somehow I always managed to avoid what seemed the inevitable. Believe me there is always light at the end of the tunnel even if it seems very far away. My advice to you would be to go and see the Citizens advice, they are impartial, they won't charge but best of all they can look at all the available options with you. Do not go to a solicitor to start with as normally they will tell you to argue just so they can have a good income from it, my advice of solicitors is that they rarely consider all of the facts and they have a vested interest in prolonging the argument.

The sad ending to my story is that as a result of the last court hearing with my ex, she has stopped me seeing my daughters completely. She decided to share some of the things that were said in court and the fact that I threatened her with putting the girls in court to determine their feelings about her restricting the the contact with me. As a result of this I recieved a letter from my daughters both of whom were over 12 years old (so they can make their own minds up) clearly telling me that I was wicked person that took no interest in them and as a result they no longer wanted to see me. What they failed to realise was the threat was made precisely for the reason I wanted more to do with them and spend more time with them.

I hope longer term all works out well for you.

PS. Don't listen to others on here that put you down for asking the questions, ultimately that is what the forum is for.

Helen42

Been skim reading a bit so sorry if I get the wrong point here but what some people seem to be forgetting is when a divorce happens emotions run very very high and sometimes the easy way out seems the best at that time, we can all pull Katherine to pieces for not doing this and that and for not finalizing some things at the time of the divorce.

There are a lot of people out there more than ready to have a go at us "sour bitter women" and generally those people are the ones who don't want to be financially responsible for their children dont want to give their children what they deserve from both parent not just the parent with care.

I really beleive that both parties of ALL couples who split who have children should be given a new tax coding based on what maintenance should be paid/received. i.e once the assessment is done the parent who is not living with the children has a tax code that reflects the assesment and the parent with care is passed that money via his/her coding. By doing this no man/woman can miss payments and no man/woman can say they havent had payments that they have received in cash as it will all be recorded properly

xxxx

jojo_2012_2

CSA won't leave him with less than he can afford to live on. Take it from me my ex is always going on "sick leave" from work, which means my payments stop. He's making excuses, and needs to cut back and actually financially contribute to HIS children.

Helen42

Totally agree with you JoJo my ex has changed jobs and waited for DOE (deductions of earnings orders) every time which takes about 3 to 4 months and then when he had a couple of those he changes jobs again.